It was not till some years after Titus that the spectators began to experience a new kind of pleasure in seeing Christians thrown living to the wild beasts of the arena. Many thus perished as witnesses of a better faith and a higher morality. When, however, Christianity triumphed and became the religion of the empire, an effort was instituted, first by Constantine, to stop the degrading shows. But the people were so frantically addicted to them that they were scarcely abated by government edicts till Emperor Honorius succeeded in abolishing gladiatorial fights in 404. Long afterward the hunting of wild beasts continued. The massive structure remained scarcely impaired by time till about the middle of the fourteenth century, when the greater part of the southern half collapsed, probably through an earthquake. The ruin piled up a “mountain of stone,” which for the next five centuries served the Roman nobles as a quarry. THE GRANDEUR OF THE COLOSSEUM Some of the most imposing palaces which lend dignity to the modern city have been built with this material. Although fully half the stone has been thus removed, the part of the structure which still remains is the most impressive of all the ruins of the city--a monument of the grandeur and of the moral degradation of Rome. It is an especially rich experience to visit the Colosseum by moonlight, where, seated on a stone at the edge of the arena, we may in imagination, with the aid of the tranquil light, reconstruct the vast interior and repeople it with a Roman multitude breathlessly awaiting the opening of the games or exulting over the triumph of a popular favorite. On certain nights the municipal authorities illuminate the interior with colored lights, whose weird spell awakens the imagination to sights of bloody conflict amid a yelling, savage mob. [Illustration: THE BASILICA OF TRAJAN One of the buildings of the Forum of Trajan. The interior as it looked in the days of ancient Rome.] THE TOMB OF HADRIAN The most versatile and perhaps the ablest of all the emperors--an artist, poet, philosopher, general, and statesman--- was Hadrian. Two-thirds of his reign of twenty-one years (117-138 A. D.) he devoted to travel throughout his vast empire. The object of these journeys was not, like that of our presidents, to explain policies and secure votes for reëlection to a second term; for the emperor’s lease of power was lifelong. His purpose was rather to discover and meet the needs of his people. We find him accordingly improving the organization, equipments, and discipline of the army, fortifying exposed points of the frontier, negotiating treaties of alliance with border states, building roads, providing the cities he visited with temples, theaters, and aqueducts, carefully overseeing the complex system of administrative officers, or finding relaxation in conversation with architects, authors, and philosophers. [Illustration: HADRIAN’S TOMB Now known as the Castle Sant’ Angelo.]