Gladiatorial shows grew in favor with the Roman public. Thousands thronged to see the sport. High bred ladies crowded the benches. Schools were maintained to train the contestants. Enterprising speculators brought home captive Gauls, Germans, Thracians, negroes and Moors. These prisoners were trained in the art of fighting that they might be let out for hire.
When a youthful candidate for office, Julius Caesar entertained the voters by an exhibition of 300 pairs of gladiators. The emperor Trajan, it is said, exhibited 5,000 pairs in the amphitheater that bore his name. The ranks of the gladiators were swelled by the accession of captured brigands and petty criminals of every description, who were given a chance for their lives on condition that they go into training. Ordinarily, participants were armed with shields or bucklers and fought with short swords or daggers. Some carried nets which they were at liberty to fling out with a view to entangling their opponents. Sometimes the gladiators fought two and two; sometimes parties were pitted against each other; sometimes an especially strong, skillful champion took delight in defending himself against a band of opponents. The bodies of those who were slain were dragged from the arena unceremoniously. A wounded gladiator was at liberty to hold up his hand. If the audience saw fit to grant him his life, they held their thumbs upward. Without this sign of mercy the wounded had no choice but to fight until life was extinct.
The Roman populace appear to have taken the greatest delight in gladiatorial fights. These contests were necessarily brutal and appealed to a cruel trait in the Roman character. In criticising the gladiatorial fights of Rome we should bear in mind, however, bullfighting among people of Spanish descent; bearbaiting, practiced in England until of late; dueling; cockfighting; and, last of all, prize fighting. If we wonder that slaves could be brought to fight each other with swords, we have only to recall the difficulty with which prize fighters can be prevented from fighting with their fists.
