Another circumstance will illustrate the manners of the times. L. Flamininus, the brother of the conqueror of Philip, and Consul in B.C. 192, took with him into Cisalpine Gaul a beautiful Carthaginian boy, to whom he was attached. The youth complained of leaving Rome just before the exhibition of the games of the gladiators. Shortly after reaching the province, when Flamininus was feasting with his favorite, a Boian chief came into the Consul's tent to implore his protection. Flamininus seized this opportunity to please the boy, and, telling him that he should be rewarded for not seeing the gladiators, he ordered an attendant to stab the Gaul, that his favorite might enjoy the dying agonies of the man. The increasing love of gladiatorial combats was another indication of the national character. These brutalizing sports are said to have taken their origin from the Etruscans, who were accustomed to kill slaves and captives at the funerals of their relatives. They were first exhibited at Rome in the beginning of the First Punic War (B.C. 264). At first confined to funerals, they were afterward exhibited by the AEdiles at the public games, with the view of pleasing the people. The passion for this brutalizing amusement rose to a great height toward the end of the Republic and under the Empire. Great pains were taken with the training of gladiators, who were divided into different classes according to their arms and modes of fighting. Among many other important consequences of these foreign wars, two exercised an especial influence upon the future fate of the Republic. The nobles became enormously rich, and the peasant proprietors almost entirely disappeared. The wealthy nobles now combined together to keep in their own families the public offices of the state, which afforded the means of making such enormous fortunes. Thus a new Nobility was formed, resting on wealth, and composed alike of plebeian and patrician families. Every one whose ancestry had not held any of the curule magistracies[53] was called a New Man, and was branded as an upstart.[54] It became more and more difficult for a New Man to rise to office, and the Nobles were thus almost an hereditary aristocracy in the exclusive possession of the government. The wealth they had acquired in foreign commands enabled them not only to incur a prodigious expense in the celebration of the public games in their aedileship, with the view of gaining the votes of the people at future elections, but also to spend large sums of money in the actual purchase of votes. The first law against bribery[55] was passed in B.C. 181, a sure proof of the growth of the practice.