In the first and second centuries the passion for cruel excitement was as strong in the provincial towns as it was even at Rome. This may have been partly due to the monotony of provincial life. It was also stimulated by the ease with which public sentiment extorted the means for these gratifications from the richer citizens. The opinion of the powerful and enlightened class, with rare exceptions, made no effort to purify and humanise the grossness of the masses. Seneca and Demonax indeed display a modern humanity in their view of the degrading influence of these displays.(1334) A humane magistrate of Vienne, one Trebonius Rufinus, in the reign of Trajan, having autocratically abolished them in his city, was called upon to defend his conduct before the emperor, and Junius Mauricus had the courage to express before the council a wish that they could be abolished also at Rome.(1335) Augustus had, by an imperial edict, restrained the cruel exhibitions of the father of Nero.(1336) Vespasian, according to Dion Cassius,(1337) had little pleasure in the shows of the arena. But the emperors generally, and not least Vespasian’s sons, encouraged and pandered to the lust for blood.(1338) The imperial gladiators were organised elaborately in four great schools by Domitian,(1339) with a regular administration, presided over by officers of high rank. The gentle Pliny, who had personally no liking for such spectacles, applauded his friend Maximus for giving a gladiatorial show to the people of Verona, to do honour to his dead wife, in the true spirit of the old Bruti and Lepidi of the age of the Punic Wars.(1340) He found in the shows of Trajan a splendid incentive of contempt for death.