onies of the man.

The increasing love of gladiatorial combats was another indication of
the national character. These brutalizing sports are said to have taken
their origin from the Etruscans, who were accustomed to kill slaves and
captives at the funerals of their relatives. They were first exhibited
at Rome in the beginning of the First Punic War (B.C. 264). At first
confined to funerals, they were afterward exhibited by the AEdiles at the
public games, with the view of pleasing the people. The passion for this
brutalizing amusement rose to a great height toward the end of the
Republic and under the Empire. Great pains were taken with the training
of gladiators, who were divided into different classes according to
their arms and modes of fighting.

Among many other important consequences of these foreign wars, two
exercised an especial influence upon the future fate of the Republic.
The nobles became enormously rich, and the peasant proprietors almost
entirely disappeared. The wealthy nobles now combined together to keep
in their own families the public offices of the state, which afforded
the means of making such enormous fortunes. Thus a new Nobility was
formed, resting on wealth, and composed alike of plebeian and patrician
families. Every one whose ancestry had not held any of the curule
magistracies[53] was called a New Man, and was branded as an
upstart.[54] It became more and more difficult for a New Man to rise to
office, and the Nobles were thus almost an hereditary aristocracy in the
exclusive possession of the government. The wealth they had acquired in
foreign commands enabled them not only to incur a prodigious expense in
the celebration of the public games in their aedileship, with the view of
gaining the votes of the people at future elections, but also to spend
large sums of money in the actual purchase of votes. The first law
against bribery[55] was passed in B.C. 181, a sure proof of the growth
of the practice.

The decay of the peasant proprietors was an inevitable consequence of
these frequent and long-protracted wars. In the earlier times the
citizen-soldier, after a few weeks' campaign, returned home to cultivate
his land; but this became impossible when wars were carried on out of
Italy. Moreover, the soldier, easily obtaining abundance of booty, found
life in the camp more pleasant than the cultivation of the ground. He
was thus as ready to sell his land as the nobles were anxious to buy it.