After the noise has subsided, the trumpets blow again, another set of chariots is ready and the whole excitement is repeated. So the contests keep up through the day. If there is a long interval between the races, rope-dancers, acrobats, and trick-riders are ready to amuse the populace. Probably at the end there will be the crowning and decisive race between the winners of the preceding contests. If Scorpus can triumph in this also, he will carouse with his companions, doubtless more praised and fêted for one glad night than even the Emperor. =330. Gladiatorial Contests Even More Popular than the Circus.=--Yet Scorpus with all his adulation and ephemeral wealth turns green with jealousy toward a rival for fame--the victorious gladiator in the last combats in the Flavian. The sports of the arena perhaps excite greater favor with the mob, betting more reckless, passions more frantic than do even the contests of the Circus. The gladiatorial games are peculiar to Roman civilization; nothing exactly like them will follow in later ages.[210] They illustrate completely the pitiless spirit and carelessness of human life lurking behind the pomp, glitter, and cultural pretensions of the great imperial age. True it is that persons of intellectual tastes sometimes affect greater contempt for these contests than they do for the Circus. “No doubt the gladiators,” such men as Seneca write to one another, “are criminals deserving their fate, but what have _you_ done to deserve being compelled to witness their last agonies?” No matter; nothing will gain “popularity” for a ruler or for a magnate sooner than announcing a fight in the arena. The very best Emperors arrange elaborate series of combats--perhaps with a sigh in their hearts, as colossal and bloody bribes which must be thrown constantly to the mob; and Imperator, great officials, senators, priests, nay, the Vestal Virgins themselves, will all be on hand in the reserved front benches. There is even given out a philosophical justification for the butcheries, namely, that the spectators become hardened to the sight of death and are, therefore, the more courageous when their own hour comes. The reigning Hadrian considers the arena combats to be useful also for keeping up the military spirit; in short the whole Latin half of the Empire delights in them, although they never have become very popular in the Greek portion.[211] =331. Gladiator Fights at Funerals.=--Gladiatorial fights claim an Etruscan origin, and in Rome they were first exhibited at funerals of the great, possibly with the idea that the spirits of the slain would serve the dead lord in the underworld. It is still very fashionable to give a sizable gladiator fight as the aftermath of any pretentious funeral, but this is perhaps more common in the provincial towns than in Rome, where the government likes to control such martial spectacles.