The entertainments provided were of several kinds, by no means equally popular. There were plays in the theatres; there were contests of running, wrestling, boxing, throwing of spears and disks, and other "events," corresponding to our athletic sports; there were chariot-races in the Circus, answering to our horse-races at Epsom or Newmarket; and there were spectacles in the amphitheatre, to which, happily, we have no modern parallel. These included huntings and baitings of animals, fights with wild beasts--performances far more dangerous than those of the Spanish bull-ring--and, above all, the combats of the gladiators or professional "swordsmen." So far as there exists a later analogue to the last it is to be found in the more chivalrous tourney in the lists, but the resemblance is not very close. Least valued among the real Romans were the athletic sports. For genuine enjoyment of these we must look to the Greek part of the empire. At Rome they appeared tame, for the mind of the Roman populace was naturally coarse in grain; what it delighted in was something sensationally acrobatic, or provocative of a rather gross laughter, or else involving a thrilling anticipation of danger and bloodshed. In taste the Romans were in fact similar to those modern spectators who love to see a man plunge from a lofty trapeze into a narrow tank, with a reasonable chance of breaking his neck. It is a strange contradiction with other Roman attitudes when we find that they objected to the Greek wrestling or running on grounds of decorum, because it was innocently nude. On the athletic sports, although they were never wanting in the "games" at Rome, we need not therefore dwell. It may be sufficient to show by an illustration what sort of notion the ancient world entertained of interesting pugilism. It is only fair to say that the "boxing-gloves" here given--thongs of leather wrapped tightly round the arm and hand, and loaded or studded with lead or iron--were a notion borrowed from the professional pugilists of Greece. [Illustration: FIG. 80.--THEATRE AT ASPENDUS.]