April, the sweetest month in the south, had decked the land in all its wealth of beauty. The City of the Seven Hills, with its endless gardens and plantations, wore a really enchanting aspect. It seemed to have put on its freshest and gayest attire in honor of the secular games, which had already begun on the previous day with magnificent races in the Circus Maximus. To-day, the sixth after the calends,[125] at two hours after sunrise, gladiators and ships were to fight in the Flavian Amphitheatre, and men were to fight with beasts. It was still nearly an hour to the time, but in the Forum and all the neighboring streets the slanting light of morning fell on a crowd so dense as to defy all description. Long files of litters, gorgeous in purple and gold, pushed their slow way through the surging masses of men struggling along the Via Sacra towards the entrance to the amphitheatre. Three hundred lions[126] and as many panthers, fifty Cantabrian bears, forty elephants and other beasts, six hundred gladiators and boxers--among them some women and dwarfs--a dozen of highwaymen from the Appian Way, and about ninety Christians, were to shed their blood, some in single combat, others in larger or smaller divisions, and all in the course of the next three days, for the evening of the fourth saw the end of the great festival.[127] Indeed, the herald who invited the populace in the Emperor’s name, spoke the truth in more senses than one, as he shouted the usual proclamation: "Come hither to see what none of you has ever yet seen, or ever will see again!"[128] To-day, the second day, the interest and excitement seemed even greater than yesterday. The number of strangers, gathered together from all parts of the Empire, was certainly swelled and, although the amphitheatre could accommodate above eighty thousand spectators, the crowd was so enormous, that many visitors were doubtful of succeeding in fighting their way to places.