The company marches solemnly down the arena led by an enormous lanista, one of their trainers, the scarred hero of all the youth of Rome. Before Cluentius on the podium they halt and flourish their weapons defiantly. Everybody knows that they have just taken their fearful oath “to be bound, to be burned, to be scourged, to be slain, and to endure all else required of them as proper gladiators, giving up alike their souls and their bodies.”[216] =339. Throwing a Criminal to the Beasts. The Animal Hunt.=--However, the contests do not begin immediately; there is a preliminary spectacle in store. The Prætor’s friend, the City Præfect, most luckily has handed over to him a vicious freedman caught maltreating his patron’s lady. The wretch, of course, deserves death:--how proper, therefore, that he can be made to amuse more honest folk by his very exit! Into the middle of the arena they lead him, a pitiful gibbering object, half-dead already with fright. The guards strike off his fetters, thrust a cheap sword into his hands, and themselves hastily retire into one of the numerous caged chambers lining the arena. A tense stillness for an instant holds the Flavian. Suddenly the rattle of chains is heard. In the very center of the sands (part of which are over wooden substructures) the arena opens; a cage appears lifted by pulleys, and then is opened by some mechanism. Forth bounds a tawny lion, lashing his tail and growling with hunger and rage. The unskilled victim has been given a sword with the vain promise that if he can actually kill the lion his own life will be spared. His chances are infinitesimal, but a few desperadoes have thus actually saved themselves. Will the prisoner fight? To the infinite disgust of the thousands he collapses upon the sands in sheer terror before the lion can so much as strike him. The beast finishes his life almost instantly. The multitude hoot and curse--they have been cheated of their passionate desire to see a human victim struggling in desperate combat with the great beast. Fortunately, they remind themselves, this is only the beginning of the performance. If one need not moralize, one need not linger. After the sacrifice of the criminal there are more beasts turned loose in the arena. Of course, no Prætor can be expected to show the hundreds of animals which an Emperor will exhibit in his greater games, but Cluentius has done the thing very respectably. He has in all ten bears, eighteen panthers, five lions, and six tigers.