_V. Inl._ or _Vir Inlustris_, _V. C._ or _Vir Clarissimus_, and even _Patric._ or _Patrician_, were personal titles and not hereditary. They denoted that the bearer had held high office. We also find _Præfectus_, and _Comes domesticorum equites_, or commander of the imperial bodyguard. To be called _Vir spectabilis_, or a respectable man, was then esteemed a high honour, while in our degenerate days it is almost considered an insult. But _Cons. ordin._ or _Consul ordinarius_ was the real dignity, and with one exception always stood last. In the lower division of the Orestes tablet, two servants pour money from sacks, doubtless commemorating the Consul’s largesse to the people. In some diptychs they scatter prizes for the Games, and often there are lively representations of the chariot races (No. 33), and the fights with wild beasts. Areobindus has left us the most varied pictures. A row of spectators look on at the struggling gladiators (No. 9), or _Bestiarii_ fighting with all sorts of wild beasts, lions and bears (No. 7), a bull-fight (No. 10), and on an anonymous diptych at Liverpool (No. 51), five magnificent elans are being attacked by hunters. The fights do not appear to have been very dangerous for the men; the scenes are often quite comic from the numerous precautions taken, especially on the Basilewsky tablet at St. Petersburg (No. 52). The fighters, carefully packed in leather protectors, bolt through doors with peep-holes, or climb into a sort of crow’s-nest, curling up their ferocious opponents at the end of extremely long spears. In fact there was every means of escape, trap-doors, turnstile exits, and even dummy figures to divert the attention of the animals. Perhaps it was necessary, for we read of Pompey providing six hundred lions for a single show, and of Trajan celebrating his Dacian victories by the slaughter of eleven thousand beasts. If these little precautions had not been taken, the entertainment might have ended abruptly, and more in favour of the lower animals than the lords of creation. The fights of the gladiators represented on the Besançon tablet must have been more exhibitions of skill than struggles to the death. These gladiatorial fights ceased after the generous act of the monk Telemachus. He, after travelling to Rome from the far East with the set purpose, stept down into the arena, at the triumphal games of the Emperor Honorius (404), and tried to part the combatants. He was stoned to death by the enraged multitude; but his death was not unavailing, for his memory was respected, and these degrading exhibitions were for ever abolished.