Fights of all sorts took place--the light-armed soldier and the netsman--the lasso and the javelin--the two heavy-armed warriors--all combinations of single combat, and sometimes a general melee. When a gladiator wounded his adversary, he shouted to the spectators, Hoc habet! 'He has it!' and looked up to know whether he should kill or spare. If the people held up their thumbs, the conquered was left to recover, if he could; if they turned them down, he was to die: and if he showed any reluctance to present his throat for the deathblow, there was a scornful shout, Recipe ferrum! 'Receive the steel!' Many of us must have seen casts of the most touching statue of the wounded man, that called forth the noble lines of indignant pity which, though so often repeated, cannot be passed over here: 'I see before me the Gladiator lie; He leans upon his hand--his manly brow Consents to death, but conquers agony. And his droop'd head sinks gradually low, And through his side the last drops, ebbing slow From the red gash, fall heavy one by one, Like the first of a thunder shower; and now The arena swims around him--he is gone Ere ceased the inhuman shout which hailed the wretch who won. 'He heard it, but he heeded no--this eyes Were with his heart, and that was far away. He reck'd not of the life he lost, nor prize, But where his rude hut by the Danube lay, There were his young barbarians all at play, There was their Dacian mother--he their sire, Butcher'd to make a Roman holiday. All this rush'd with his blood--Shall he expire, And unavenged? Arise ye Goths and glut your ire.' Sacred vestals, tender mothers, fat, good-humored senators, all thought it fair play, and were equally pitiless in the strange frenzy for exciting scenes to which they gave themselves up, when they mounted the stone stairs of the Coliseum. Privileged persons would even descend into the arena, examine the death agonies, and taste the blood of some specially brave victim ere the corpse was drawn forth at the death gate, that the frightful game might continue undisturbed and unencumbered. Gladiator shows were the great passion of Rome, and popular favor could hardly be gained except by ministering to it. Even when the barbarians were beginning to close in on the Empire, hosts of brave men were still kept for this slavish mimic warfare--sport to the beholders, but sad earnest to the actors.