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mpanies the entire piece: "Campanians, your victory has been as fatal to you as it was to the people of Nocera."[K] The hand of Rome, ever the hand of Rome! For that matter, the ordinances relating to the amphitheatre applied to the whole empire. One of the Pompeian inscriptions announces that the duumvir C. Cuspius Pansa had been appointed to superintend the public shows and see to the observance of the Petronian law. This law prohibited Senators from fighting in the arena, and even from sending slaves thither who had not been condemned for crime. Such things, then, required to be prohibited! I have described the arena and the seats; let me now pass on to the show itself. Would yon like to have a hunt or a gladiatorial combat? Here I invent nothing. I have data, found at Pompeii (the paintings in the amphitheatre and the bas-reliefs on the tomb of Scaurus), that reproduce scenes which I have but to transfer to prose. Let us, then, suppose the twenty thousand spectators to be in their places on thirty-four ranges of seats, one above the other, around the arena; then, let us take our seats among them and look on. First we have a hunt. A panther, secured by a long rope to the neck of a bull let loose, is set on against a young _bestiarius_, who holds two javelins in his hands. A man, armed with a long lance, irritates the bull so that it may move and second the rush of the panther fastened to it. The lad who has the javelins, and is a novice in his business, is but making his first attempt; should the bull not move, he runs no risk, yet I should not like to be in his place. Then follows a more serious combat between a bear and a man, who irritates him by holding out a cloth at him, as the matadors do in bull-fights. Another group shows us a tiger and a lion escaping in different directions. An unarmed and naked man is in pursuit of the tiger, who cannot be a very cross one. But here is a _venatio_ much more dramatic in its character. The nude bestiarius has just pierced a wolf through and through, and the animal is in flight with the spear sticking in his body, but the man staggers and a wild boar is rushing at him. At the same time, a stag thrown down by a lasso that is still seen dangling to his antlers, awaits his death-blow; hounds are dashing at him, and "their fierce baying echoes from vale to vale." But that is not all. Look at yon group of victors: a real matador has plunged his spear into the breast
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