houlder-buckle of gold or silver or bronze, an armlet, a
woman's earring, a purse, perhaps, with something in it. And the fitful
night-breeze blew now and then and made them shade their lights with
their dark hands. By the 'door of the dead' a torch was burning down in
its socket, its glare falling upon a heap of armour, mostly somewhat
battered, and all of it blood-stained; a score of black-browed smiths
were picking it over and distributing it in heaps, according to its
condition. Now and then, from the deep vaults below the arena, came the
distant sound of a clanging gate or of some piece of huge stage
machinery falling into its place, and a muffled calling of men. One of
the keepers, with his light, was singing softly some ancient minor
strain as he searched the tiers. That would be all, and presently even
that would cease.

One thinks of such things naturally enough; and then the dream runs
backward, against the sun, as dreams will, and the moon rays weave a
vision of dim day. Straightway tier upon tier, eighty thousand faces
rise, up to the last high rank beneath the awning's shade. High in the
front, under the silken canopy sits the Emperor of the world,
sodden-faced, ghastly, swine-eyed, robed in purple; all alone, save for
his dwarf, bull-nosed, slit-mouthed, hunch-backed, sly. Next, on the
lowest bench, the Vestals, old and young, the elder looking on with hard
faces and dry eyes, the youngest with wide and startled looks, and
parted lips, and quick-drawn breath that sobs and is caught at sight of
each deadly stab and gash of broadsword and trident, and hands that
twitch and clutch each other as a man's foot slips in a pool of blood,
and the heavy harness clashes in the red, wet sand. Then grey-haired
senators; then curled and perfumed knights of Rome; and then the people,
countless, vast, frenzied, blood-thirsty, stretching out a hundred
thousand hands with thumbs reversed, commanding death to the
fallen--full eighty thousand throats of men and women roaring, yelling,
shrieking over each ended life. A theatre indeed, a stage indeed, a play
wherein every scene of every act ends in sudden death.

And then the wildest, deadliest howl of all on that day; a handful of
men and women in white, and one girl in the midst of them; the clang of
an iron gate thrown suddenly open; a rushing and leaping of great, lithe
bodies of beasts, yellow and black and striped, the sand flying in
clouds behind them; a worrying and cr