In the provinces the same passion was displayed. From Gaul to Syria, wherever the Roman influence extended, the spectacles of blood were introduced, and the gigantic remains of amphitheatres in many lands still attest by their ruined grandeur the scale on which they were pursued. In the reign of Tiberius, more than 20,000 persons are said to have perished by the fall of the amphitheatre at the suburban town of Fidenæ.(478) Under Nero, the Syracusans obtained, as a special favour, an exemption from the law which limited the number of gladiators.(479) Of the vast train of prisoners brought by Titus from Judea, a large proportion were destined by the conqueror for the provincial games.(480) In Syria, where they were introduced by Antiochus Epiphanes, they at first produced rather terror than pleasure; but the effeminate Syrians soon learned to contemplate them with a passionate enjoyment,(481) and on a single occasion Agrippa caused 1,400 men to fight in the amphitheatre at Berytus.(482) Greece alone was in some degree an exception. When an attempt was made to introduce the spectacle into Athens, the cynic philosopher Demonax appealed successfully to the better feelings of the people by exclaiming, “You must first overthrow the altar of Pity.”(483) The games are said to have afterwards penetrated to Athens, and to have been suppressed by Apollonius of Tyana;(484) but with the exception of Corinth, where a very large foreign population existed, Greece never appears to have shared the general enthusiasm.(485) One of the first consequences of this taste was to render the people absolutely unfit for those tranquil and refined amusements which usually accompany civilisation. To men who were accustomed to witness the fierce vicissitudes of deadly combat, any spectacle that did not elicit the strongest excitement was insipid. The only amusements that at all rivalled the spectacles of the amphitheatre and the circus were those which appealed strongly to the sensual passions, such as the games of Flora, the postures of the pantomimes, and the ballet.(486) Roman comedy, indeed, flourished for a short period, but only by throwing itself into the same career. The pander and the courtesan are the leading characters of Plautus, and the more modest Terence never attained an equal popularity. The different forms of vice have a continual tendency to act and react upon one another, and the intense craving after excitement which the amphitheatre must necessarily have produced, had probably no small influence in stimulating the orgies of sensuality which Tacitus and Suetonius describe.