The gladiatorial games form, indeed, the one feature of Roman society which to a modern mind is almost inconceivable in its atrocity. That not only men, but women, in an advanced period of civilisation—men and women who not only professed but very frequently acted upon a high code of morals—should have made the carnage of men their habitual amusement, that all this should have continued for centuries, with scarcely a protest, is one of the most startling facts in moral history. It is, however, perfectly normal, and in no degree inconsistent with the doctrine of natural moral perceptions, while it opens out fields of ethical enquiry of a very deep though painful interest. These games, which long eclipsed, both in interest and in influence, every other form of public amusement at Rome,(459) were originally religious ceremonies celebrated at the tombs of the great, and intended as human sacrifices to appease the Manes of the dead.(460) They were afterwards defended as a means of sustaining the military spirit by the constant spectacle of courageous death,(461) and with this object it was customary to give a gladiatorial show to soldiers before their departure to a war.(462) In addition to these functions they had a considerable political importance, for at a time when all the regular organs of liberty were paralysed or abolished, the ruler was accustomed in the arena to meet tens of thousands of his subjects, who availed themselves of the opportunity to present their petitions, to declare their grievances, and to censure freely the sovereign or his ministers.(463) The games are said to have been of Etruscan origin; they were first introduced into Rome, B.C. 264, when the two sons of a man named Brutus compelled three pair of gladiators to fight at the funeral of their father,(464) and before the close of the Republic they were common on great public occasions, and, what appears even more horrible, at the banquets of the nobles.(465) The rivalry of Cæsar and Pompey greatly multiplied them, for each sought by this means to ingratiate himself with the people. Pompey introduced a new form of combat between men and animals.(466) Cæsar abolished the old custom of restricting the mortuary games to the funerals of men, and his daughter was the first Roman lady whose tomb was desecrated by human blood.(467) Besides this innovation, Cæsar replaced the temporary edifices in which the games had hitherto been held by a permanent wooden amphitheatre, shaded the spectators by an awning of precious silk, compelled the condemned persons on one occasion to fight with silver lances,(468) and drew so many gladiators into the city that the Senate was obliged to issue an enactment restricting their number.(469) In the earliest years of the Empire, Statilius Taurus erected the first amphitheatre of stone.(470) Augustus ordered that not more than 120 men should fight on a single occasion, and that no prætor should give more than two spectacles in a