When once there, Onesimus had not the wisdom to behave as young Alypius did three centuries later, and to close his eyes. On the contrary, he caught fire, almost from the first moment, with the wild excitement, and returned home paganised in every fibre of his being by the horrid voluptuous maddening scene which he had witnessed--in which he had taken part. All that was sweet and pure and tender in the lessons which he had learnt in the house of Philemon seemed to have been swept away for the time in that crimson tide of blood, in that demoniac spectacle of strong men sacrificed as on a Moloch-altar for the amusement of the idle populace. The more splendid the agility of the nets-man, the more brawny the muscles of the Samnite, the more dazzling the sweep of the mirmillo’s steel, the more vivid was the excitement of watching the glazing eye and ebbing life. It was thrilling to see the supreme moments and most unfathomed mysteries of existence turned into the spectacle of a holiday; and even to help in deciding by the movement of a thumb whether some blue-eyed German from the Teutobergian forests should live or die. What wonder was it that waves of emotion swept over the assembled multitude as the gusts of a summer tempest sweep over the waving corn? What wonder that the hearts of thousands, as though they were the heart of one man, throbbed together in fierce sympathy, and became like a wild Æolian harp, of which the strings were beaten into murmurs or shrieks or sobs by some intermittent hurricane? In the concentrated passion of those hours, when every pulse leapt and tingled with excitement, the youth seemed to live through years in moments; his whole being palpitated with a delicious horror, which annihilated all the ordinary interests of life. Here, for the mere dissipation of time, the most consummate tragedies were enacted as part of a scenic display. The spasms of anguish and the heroism of endurance were but the passing incidents of a gymnastic show. When Onesimus returned to his cell that night he was a changed being. For a long time he could not sleep, and when he did sleep the tumult of the arena still rolled through his troubled dreams. His fellow-slaves, long familiar with such games, were amused to hear him start up from his pallet with shouts of _Habet! Occide! Verbera!_ and all the wild cries of the amphitheatre, and from these bloodshot dreams he would awake panting as from a nightmare, while the chant of the gladiators, _Ave, Cæsar! Morituri te salutamus_, still woke its solemn echoes in his ears.