There was one exception to this rule. Constantine came down with a heavy hand on secret divination and the practice of magic and the black arts. But other Emperors before him had done the same, Emperors whose loyalty to the Roman religion had never been questioned—for these mysterious rites formed no part of the established worship. They might be employed to the harm of the State; they might portend danger to the Emperor’s life and throne. It was not for private individuals to experiment with and let loose the powers of darkness, for, as a rule, beneficent deities had no part or lot in these dark mysteries. As a Christian, Constantine would have a double satisfaction in issuing edicts against the wonder-working charlatans who abounded in the great cities; but the point is that in attacking them he was not technically attacking the old State religion. The public and official haruspices were not interfered with; if any devout pagan still desired to consult an oracle, no obstacle was placed in his way; and, as a tribute to the universal superstition of the age from which he himself was not free, even private divination was permitted when the object was a good one, such as the restoration of a sick person to health or the protection of crops against hail. But it is evident that Constantine and his bishops were far more apprehensive of evil from the unchaining of the Devil than expectant of good from the favour of the ministers of grace. They were terrified of the one: they indulged but a pious hope of the other. Nor was the Emperor successful in stamping out the private thaumaturgist. Human nature was too strong for him. _Sileat perpetuo divinandi curiositas_, ordered one of his successors in 358. But the curiosity to divine the future continued to defy both civil and ecclesiastical law. A much bolder act, however, than the closing of a few temples on the score of public decency or the forbidding of private divination was the edict of 325, in which Constantine ordered the abolition of the gladiatorial shows. “Such blood-stained spectacles,” he said, “in the midst of civil peace and domestic quiet are repugnant to our taste.” He ordained, therefore, that in future all criminals who were usually condemned to be gladiators should be sent to work in the mines, that they might expiate their offences without shedding of blood. But it was one thing to issue an edict and another to enforce it. Whether Constantine insisted on the observance of this particular edict, we cannot say, but his successors certainly did not, for the gladiatorial spectacles at Rome were in full swing in the days of Symmachus, who ransacked the world for good swordsmen and strange animals. The “_cruenta spectacula_” as Constantine called them, were not finally abolished until the reign of Honorius.