Besides this, the mere desire for novelty impelled the people to every excess or refinement of barbarity.(491) The simple combat became at last insipid, and every variety of atrocity was devised to stimulate the flagging interest. At one time a bear and a bull, chained together, rolled in fierce contest along the sand; at another, criminals dressed in the skins of wild beasts were thrown to bulls, which were maddened by red-hot irons, or by darts tipped with burning pitch. Four hundred bears were killed on a single day under Caligula; three hundred on another day under Claudius. Under Nero, four hundred tigers fought with bulls and elephants; four hundred bears and three hundred lions were slaughtered by his soldiers. In a single day, at the dedication of the Colosseum by Titus, five thousand animals perished. Under Trajan, the games continued for one hundred and twenty-three successive days.(492) Lions, tigers, elephants, rhinoceroses, hippopotami, giraffes, bulls, stags, even crocodiles and serpents, were employed to give novelty to the spectacle. Nor was any form of human suffering wanting. The first Gordian, when edile, gave twelve spectacles, in each of which from one hundred and fifty to five hundred pair of gladiators appeared.(493) Eight hundred pair fought at the triumph of Aurelian.(494) Ten thousand men fought during the games of Trajan.(495) Nero illumined his gardens during the night by Christians burning in their pitchy shirts.(496) Under Domitian, an army of feeble dwarfs was compelled to fight,(497) and, more than once, female gladiators descended to perish in the arena.(498) A criminal personating a fictitious character was nailed to a cross, and there torn by a bear.(499) Another, representing Scævola, was compelled to hold his hand in a real flame.(500) A third, as Hercules, was burnt alive upon the pile.(501) So intense was the craving for blood, that a prince was less unpopular if he neglected the distribution of corn than if he neglected the games; and Nero himself, on account of his munificence in this respect, was probably the sovereign who was most beloved by the Roman multitude. Heliogabalus and Galerius are reported, when dining, to have regaled themselves with the sight of criminals torn by wild beasts. It was said of the latter that “he never supped without human blood.”(502)