As these combats formed the supreme pleasure of the inhabitants of Rome, the most cruel of their Emperors were sometimes the most popular; merely because they gratified the people, without restraint, in their favourite amusement. When Marcus Aurelius thought it necessary, for the public service, to recruit his army from the gladiators of Rome; it raised more discontent among the populace, than many of the wildest pranks of Caligula. In the times of some of the Emperors, the lower class of Roman citizens were certainly as worthless a set of men as ever existed; stained with all the vices which arise from idleness and dependence; living upon the largesses of the great; passing their whole time in the Circus and Amphitheatres, where every sentiment of humanity was annihilated within their breasts, and where the agonies and torments of their fellow-creatures were their chief pastime. That no occasion might be lost of indulging this savage taste of the populace, criminals were condemned to fight with wild beasts in the Arena, or were exposed, unarmed, to be torn in pieces by them; at other times, they were blindfolded, and in that condition obliged to cut and slaughter each other. So that, instead of victims solemnly sacrificed to public justice, they seemed to be brought in as buffoons to raise the mirth of the spectators. The practice of domestic slavery had also a great influence in rendering the Romans of a cruel and haughty character. Masters could punish their slaves in what manner, and to what degree, they thought proper. It was as late as the Emperor Adrian’s time, before any law was made, ordaining that a master who should put his slave to death without sufficient cause, should be tried for his life. The usual porter at the gate of a great man’s house in ancient Rome, was a chained slave. The noise of whips and lashes resounded from one house to another, at the time when it was customary for the masters of families to take an account of the conduct of their servants. This cruel disposition, as is the case wherever domestic slavery prevails, extended to the gentle sex, and hardened the mild tempers of the women. What a picture has Juvenal drawn of the toilet of a Roman lady! Nam si constituit, solitoque decentius optat Ornari —— —— Componit crinem laceratis ipsa capillis, Nuda humeros Psecas infelix, nudisque mamillis, Altior hic quare cincinnus? Taurea punit. Continuo flexi crimen facinusque capilli. It was customary for avaricious masters, to send their infirm and sick slaves, to an island in the Tiber, where there was a Temple of Æsculapius; if the God pleased to recover them, the master took them back to his family; if they died, no farther inquiry was made about them. The Emperor Claudius put a check to this piece of inhumanity, by ordaining, that every sick slave, thus abandoned by his master, should be declared free when he recovered his health.