The Last of the Gladiators
The first gladiatorial show which we read of in Roman history was about the year of the city 490 (263 B.C.), given by Marcus and Decius Brutus (called the Bruti) at the funeral of their father. Afterwards these exhibitions were given by the magistrates at regular periods, and at length they became the chief means of obtaining the favor of the people.
The emperors exceeded all others in the extent and magnificence of these cruel spectacles. Julius Caesar gave a show of three hundred and twenty couples. Titus gave a show of gladiators with wild beasts for one hundred days; Trajan for one hundred and twenty-three days, in which twenty thousand gladiators, chiefly Dacian prisoners, and eleven thousand wild beasts, are said to have been slain for the amusement of seventy thousand Romans, patricians and plebeians, the highest ladies and the lowest rabble, assembled in the Coliseum.
The gladiators consisted chiefly of slaves, captives, and condemned malefactors; but sometimes free-born citizens became gladiators for hire. Even persons of high birth were induced to display their skill and courage before the people in these combats.
The gladiators were trained and sworn to fight to the death. If they showed cowardice, they were killed after torture.
When one of the combatants was disarmed or upon the ground, the victor looked to the emperor if present, or to the people, for the signal of death. If they raised their thumbs, his life was spared: if they turned them down, the victor executed the fatal mandate.
A gladiator who had conquered was rewarded with a branch of palm or with his freedom. The Emperor Constantine prohibited these contests of gladiators (A.D. 325), but they could not at once be abolished.
In the reign of Honorius, son of Theodosius the Great, the retreat of the Goths from Rome, under their chieftain Alaric, was celebrated with great rejoicing in the city, and with the revival of the gladiatorial contests. In the midst of the games in the Coliseum, Telemachus, a Christian monk, sprang into the arena, and, raising the cross above his head, commanded the gladiators, in the name of their crucified Lord, to cease from their inhuman sport.
The enraged multitude stoned him to death; but a little later, overwhelmed with remorse for the act, they proclaimed him a martyr.
The Emperor Honorius took advantage of this occasion to prohibit gladiatorial combats forever within the amphitheatre at Rome (A.D. 404). They ceased throughout the empire about the year A.D. 500.