On the upper tier (but apart from the male spectators) sat the women,
their gay dresses resembling some gaudy flower-bed; it is needless to
add that they were the most talkative part of the assembly; and many
were the looks directed up to them, especially from the benches
appropriated to the young and the unmarried men. On the lower seats
round the arena sat the more high-born and wealthy visitors--the
magistrates and those of senatorial or equestrian dignity: the
passages which, by corridors at the right and left, gave access to
these seats, at either end of the oval arena, were also the entrances
for the combatants. Strong palings at these passages prevented any
unwelcome eccentricity in the movements of the beasts, and confined
them to their appointed prey. Around the parapet which was raised
above the arena, and from which the seats gradually rose, were
gladiatorial inscriptions, and paintings wrought in fresco, typical of
the entertainments for which the place was designed. Throughout the
whole building wound invisible pipes, from which, as the day advanced,
cooling and fragrant showers were to be sprinkled over the spectators.
[Footnote 10: From "The Last Days of Pompeii." The great theater at
Pompeii, built in the time of Augustus, was semi-circular in form,
with a diameter of 322 feet.]
The officers of the amphitheater were still employed in the task of
fixing the vast awning (or _velaria_) which covered the whole, and
which luxurious invention the Campanians arrogated to themselves: it
was woven of the whitest Apulian wool, and variegated with broad
stripes of crimson. Owing either to some inexperience on the part of
the workmen or to some defect in the machinery, the awning, however,
was not arranged that day so happily as usual; indeed, from the
immense space of the circumference, the task was always one of great
difficulty and art--so much so that it could seldom be adventured in
rough or windy weather. But the present day was so remarkably still
that there seemed to the spectators no excuse for the awkwardness of
the artificers; and when a large gap in the back of the awning was
still visible, from the obstinate refusal of one part of the velaria
to ally itself with the rest, the murmurs of discontent were loud and
general.
The ædile Pansa,[11] at whose expense the exhibition was given, looked
particularly annoyed at the defect, and vowed bitter vengeance on the
head of the chief officer of the show, who, fretting, puffing,
perspiring, busied himself in idle orders and unavailing threats.
[Footnote 11: The house of Pansa in Pompeii, as now uncovered, shows
one of the largest and most elaborate dwellings in the city. It
measures 120 by 300 feet.]
The hubbub ceased suddenly--the operators desisted--the crowd were
stilled--the gap was forgotten--for now, with a loud and warlike
flourish of trumpets, the gladiators, marshaled in ceremonious
procession, entered the arena. They swept round the oval space very
slowly and deliberately, in order to give the spectators full leisure
to admire their stern serenity of feature--their brawny limbs and
various arms, as well as to form such wagers as the excitement of the
moment might suggest.
"Oh!" cried the widow Fulvia to the wife of Pansa, as they leaned down
from their lofty bench, "do you see that gigantic gladiator? how
drolly he is drest!"
"Yes," said the ædile's wife with complacent importance, for she knew
all the names and qualities of each combatant: "he is a retiarius or
netter; he is armed only, you see, with a three-pronged spear like a
trident, and a net; he wears no armor, only the fillet and the tunic.
He is a mighty man, and is to fight with Sporus, yon thick-set
gladiator, with the round shield and drawn sword but without body
armor; he has not his helmet on now, in order that you may see his
face--how fearless it is! By-and-by he will fight with his visor
down."...
While thus conversing, the first formalities of the show were over. To
these succeeded a feigned combat with wooden swords between the
various gladiators matched against each other. Among these the skill
of two Roman gladiators, hired for the occasion, was the most admired;
and next to them the most graceful combatant was Lydon. This sham
contest did not last above an hour, nor did it attract any very lively
interest except among those connoisseurs of the arena to whom art was
preferable to more coarse excitement; the body of the spectators were
rejoiced when it was over, and when the sympathy rose to terror. The
combatants were now arranged in pairs, as agreed beforehand; their
weapons examined; and the grave sports of the day commenced amid the
deepest silence--broken only by the exciting and preliminary blast of
warlike music.
It was often customary to begin the sports by the most cruel of all;
and some bestiarius, or gladiator appointed to the beasts, was slain
first as an initiatory sacrifice. But in the present instance the
experienced Pansa thought better that the sanguinary drama should
advance, not decrease, in interest; and accordingly the execution of
Olinthus and Glaucus was reserved for the last. It was arranged that
the two horsemen should first occupy the arena; that the foot
gladiators, paired off, should then be loosed indiscriminately on the
stage; that Glaucus and the lion should next perform their part in the
bloody spectacle; and the tiger and the Nazarene be the grand finale.
And in the spectacles of Pompeii, the reader of Roman history must
limit his imagination, nor expect to find those vast and wholesale
exhibitions of magnificent slaughter with which a Nero or a Caligula
regaled the inhabitants of the Imperial City. The Roman shows, which
absorbed the more celebrated gladiators and the chief proportion of
foreign beasts, were indeed the very reason why in the lesser towns of
the empire the sports of the amphitheater were comparatively humane
and rare; and in this as in other respects, Pompeii was the miniature,
the microcosm of Rome. Still, it was an awful and imposing spectacle,
with which modern times have, happily, nothing to compare; a vast
theater, rising row upon row, and swarming with human beings, from
fifteen to eighteen thousand in number, intent upon no fictitious
representation--no tragedy of the stage--but the actual victory or
defeat, the exultant life or the bloody death, of each and all who
entered the arena!
The two horsemen were now at either extremity of the lists (if so they
might be called), and at a given signal from Pansa the combatants
started simultaneously as in full collision, each advancing his round
buckler, each posing on high his sturdy javelin; but just when within
three paces of his opponent, the steed of Berbix suddenly halted,
wheeled round, and as Nobilior was borne rapidly by, his antagonist
spurred upon him. The buckler of Nobilior, quickly and skilfully
extended, received a blow which otherwise would have been fatal. And
the wild murmur, swelled by many a shout, echoed from side to side.
The visors of both the horsemen were completely closed (like those of
the knights in after times), but the head was nevertheless the great
point of assault; and Nobilior, now wheeling his charger with no less
adroitness than his opponent, directed his spear full on the helmet
of his foe. Berbix raised his buckler to shield himself, and his
quick-eyed antagonist, suddenly lowering his weapon, pierced him
through the breast. Berbix reeled and fell.
"Nobilior! Nobilior!" shouted the populace.
"I have lost ten sestertia," said Clodius, between his teeth.
"_Habet!_" (he has it) said Pansa deliberately.
The populace, not yet hardened into cruelty, made the signal of mercy:
but as the attendants of the arena approached, they found the kindness
came too late; the heart of the Gaul had been pierced, and his eyes
were set in death, It was his life's blood that flowed so darkly over
the sand and sawdust of the arena.
There were now on the arena six combatants: Niger and his net, matched
against Sporus with his shield and his short broad-sword; Lydon and
Tetraides, naked save by a cincture round the waist, each armed only
with a heavy Greek cestus; and two gladiators from Rome, clad in
complete steel, and evenly matched with immense bucklers and pointed
swords.
The initiatory contest between Lydon and Tetraides being less deadly
than that between the other combatants, no sooner had they advanced to
the middle of the arena than as by common consent the rest held back,
to see how that contest should be decided, and wait till fiercer
weapons might replace the cestus ere they themselves commenced
hostilities. They stood leaning on their arms and apart from each
other, gazing on the show, which, if not bloody enough thoroughly to
please the populace, they were still inclined to admire because its
origin was of their ancestral Greece.
No persons could at first glance have seemed less evenly matched than
the two antagonists. Tetraides, tho no taller than Lydon, weighed
considerably more; the natural size of his muscles was increased, to
the eyes of the vulgar, by masses of solid flesh; for, as it was a
notion that the contest of the cestus fared easiest with him who was
plumpest, Tetraides had encouraged to the utmost his hereditary
predisposition to the portly. His shoulders were vast, and his lower
limbs thick-set, double-jointed, and slightly curved outward, in that
formation which takes so much from beauty to give so largely to
strength. But Lydon, except that he was slender even almost to
meagerness, was beautifully and delicately proportioned; and the
skilful might have perceived that with much less compass of muscle
than his foe, that which he had was more seasoned--iron and compact.
In proportion, too, as he wanted flesh, he was likely to possess
activity; and a haughty smile on his resolute face, which strongly
contrasted with the solid heaviness of his enemy's, gave assurance to
those who beheld it and united their hope to their pity; so that
despite the disparity of their seeming strength, the cry of the
multitude was nearly as loud for Lydon as for Tetraides.
Whoever is acquainted with the modern prize-ring--whoever has
witnessed the heavy and disabling strokes which the human fist,
skilfully directed, hath the power to bestow--may easily understand
how much that happy facility would be increased by a band carried by
thongs of leather round the arm as high as the elbow, and terribly
strengthened about the knuckles by a plate of iron, and sometimes a
plummet of lead. Yet this, which was meant to increase, perhaps rather
diminished, the interest of the fray; for it necessarily shortened its
duration. A very few blows, successfully and scientifically planted,
might suffice to bring the contest to a close; and the battle did not,
therefore, often allow full scope for the energy, fortitude, and
dogged perseverance that we technically style _pluck_, which not
unusually wins the day against superior science, and which heightens
to so painful a delight the interest in the battle and the sympathy
for the brave.
Tetraides struck--it was as the blow of a smith on a vise; Lydon sank
suddenly on one knee--the blow passed over his head. Not so harmless
was Lydon's retaliation; he quickly sprang to his feet, and aimed his
cestus full on the broad chest of his antagonist. Tetraides
reeled--the populace shouted....
The people had been already rendered savage by the exhibition of
blood; they thirsted for more; their superstition was aided by their
ferocity. Aroused, inflamed by the spectacle of their victims, they
forgot the authority of their rulers. It was one of those dread
popular convulsions common to crowds wholly ignorant, half free and
half servile, and which the peculiar constitution of the Roman
provinces so frequently exhibited. The power of the prætor was a reed
beneath the whirlwind; still, at his word the guards had drawn
themselves along the lower benches, on which the upper classes sat
separate from the vulgar. They made but a feeble barrier; the waves of
the human sea halted for a moment, to enable Arbaces to count the
exact moment of his doom! In despair, and in a terror which beat down
even pride, he glanced his eye over the rolling and rushing crowd;
when, right above them, through the wide chasm which had been left in
the velaria, he beheld a strange and awful apparition; he beheld, and
his craft restored his courage!
He stretched his hand on high; over his lofty brow and royal features
there came an expression of unutterable solemnity and command.
"Behold!" he roared with a voice of thunder, which stilled the roar of
the crowd: "behold how the gods protect the guiltless! The fires of
the avenging Orcus burst forth against the false witness of my
accusers!"
The eyes of the crowd followed the gesture of the Egyptian, and beheld
with dismay a vast vapor shooting from the summit of Vesuvius in the
form of a gigantic pine-tree; the trunk, blackness--the breaches
fire!--a fire that shifted and wavered in its hues with every moment,
now fiercely luminous, now of a dull and dying red, that again blazed
terrifically forth with intolerable glare!
There was a dead, heart-sunken silence; through which there suddenly
broke the roar of the lion, which was echoed back from within the
building by the sharper and fiercer yells of its fellow beasts. Dread
seers were they of the Burden of the Atmosphere, and wild prophets of
the wrath to come!
Then there arose on high the universal shrieks of women; the men
stared at each other, but were dumb. At that moment they felt the
earth shake under their feet; the walls of the theater trembled; and
beyond in the distance they heard the crash of falling roofs; an
instant more, and the mountain cloud seemed to roll toward them, dark
and rapid, like a torrent; at the same time it cast forth from its
bosom a shower of ashes mixt with vast fragments of burning stone!
Over the crushing vines, over the desolate streets, over the
amphitheater itself; far and wide, with many a mighty splash in the
agitated sea, fell that awful shower!
No longer thought the crowd of justice or of Arbaces; safety for
themselves was their sole thought. Each turned to fly--each dashing,
pressing, crushing against the other. Trampling recklessly over the
fallen, amid groans and oaths and prayers and sudden shrieks, the
enormous crowd vomited itself forth through the numerous passages.
Whither should they fly? Some, anticipating a second earthquake,
hastened to their homes to load themselves with their more costly
goods and escape while it was yet time; others, dreading the showers
of ashes that now fell fast, torrent upon torrent, over the streets,
rushed under the roofs of the nearest houses, or temples, or
sheds--shelter of any kind--for protection from the terrors of the
open air. But darker, and larger, and mightier, spread the cloud above
them. It was a sudden and more ghastly Night rushing upon the realm of
Noon!