[127] Sahagun, Hist. de Nueva-España, lib. 2, cap. 10, 29.--Gomara, Crón., cap. 219, ap. Barcia, tom. ii.--Toribio, Hist. de los Indios, MS., Parte 1, cap. 6-11.--The reader will find a tolerably exact picture of the nature of these tortures in the twenty-first canto of the “Inferno.” The fantastic creations of the Florentine poet were nearly realized, at the very time he was writing, by the barbarians of an unknown world. One sacrifice, of a less revolting character, deserves to be mentioned. The Spaniards called it the “gladiatorial sacrifice,” and it may remind one of the bloody games of antiquity. A captive of distinction was sometimes furnished with arms, and brought against a number of Mexicans in succession. If he defeated them all, as did occasionally happen, he was allowed to escape. If vanquished, he was dragged to the block and sacrificed in the usual manner. The combat was fought on a huge circular stone, before the assembled capital. Sahagun, Hist. de Nueva-España, lib. 2, cap. 21.--Rel. d’un gentil’ huomo, ap. Ramusio, tom. iii. fol. 305. [128] Sahagun, Hist. de Nueva-España, lib. 2, cap. 1, 4, 21, et alibi.--Torquemada, Monarch. Ind., lib. 10, cap. 10.--Clavigero, Stor. del Messico, tom. ii. pp. 76, 82. [129] Carta del Lic. Zuazo, MS.--Torquemada, Monarch. Ind., lib. 7, cap. 19.--Herrera, Hist. general, dec. 3, lib. 2, cap. 17.--Sahagun, Hist. de Nueva-España, lib. 2, cap. 21, et alibi.--Toribio, Hist. de los Indios, MS., Parte 1, cap. 2. [130] To say nothing of Egypt, where, notwithstanding the indications on the monuments, there is strong reason for doubting it. (Comp. Herodotus, Euterpe, sec. 45.) It was of frequent occurrence among the Greeks, as every schoolboy knows. In Rome, it was so common as to require to be interdicted by an express law, less than a hundred years before the Christian era,--a law recorded in a very honest strain of exultation by Pliny (Hist. Nat., lib. 30, sec. 3, 4); notwithstanding which, traces of the existence of the practice may be discerned to a much later period. See, among others, Horace, Epod., In Canidiam.