control of every manifestation of suffering in themselves, and contempt for the expression of it in others, tended to exclude tragedy almost entirely from the range of their literature. Any softer emotions, too, which the Roman people may have once experienced—any sentiments capable of being awakened to tragic pathos, became gradually blunted by the manner in which they were exercised. They had, by degrees, been accustomed to take a barbarous delight in the most wanton displays of human violence, and brutal cruelty. Lions and elephants tore each other in pieces before their eyes; and they beheld, with emotions only of delight, crowds of hireling gladiators wasting their energy, valour, and life, on the guilty _arena_ of a Circus. Gladiatorial combats were first exhibited by Decius and Marcus Brutus, at the funeral of their father, about the commencement of the Punic wars. The number of such entertainments increased with the luxury of the times; and those who courted popular favour found no readier way to gain it than by magnificence and novelty in this species of expense. Cæsar exhibited three hundred pairs of gladiators; Pompey presented to the multitude six hundred lions, to be torn in pieces in the Circus, besides harnessed bears and dancing elephants; and some other candidate for popular favour, introduced the yet more refined barbarity of combats between men and wild animals. These were the darling amusements of all, and chief occupations of many Romans; and those who could take pleasure in such spectacles, must have lost all that tenderness of inward feeling, and all that exquisite sympathy for suffering, without which none can perceive the force and beauty of a tragic drama. The extension, too, of the military power, and the increasing wealth and splendour of the Roman republic, accustomed its citizens to triumphal and gaudy processions. This led to a taste for what, in modern times, has been called _Spectacle_; and, instead of melting with tenderness at the woes of Andromache, the people demanded on the stage such exhibitions as presented them with an image of their favourite pastimes:— “Quatuor aut plures aulæa premuntur in horas, Dum fugiunt equitum turmæ, peditumque catervæ: Mox trahitur manibus regum fortuna retortis; Esseda festinant, pilenta, petorrita, naves: Captivum portatur ebur, captiva Corinthus(358).”