B.C.,[66] but probably did not become annual until 173;[67] while the
games to the Great Mother (_Megalesia_) followed by thirteen years the
invitation and hospitable reception of that Phrygian goddess by the
Romans, and became a regular feature in their calendar in 191.[68] This
increase in the amenities of the people, every item of which falls
within a term of fifty years, is a remarkable feature of the age which
followed Rome's assumption of imperial power. It proved that the Roman
was willing to bend his austere religion to the purposes of
gratification, when he could afford the luxury, that the enjoyment of
this luxury was considered a happy means of keeping the people in good
temper with itself and its rulers, and that the cost of providing it was
considered, not merely as compatible with the traditions of the existing
regime, but as a means of strengthening those traditions by closing the
gates of office to the poor.

The types of spectacle, in which the masses took most delight, were also
new and expensive creations. These types were chiefly furnished by the
gladiatorial shows and the hunting of wild beasts. Even the former and
earlier amusement had had a history of little more than a hundred years.
It was believed to be a relic of that realistic view of the after life
which lingered in Italy long after it had passed from the more spiritual
civilisation of the Greeks. The men who put each other to the sword
before the eyes of the sorrowing crowd were held to be the retinue which
passed with the dead chieftain beyond the grave, and it was from the
sombre rites of the Etruscans that this custom of ceremonial slaying was
believed to have been transferred to Rome. The first year of the First
Punic War witnessed the earliest combat that accompanied a Roman
funeral,[69] and, although secular enjoyment rapidly took the place of
grim funereal appreciation, and the religious belief that underlay the
spectacle may soon have passed away, neither the State nor the relatives