is true. A stairway has now been constructed to this lower depth,
and the present writer has stood upon the stone pavement worn by the
feet of generations of victims of oppression, and has drunk of a spring
at which the Apostle of the Gentiles may have quenched his thirst.

The prisoners enjoyed not long even this sad reprieve from death. They
were destined soon to finish their course by a glorious martyrdom. The
Emperors determined to gratify at once their own persecuting fury and
the cruel thirst for blood of the Roman mob, by offering a holocaust of
victims in the amphitheatre. The _Acta Diurna_, a sort of public gazette
of the day, which circulated in the great houses, and baths, and other
places of concourse, contained the announcement of a grand exhibition of
the _ludi circenses_, or gladiatorial games, to be celebrated in honour
of the god Neptune--_Neptunus Equestris_. In the public spaces of the
Forum, and in the neighbourhood of the Flavian Amphitheatre and
elsewhere, where the crowd around them would not obstruct the highway,
were displayed large white bulletin boards, on which were written in
coloured chalks a list of the games--like the playbills which placard
the streets of great cities to-day--and heralds proclaimed through every
street, even in the crowded Ghetto, the splendour of the approaching
games. These were on a scale on which no modern manager ever dreamed.
Trajan exhibited games which lasted a hundred and twenty-three days, in
which 10,000 gladiators fought and 11,000 fierce animals were killed.
Sometimes the vast arena was flooded with water, and _naumachia_ or
sea-fights were exhibited. The vast flood-gates and cisterns by which
this was accomplished may still be seen.

The chief attraction of the games provided by the Emperors Diocletian
and Galerius, however, was not the conflict of what might almost be
called armies of trained gladiators, nor the slaughter of hundreds of
fierce Libyan leopards and Numidian lions, but the sacrifice of some
scores of helpless and unarmed Christians--old men, weak women, and
tender and innocent children.

There was much excitement in the schools of the gladiators--vast stone
barracks, where they were drilled in their dreadful trade. They were
originally captives taken in war, or condemned malefactors; but in the
degenerate days of the Empire, knights, senators, and soldiers sought
distinction in the arena, and even unsexed women fought half-naked in
the ring