ing his legs. He said, idly,
"And you think our basic institutions have reached the state of
needing change?"

"Perhaps, although as a member of the Government Category, it should
hardly be my position to advocate such." He seemed to switch subjects.
"Have you read much of the Roman _ludi_, the games as we call them?"

"The gladiators and such?" Joe shrugged. "I've read a bit about them.
It's been pointed out, in fact by Dr. Haer, among others, that
basically our present day fracases serve the same purposes. That
instead of bread and circuses, provided by the Roman patricians to
keep the unemployed Roman mob from becoming restive, we give them
trank pills and Telly violence."

"Um-m-m," Holland nodded, "but that isn't the point I was making right
now. What I was thinking was that at first the Roman games were
athletic affairs without bloodshed. It wasn't until 264 B.C. that
three pairs of slaves were sent in to fight with swords. By 183 B.C.
the number had gone up to sixty pairs. By 145 B.C. ninety pairs fought
for three days. But that was just the beginning. They really got under
way with the dictators. Sulla put a hundred lions into the arena, but
Julius Caesar topped that with four hundred and Pompey that with six
hundred, plus over four hundred leopards and twenty elephants.
Augustus beat them all with three thousand five hundred elephants and
ten thousand men killed in a series of games. But it was the emperors
who really expanded the ludi. Trajan had ten thousand animals killed
in the arena to celebrate his victory over the Dacians, not to mention
eleven thousand people.

"Are you surprised at my memory? The subject has always fascinated me.
For one thing, I am a great believer in the theory that history
repeats itself. As time went on, arenas were built all over the
empire, even small towns boasted their own. In Rome, the number of
them grew so that eventually an avid follower could attend every day,
the year around. And as they increased in quantity they also had to
grow more extreme to hold the fan's attention. The Emperor Philip, in
celebrating the thousandth anniversary of the founding of Rome, had
killed a thousand pair of gladiators, a rhinoceros, six hippopotami,
ten hyenas, ten giraffes, twenty wild asses, ten tigers, ten zebras,
thirty leopards, sixty lions, thirty-two elephants, forty wild horses.
I am afraid I forgot the rest."

Joe stirred in his chair. The other's personality grew on him. The