that they were much more numerous then the free population. It was justly apprehended that there would be great danger in making them acquainted with their own numbers, and on this account Seneca informs us that the proposal for discriminating them by a peculiar dress was at once rejected. Athenæus declares that he knew very many Romans who kept for ostentation rather than use, ten and even twenty thousand slaves. This may perhaps be an exaggeration; but Tacitus informs us that on a very melancholy occasion, no less than four hundred slaves were found in a single palace in Rome. The anecdote is very remarkable, not merely because it proves the great amount of the slave population, but also because it shews what sanguinary precautions were required to shield the masters from their vengeance.

According to the ancient laws of Rome, if a master was murdered by his slave, all the slaves that lived under the same roof were to be involved in the same penalty as the criminal. Pedanius Secundus, the governor of Rome under Nero, was murdered by one of his slaves, and as he maintained four hundred of these unhappy beings in his palace, the Roman citizens were revolted by the wholesale butchery which the law required. The matter was referred to the senate, and after a long debate it was resolved by the majority, that notwithstanding the age of some, the sex of others, and the undoubted innocence of most, the whole four hundred should be condemned to death and executed. It was not without difficulty that this atrocious sentence was fulfilled. Nero had to issue an edict to restrain the people, and to order out all the military force in Rome to guard the place of execution.

The invasions of Alaric and Attila were greatly facilitated by the multitude of slaves in Italy. They easily recruited their armies from a population so justly disaffected; no less than forty thousand slaves once joined· Alaric in a body, and they became the most desperate and sanguinary portion of his army. A slave-holding country must ever be at the mercy of invaders; it would be a fearful contemplation to speculate on the consequences of the Royal African corps, or a brigade of the West India regiments effecting a landing in the southern states of America.

It is impossible to speak or think of the Gladiatorial system, that worst aggravation of the horrors of Roman slavery, without referring to Byron's noble description of the Dying Gladiator :

I see before me the gladiator lie :

He leans upon his hand-his manly brow
Consents to death, but conquers agony,
And his droop'd head sinks gradually low—
And through his side the last drops ebbing slow
From the red gash, fall heavy, one by one,
Like the first of a thunder shower; and now

The arena swims around him-he is gone,

Ere ceased the inhuman shout which hail'd the wretch who won.

He heard it, but he heeded not-his eyes
Were with his heart, and that was far away;
He reck'd not of the life he lost, nor prize,
But where his rude hut by the Danube lay,
There were his young barbarians all at play,
There was their Dacian mother-he their sire,
Butcher'd to make a Roman holiday-

All this rush'd with his blood.-Shall he expire,
And unavenged?-Awake, ye Goths, and glut your ire!

Most of the gladiators were barbarian slaves or cap

tives, purchased by contractors for public and private exhibitions of these sanguinary spectacles. No war was ever so destructive to the human race as these sports. The principal magistrates, the candidates for office, and the heirs of any great and rich citizen lately deceased, gratified the populace with these sights during the republic; but the emperors, whose policy it was to court the mob as their surest support against any confederation of the nobles, exhibited them on almost every occasion. Julius Cæsar, in his ædileship, diverted the people with three hundred and twenty couple of gladiators; and Trajan in a solemnity of more than a hundred days, exhibited no less than a thousand couple. Besides the torrents of blood which flowed at the funerals, in the amphitheatres, the circus, the forums, and other public places, gladiators were introduced at feasts, and tore each other to pieces amidst the supper tables, to the great delight and applause of the guests.

Authors have been found who have attempted to palliate or even justify these barbarous sports on the same ground that bull-baiting, bear-baiting, cock-fighting, and man-fighting were defended in England; it was said that they kept alive the manly and martial spirit of the people. Experience has shewn that even this miserable excuse is destitute of foundation; so far is a taste for sanguinary sport from being an incentive to courage, that it was quite a proverb with our soldiers during the last war, that the most cruel were the most cowardly. The Spanish bull-fights are the nearest approximation to the gladiatorial combats which can be found in modern Europe, and assuredly the Spaniards are far from being the bravest people in Christendom.

Amusements of blood and cruelty may, and do inculcate assassination, treachery and murder; but they never did, and they never can inspire the courage and firmness that constitute a hero. They only served to brutalize the Roman populace, already demoralized by a vicious administration; and if they did not accelerate the fall of the empire, they at least stripped fallen greatness of all its claim to pity, and caused the ruin of Rome to be hailed as the triumph of humanity.

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CHAPTER VII.

ON THE DECLINE OF POLYTHEISM.

HAVING in the two preceding chapters examined some of the leading moral influences which the polytheism of Greece and Rome exercised over the social condition of Europe, it is proper to take a view of the effects produced by the decline and fall of their religious systems, before we enter on any examination of the new principles of civilization developed by the Christian system. This is an inquiry of considerable difficulty and importance; but we shall be greatly aided in the examination if we first direct our attention to the more general question-the circumstances that mark the decay and termination of a dogma or an opinion.

No opinion or dogma, totally and absolutely false, ever held dominion over mankind; a prevalent creed must, in the outset, have won its way by giving prominence to some great truth, and by keeping in the back-ground the portion of falsehood with which it was united. The Hellenic system of polytheism prevailed over the elementary mythology of Asia, principally by attributing human sympathies to its deities, and thus bringing forward the great truth--that a religion of love is more desirable for mankind than a religion of fear. The falsehood combined with the dogma was, that sympathies for humanity could only be expected