THE WORLD A GLADIATORIAL AMPHITHEATRE.


The growing tendencies of mankind have been quickened by the
character of the present war, and the unexampled publicity with
which it has been waged. Never before were all nations, even those
separated by great spaces, whether of land or ocean, the daily and
excited spectators of the combat. The vast amphitheatre within
which the battle is fought, with the whole heavens for its roof,
is coextensive with civilization itself. The scene in that great
Flavian Amphitheatre, the famous Colosseum, is a faint type of
what we are witnessing; but that is not without its lesson. Bloody
games, where human beings contended with lions and tigers,
imported for the purpose, or with each other, constituted an
institution of ancient Rome, only mildly rebuked by Cicero,
[Footnote: "Crudele gladiatorum spectaculum et inhumanum nonnullis
videri solet: et hand scio an ita sit, ut nunc fit."_--Tusculanae
Quaestiones_, Lib. II. Cap. XVII. 41.] and adopted even by
Titus, in that short reign so much praised as unspotted by the
blood of the citizen. [Footnote: Suetonius: _Titus_, Cap. IX.
Merivale, History of the Romans under the Empire, (London, 1862,)
Ch. LX., Vol. VII. p. 56.] One hundred thousand spectators looked
on, while gladiators from Germany and Gaul joined in ferocious
combat; and then, as blood began to flow, and victim after victim
sank upon the sand, the people caught the fierce contagion. A
common ferocity ruled the scene. As Christianity prevailed, the