=333. Severe Training of Gladiators; Their Ephemeral Glory.=--The lanistæ’s discipline is terribly severe, as is perhaps needful considering the wretches placed under it. The gladiators are kept in prison-like barracks. Nothing is omitted to brutalize them and to make their whole life center around mere skill with their weapons. They are fed upon great quantities of meat. Cruel floggings follow the least breach of discipline, and in every _ludus_ is a lock-up, with a long line of stocks and shackles, which never wants its many occupants. On the other hand many a stupid wretch is made to forget the doom probably awaiting him in the next combats, by dreaming of the glories promised a truly successful gladiator. If he can emerge victorious from a series of combats, he is more talked of than even the most daring charioteer; great nobles will visit his quarters to watch his training and feel of his muscles; his owners will do everything to pamper such a valuable piece of property; innumerable women, even among the silken-robed _clarissimæ_, will dote upon him; and perhaps he can actually elope with a senator’s wife. Not merely the youths but all the girls in Rome will sing the champion’s praises and dream of his valor. He will be named in countless wall-scribblings as “The Maiden’s Sigh,” “The Glory of the Girls,” “The Lord of the Lasses,” or “The Doctor (_medicus_) of the Little Darlings.”[212] If he has lost an ear, if his face is one mass of disfiguring scars, the women run after him all the more. “Never mind _that_,” scolds Juvenal, “he is a gladiator.” The end of this glory ordinarily comes speedily and tragically, but sometimes the very fortunate and skilful fighter will win such favor that, at the popular demand, the giver of the games will present him with a wooden sword--the token of honorable discharge. If he is not a slave-criminal, he can now quit the _ludus_ with plenty of money and a merry life before him, but the taint of his “profession” will always stick to him. He can never become a Roman citizen, much less can he be enrolled as an eques whatever the extent of his wealth. =334. Normal Arrangements for an Arena Contest.=--Strictly speaking the amphitheater is used for two kinds of entertainments--wild beast hunts (_venationes_) and direct combats between men. Each form is extremely popular, although human gore appears a little cheap and ordinary compared with that of an expensive tiger, panther, or lion. It always makes a hit with the crowd to turn, for example, a tigress and a fierce bull-elephant loose on the sands and watch the two brutes rend one another. It is true nevertheless that nothing can really take the place of a sustained combat between two thoroughly trained pupils of the “schools.” Ordinarily the management will have the hunts in the morning at the amphitheater and the human contests in the afternoon. That will send the myriads away happily satiated after a day spent amid the perpetual sniff of gore.