Death--always death! In the paintings; in the bas-reliefs that I describe; in the scenes that they reproduce; in the arena where these combats must have taken place, I can see only unhappy wretches undergoing assassination. One of them, holding his shield behind him, is thinking only how he may manage to fall with grace; another, kneeling, presses his wound with one hand, and stretches the other out toward the spectators; some of them have a suppliant look, others are stoical, but all will have to roll at last upon the sand of the arena, condemned by the inexorable caprice of a people greedy for blood. "The modest virgin," says Juvenal, "turning down her thumb, orders that the breast of yonder man, grovelling in the dust, shall be torn open." And all--the heavily armed Samnite, the Gaul, the Thracian, the secutor; the _dimachoerus_, with his two swords; the swordsman who wears a helmet surmounted with a fish--the one whom the retiarius pursues with his net, meanwhile singing this refrain, "It is not you that I am after, but your fish, and why do you flee from me?"--all, all must succumb, at last, sooner or later, were it to be after the hundredth victory, in this same arena, where once an attendant employed in the theatre used to come, in the costume of Mercury, to touch them with a red-hot iron to make sure that they were dead. If they moved, they were at once dispatched; if they remained icy-cold and motionless, a slave harpooned them with a hook, and dragged them through the mire of sand and blood to the narrow corridor, the _porta libitinensis_,--the portal of death,--whence they were flung into the spoliarium, so that their arms and clothing, at least, might be saved. Such were the games of the amphitheatre. [Footnote K: M. Campfleury has reproduced this design in his very curious book on _Antique Caricature_.] IX. THE ERUPTION. THE DELUGE OF ASHES.--THE DELUGE OF FIRE.--THE FLIGHT OF THE POMPEIANS.--THE PREOCCUPATIONS OF THE POMPEIAN WOMEN.--THE VICTIMS: THE FAMILY OF DIOMED; THE SENTINEL; THE WOMAN WALLED UP IN A TOMB; THE PRIEST OF ISIS; THE LOVERS CLINGING TOGETHER, ETC.--THE SKELETONS.--THE DEAD BODIES MOULDED BY VESUVIUS.