§ 1. Against bloody spectacles, much was said by me in the chapter on avoiding cruelty. Yet there have not been lacking those who judged that they should be recalled, so that youth, accustomed to wounds and blood, might not shudder in war at things it had often watched in peace, as though they were unfamiliar. They therefore judge that men are rendered brave and warlike by watching the combats of gladiators, and for this reason they praise the Romans. Those counsels contrive cruelty and destruction for the human race. Even now, are not cruel spirits seen to delight in cheap blood and the degenerate common people? How great is the concourse to watch the punishment of one wretched little man? Neglecting their own affairs, they purchase the spectacle of a dying man, and would purchase it even at a price if that were required. And lest you marvel that such cruel spectacles are demanded again by those who make a profession of the Christian religion, weigh in your mind the things which experience teaches us to occur. Many teach in cities the art of fighting with the sword, spear, and other weapons. They challenge one another in mutual rivalry. With how much zeal do men press themselves forward and purchase a place for watching at a price? Nor are there lacking those who, by sending gifts, because they cannot do so by command, attempt to incite them to fiercer combat. Sometimes they exhibit these spectacles for themselves at weddings, and not rarely they are gravely wounded or fall. But if some men, as indeed happens wickedly and against the laws, decide life by a challenge, how great a multitude of spectators runs together? How few out of so many exhort them to peace. Some even possess such savagery that they eagerly attend the tortures of those subjected to judicial examination. The desire of human beings is depraved and malicious; they delight in a human being’s violent death. But against cruelty, expense, and the other evils, the fruit of fortitude, courage, and military glory is alleged: that by so dreadful and deadly a spectacle spirits are strengthened against wounds and iron. I judge the contrary to be true: that by gladiatorial spectacles, the mangling of wild beasts, and acts of cruelty an immense terror is instilled, every virtue avoided, and lofty spirits cast down and effeminated, in no way raised or strengthened.
§ 2. In the first place, I shall employ examples, which have very great force in a political matter. Gaius Caesar delighted in bloody spectacles above all, as all authorities transmit, and he was most cruel. After Gaius came Claudius, concerning whom Dio says: “He frequently exhibited gladiatorial games, in which he delighted greatly. Among other things, he willingly watched at lunchtime those who were torn apart in the middle of the theater; although he killed a lion trained to eat human beings and pleasing to the common people for that reason, because it was not fitting for the Roman people to see spectacles of this sort.”
But Claudius was always fearful to a marvelous degree, and fearful when he came to power. Tiberius too was devoted to that cruelty, for he gave a most magnificent show, even recalling certain discharged gladiators, as Suetonius is the authority, with a fee of one hundred thousand sesterces. But he went mad in this way when already an old man; Nero, immediately from the beginning. Hadrian too, on his birthday, killed one hundred lions and one hundred lionesses. Martial’s servile flattery made Domitian’s arena celebrated; all these things show that he was devoted to the savagery of the amphitheater to the point of complete insanity. Nevertheless, no one was more fearful than he, who expected death at every hour, who covered a wall with phengite stone lest someone unexpectedly attack him from behind while he was walking. The madness of all was surpassed by the frenzy of Commodus. He himself was gladiator, charioteer, and trainer; he lived more in the school than in the palace. Gladiators and hunts were exhibited while he dined. He himself fought seven hundred and thirty-five times. Amid applause he was called “Paulus, first of the secutores” six hundred and twenty times; he preferred so to be called rather than “first of the emperors.” He killed or conquered one thousand gladiators—for who would test his strength against Caesar? He killed many thousands of wild beasts with his own right hand; and lest you think it was without skill, he killed one hundred lions with one hundred blows. It is marvelous that so portentous a man had so certain a hand. These things are from Lampridius. Nor amid these savage games did he forget his majesty, for he cast to wild beasts those by whom he was mocked. Gallus, the nephew of Constantius, according to Marcellinus, Book XIV, delighted in bloody games and in boxers falling beneath one another.
These men, certainly cowardly or altogether averse to war, rendered the empire liable to barbarians. Tiberius, after obtaining the empire, oppressed the city and thereafter defiled Capri; nor did he administer anything in military affairs, except to separate brave commanders from distinguished legions and to pretend that he would go into provinces and wars—in which matter, according to Tacitus, he deceived the senate for a long time, the armies longer, and the provinces longest. Gaius, although educated in war and called Caligula in a military jest, was nevertheless not a brave commander. He assembled a great army in which there were two hundred and fifty thousand soldiers, and destroyed a great part of them; for he killed them individually and sometimes even in crowds. Concerning his German expedition, Suetonius, after many things most foolishly done, relates the following in Chapter XLVI: “Finally, as though about to accomplish a war, after drawing up his battle-line upon the shore of the Ocean and placing ballistae and engines, while no one knew or imagined what he was about to undertake, he suddenly commanded them to gather shells and fill their helmets and folds of clothing, calling them the spoils of the Ocean owed to the Capitol and palace. As a memorial of victory he raised a very high tower, from which, as from a lighthouse, fires would shine at night to direct the courses of ships; and after proclaiming to the soldiers a donative of one hundred denarii per man, as though he had surpassed every example
of liberality, he said: ‘Go away happy; go away rich.’”
Claudius, bloody in spectacles, did not permit military command even to brave men. When Corbulo’s virtue became known, he revoked his command. Corbulo deservedly exclaimed: “The ancient commanders were fortunate, for they were permitted to be brave without danger; but I am prevented from it by Caesar’s envy.” Nero, so savage in spectacles, set out for Greece. Dio relates the matter in Chapter XIV: “For Rome was not sufficient for him, nor the theater of Pompey, nor the Circus Maximus; but there was need of an expedition, so that he might become, as he said, περιοδονίκης.” He brought with him so great a multitude, not only of the Augustales but also of other human beings, as though an army of enemies were present or he had captured the Parthians or other nations. But those were, of course, Neronian soldiers, and in place of arms they carried lyres, plectra, masks, and tragic shoes. Therefore he brought back a victory worthy of such an army and conquered Terpnus, Diodorus, and Pammenes in place of Philip, Perseus, and Antiochus.
And lest you think that cruelty was left behind at Rome, Dio adds: “Even if these things alone, as I said a little before, had been done, nevertheless the affair would have been exceedingly carefree, marked with disgrace, and held in mockery. But now, as though he had truly come to wage war, he plundered Greece although he left it free, committed infinite killings, confiscated the goods of certain persons still living, and took away innumerable offerings which had been deposited even in the temples at Rome.”
Dio describes Domitian’s costly and cruel spectacles and his timid and unwarlike spirit in this manner: “But Domitian, after leading an army against them—the Dacians—although he himself took no part in the war, for he was not only incapable of enduring bodily labor but also timid and unwarlike in spirit, wanton and lustful not only toward women but also toward boys, nevertheless, after sending commanders to wage the war and shamefully losing a great part of the soldiers, sent letters to Rome as victor. For this reason so many and so great decrees were made for him that throughout almost the whole world which was beneath his dominion golden and silver statues were erected. He presented a costly spectacle, from which we have learned nothing worthy of history except that virgins competed in a race. After these things he celebrated festival days, namely triumphal days. He frequently exhibited contests, with battles of infantry and thereafter cavalry joined in the circus, and also a naval battle in a certain new place, in which not only did almost all who fought die, but also many spectators, because, when a very great rain and violent storm suddenly arose, he permitted no one to depart from the spectacle; and although he himself changed his cloak, he allowed the others to change nothing. As a result, not a few fell into grave illnesses and died. And so he gave the people a nocturnal banquet for the sake of consoling them. For he often exhibited contests at night and introduced nuns and women into them.”
Commodus fled most shamefully from war and purchased peace from the barbarians. “So that by money,” says Herodian, “in which he especially abounded, he might purchase security, he denied them nothing they requested.” This was the man who nevertheless had determined to go out not from the palace clothed in purple but armed from the gladiatorial school; yet the death inflicted upon him that same night averted this disgrace from the Roman Empire.
The matter itself therefore sufficiently teaches that by such inhuman and foul spectacles not commanders and soldiers but cruel men are made brave. If we consider Rome herself, when she was formerly rustic her soldier was braver without a spectacle of domestic slaughter. Thereafter the most cowardly common people attended daily killings. A few soldiers restrained so many hundreds of thousands through fear and, when they pleased, cut them down. When gladiatorial spectacles were frequent, genuine virtue languished, and selections of the bravest began to be obtained from Gaul, Batavia, and Thrace.
§ 3. But what becomes clear to one who consults history, I am confident that I shall also prove by a reason sought from the nature of things. I shall employ a true sorites approved by philosophers. He who rejoices in bloody spectacles, as Drusus and others did, is cruel; he who is cruel is also lustful; he who is such is also timid and unwarlike; therefore he who rejoices in human blood is unwarlike.
Next, cruelty—savagery seen and practiced—is rendered more incited and inhuman, just as lust by pleasures, avarice by plunder, pride by flatteries, and ambition by honors. Thus fear and the evils connected with it are also increased.
Human beings, like the other animals, are moved by the perception and imagination of things that are pleasing and pleasurable and flee things that are sorrowful and atrocious. But it matters very greatly how forcefully and vividly custom or perception has impressed anything upon the mind. For if the mind remains fixed in attentive thought upon those things which flood the senses with pleasure, desires are incited and carried beyond bounds. If it sees a human being burned, cut, and tortured, and conceives in the mind from his voice, movement, and countenance the goads of pain, the whole body must necessarily be shaken by horror of such things. Those, therefore, who are not accustomed to them grow pale, shudder, and have their hair stand upright. For there is a certain sympathy of nature which, at another’s evil, excites pain in another. There are some who fall down at the sight of another’s pain, as Aristotle also explains in Problems, Section XXVII. Hence it follows that those who have known with their eyes, thought, and countenance the bitterness of grave torments in others more violently shudder at things whose magnitude they have accurately weighed. Thus they judge those persons most wretched and the evils intolerable. From this it necessarily happens that the things concerning which fortitude is exercised appear more terrible to those who have employed experience in others. For just as, when the enticements of another’s pleasure have been seen, the affection is incited to enjoy them, so also, when the bitterness of another’s torture is cast before the eyes, nature, the preserver of itself, recoils with great impulse and is afraid. Therefore, just as those who serve pimps and brothels are rendered more desirous of pleasures and thus more intemperate, so each person, by a raw spectacle of inhumanity, becomes more disposed to flee pains. Hence executioners and their household—a crowd ingenious in punishments—are said to be most weak if they undergo judicial tortures by their own example, as they sometimes deserve. For the whole heap of evil has already forced itself upon their vivid meditation and shaken the mind with fear before pain burns the body. They therefore suffer so great an evil twice.
§ 4. Added to the sum of the evil is the end and object which the spectators of gladiators have set before themselves. It does not tend toward making them fearless in receiving wounds, but toward their enjoying a cruel, inhuman, bestial pleasure. But the enjoyment of pleasures blunts fortitude’s edge. The pagans themselves called those spectacles consolations of the eyes, not incitements to fortitude; for every most loathsome person, useless in war, sat at them. Caelius, to be sure, the intimate of Tullius, did not dare to watch the chariot-fighters in Britain, although, says Cicero, we could not have cheated him even of an andabata. Women themselves—the Vestal Virgins—rise at the blows and say that it is their delight when they see breasts broken open by a turned thumb.
Therefore, just as those who gaze upon the filth, hunger, and calamities of the needy press more ardently upon riches and seek them through the dangers of seas, lands, and treasures deposited among the dead, so also those who most willingly watch pains in others fear the pains they have watched all the more. For they desire not the exercise of skill, not the strength of bodies, but butchery. Thus Seneca writes concerning the midday spectacles in his Letters: “Now, trifles having been set aside, they are sheer homicides. They have nothing with which they may be covered. Exposed to a blow with their whole bodies, they never direct the hand in vain. Most prefer this to the ordinary pairs and the fighters demanded in addition. Why should they not prefer it? The sword is repelled by neither helmet nor shield. To what end are defenses? To what end the arts of the sword? All those things are delays of death. In the morning human beings are cast to lions and bears; at midday they are cast to their spectators. They command those who have killed to be exposed to those who will kill them, and they reserve the victor for another slaughter. The conclusion for the fighters is death; the business is conducted with sword and fire. These things take place while the arena is unoccupied. But someone has committed robbery. What, then, did he deserve? That he be hanged. He killed a human being: because he killed, he deserved to suffer this. But you, wretched man, what have you deserved, that you should watch these things? ‘Kill, burn, scourge! Why does he rush upon the sword so timidly? Why does he kill with too little boldness? Why does he die with too little willingness?’ By blows they are driven into wounds, and with breasts bare and exposed they receive mutual strokes. Has the spectacle been interrupted? Meanwhile human beings have their throats cut, lest nothing be done.”
§ 5. He who often gazes upon wounds and blood does not tremble before them. So indeed—if he himself is outside the danger. Not even an executioner grows pale amid his daily offices of torture, unless perhaps he himself is summoned to the rack; nor is he therefore brave, but, if he does not pity those whom he torments, savage.
The gladiators themselves, indeed, exhibited an example of constancy. “What ordinary gladiator,” says Cicero, “has groaned? Who has ever changed his countenance? Who has not stood, and even lain down, honorably? Who, when he had lain down and was ordered to receive the sword, drew in his neck? So great is the power of training, meditation, and custom.”
Yet gladiators are not brave, because they undergo dangers not by reason but by miserable necessity or avarice. Training, meditation, custom—indeed necessity—drive them toward imitations of virtue, if they do not wish to fight with the spectators hostile to them, if they do not wish to be burned and cut, if they prefer to be dispatched by one wound rather than by repeated blows. But the dangers of others do not strengthen the spectators. Otherwise, how were the Romans so brave for four hundred and ninety years? For in the year 490 of the city Marcus and Decimus Brutus first presented three pairs at their father’s funeral, and thereafter the thing was rare, until, when morals had been corrupted, it grew beyond measure; for this crime long remained within a limit. In the five hundred and eightieth year of the city, some other small gladiatorial shows were given, says Livy in Book XLI. One was distinguished above the rest, in that seventy-four human beings fought over the course of three days.
The homeland of luxury and softness itself teaches that these spectacles were joined with luxury and timidity. Campanian luxury is celebrated in history, and its cruelty is well known. See Silius, Book II; Lipsius, Saturnalia, Book I, Chapter VI. For at every more sumptuous banquet it was customary to exhibit several pairs of gladiators for combat in the dining room. The custom seems to have arisen among the Campanians, concerning whom Silius writes in Book II of the Punic Wars:
Indeed, it was their ancient custom to enliven men’s banquets with slaughter, And to mingle with feasts the dreadful spectacles Of men contending with the sword and often falling over the very cups, The tables spattered with no sparing blood.
And Strabo writes concerning the same people in Book V:
ἐπὶ τοσοῦτον γὰρ ἐξετρύφησαν ὥστ᾽ ἐπὶ δεῖπνον ἐκάλουν πρὸς ζεύγη μονομάχων, ὁρίζοντες ἀριθμὸν κατὰ τὴν τῶν συνδείπνων ἀξίαν.
That is: “To such a point were they carried by luxury that they invited guests to pairs of gladiators, whose number they increased or diminished according to the dignity of each banquet.”
So savage a pleasure therefore belongs to soft and servile dispositions, and to those whom delights have subjected to the commands of others. Thus it truly is: cruelty makes men timid; and, as I have said, the timid are cruel.
But the frequent practice of cruelty makes men more timid in the face of dangers. For those who pursue pleasure recoil from serious things, and much more from dangerous things. Hence they were accustomed also to say proverbially, “Tomorrow we shall attend to serious matters”—a saying which brought destruction to several cities. The nature of animals also shows cruelty to belong to fear; for in every kind the females are more cruel than the males, and more timid. Aristotle rightly says—or someone else is the author—in Chapter V of the Physiognomy:
“Female animals appear to me to be more malicious than males, more wanton, less liberal, and weaker. The females among those animals which are raised around us are therefore very evident examples; as for those in the forest, all shepherds and hunters acknowledge that they are such as has been stated.
“But this too is evident: among individuals in each kind the female has a smaller head than the male, a narrower face and a more slender neck; they have weaker breasts and smaller sides, but thighs fleshier than the males’; they have soft knees and slender legs. Their feet are more beautiful, and the form of the whole body softer rather than stronger. They have fewer sinews, are softer, and are furnished with moister flesh. Males, having the contrary of all these things, are by nature of a stronger and more just kind, but the female is by nature more timid and unjust. Since these things are so, the lion appears to be the most perfect of all animals in assuming the form of the male.”
Those spectacles, therefore, belong neither to a brave man nor to a wise one, but to an evildoer; animals themselves are cruel through fear. When a stag has conquered, it cruelly tramples its adversary beneath its feet. Fear chills; it likewise causes torpor to be excited and inclines one toward the enticements of pleasures. Those whose blood is diluted are timid, for fear chills, and the same persons are cruel. Great cruelty formerly belonged to the Carthaginians, and even now belongs to the Ethiopians and those who inhabit the torrid zone. But they are colder by nature, as Aristotle teaches in Problems, Section XIV, Problem VIII:
διὰ τί οἱ μὲν ἐν τοῖς εὐπνόοις τόποις βραδέως γηράσκουσιν, οἱ δὲ ἐν τοῖς κοίλοις καὶ ἑλώδεσι ταχέως; ἢ τὸ γῆρας σηπεδών τις ἐστί. σήπεται δὲ τὸ ἠρεμοῦν, τὸ δὲ ἐν κινήσει ὂν ἢ ὅλως ἄσηπές, ἢ ἧττον τοῦτο πάσχει, οἷον τὸ ὕδωρ. ἐν μὲν οὖν τοῖς ὑψηλοῖς, διὰ τὴν εὐπνοίαν, ὁ ἀὴρ ἐν κινήσει ἐστίν· ἐν δὲ τοῖς κοίλοις μένει. ἐπὶ δὲ ἐκεῖ μὲν διὰ τὴν κίνησιν ἀεὶ καθαρὸς ὁ ἀὴρ καὶ ἕτερος γίνεται· ἐν δὲ τοῖς ἑλώδεσι μένει.
“Why do those who inhabit elevated and open places grow old more slowly, while those who inhabit hollow and marshy places do so more quickly? Is it because old age is a kind of putrefaction? But that which is at rest putrefies; that which is moved is in no way affected thus, or is less affected, as flowing and enclosed water show. Therefore, just as in elevated places the air is stirred by breath blowing upon it from every side, so in hollow places it remains unmoved. In addition, in open places the air is continually kept pure and varied because of the agitation; in marshy places it is impure, and the same air always grows stale.”
The signs of a timid man in Chapter III of the Physiognomy are soft hair, an inclination of the body, a posture not erect, the belly drawn upward, a yellowish color, weak and blinking eyes—broken, lean, and mobile—weak extremities of the body, small legs, long and slender hands, and small and weak loins. The body is σύντονον in its movements; likewise the timid man is not vehement,
but supine; he is easily stupefied by terror, is readily moved in countenance and head, is anxious, looks downward, has a wrinkled face, and the face itself is small. You will find most of these things in the cruel—that is, in those who are such by nature; for some, although gentle by nature, have nevertheless degenerated into cruelty by custom and habit. Since, therefore, those spectacles do not change bodily affections but make them worse, and do not confer strength upon the mind either, they in no way make men brave. Consequently, in order to excuse butchery and blood poured out in peace through a most loathsome pleasure, some have said that these things are not the rudiments of fortitude but certain sacrifices for appeasing Nemesis, so that she, appeased through domestic slaughters, might favor the killing of enemies.
§ 6. But if they judged gladiatorial shows useful in war, why did they not send the gladiators themselves into dangers? Why did they wish them to be infamous? For they ought to have been the bravest of nations; yet this was done rarely and only in the utmost necessity. Nor did they arrange matches in camps before battle and, by watching a wound, animate themselves for death. For they judged it foolish to display in another’s body the lot which each man was now to expect for himself. Fortitude consists in the meditation upon and love of surpassing dignity and moral worth, on account of which it despises dangers and pains; it does not consist in delights derived from another’s torment. It weighs by right reason the causes which may raise up and strengthen the mind for acting and suffering bravely; it does not say that the blood of a worthless, hired scoundrel is the food of its spirit.
Tiberius exhibited cruel games, imitating Augustus. “There lay,” says Tacitus, “an immense slaughter: every sex, every age, the illustrious and the obscure, scattered or gathered together.” He whom that heap delights will never be brave. He holds so tenaciously to his own pleasure that he procures it by so many deadly things. That man, of course, will fight for his fatherland for whose pleasures you will give a show only when you have killed all the citizens—and a show most pleasing of all shows. He is afraid to die who demands the deaths of others, not for his own safety or for the defense of the fatherland, but for his own delights. A brave man lays down his life for a friend, and even for an unknown person; he judges it shameful to purchase life by the vicarious death of another. This man judges it a great fruit of life to gaze upon the deaths of human beings.
How far have those pursuits of more recent men departed from the ancient integrity of Christians? By the great care and severity of bishops Christians were kept away from that savagery. What did the pagans infer from this? This, of course: that the pleasures of spectacles were avoided by Christians so that, having renounced the enticements of life, they might more easily abandon life. Thus Tertullian writes in Chapter I of On the Spectacles: “There are those who suppose that the Christian kind, ready for death, is trained for this obstinacy by the renunciation of pleasures, so that they may more easily despise life when, as though its restraining ties had been cut away, they do not desire that which they have already rendered superfluous to themselves; so that it may be thought to have been determined by this policy and by human foresight rather than prescribed by a divine command. It would, of course, be irksome, even while persevering amid such pleasures, to die for God. Although, even if it were so, obedience was owed to so suitable a policy and to the discipline of so great an obstinacy.”
The Romans, therefore, were so far from thinking that they were strengthened by those spectacles to undergo death and the dangers of death courageously that they said the spectacles were avoided by Christians for precisely this reason: lest, by pursuing the pleasures of life, they should refuse to leave life itself when virtue demanded it. Tertullian continues in Chapter II: “In short, you would find more men whom the danger of pleasure than the danger of life calls away from this sect. For even a fool does not dread death as something owed; even a wise man does not despise pleasure as so great a thing, since there is no other charm of life both for the fool and for the wise except pleasure.”
The nations therefore sought not fortitude but pleasure from the amphitheater. Among such things Tertullian reckons the circus, the lion, bodily strength, and the charms of the voice. He names the lion when he censures all the bloodiest spectacles, for in these was the height of madness. Scaevola presented many lions; Sulla, when praetor, presented one hundred maned lions; Pompey the Great, Sulla’s pupil, six hundred, among which were three hundred and fifteen maned lions. For it was fitting that the teacher, who did not know letters, should be surpassed by his pupil. But Julius surpassed Pompey even in this disgrace, for he brought forth eight hundred. Besides these they also presented panthers, after, through wickedness, an ancient decree of the senate had been abrogated by command of the people. Scaurus, in his aedileship, presented one hundred and fifty of various kinds; Pompey the Great, four hundred and ten; Augustus bestowed four hundred and twenty. These were the things because of which the nations feared to die.
Moreover, Tertullian teaches in Chapter XV of On the Spectacles that the spirit is shaken by spectacles: “No one comes to pleasure without emotion; no one experiences emotion without its own accidents. The accidents themselves are incitements of emotion. But if emotion ceases, there is no pleasure; and the man who goes to the place where he obtains nothing is guilty of so much vanity. I think, moreover, that vanity too is foreign to us. What of the fact that he also judges himself when placed among those whose like he does not wish to be, and surely confesses himself their detester? It is not enough for us if we ourselves do no such thing, unless we also are not joined with those who do such things. ‘If you saw a thief,’ he says, ‘you ran together with him.’ Would that we did not even dwell in the world together with them; nevertheless, we are separated from them in worldly things, because the world is God’s, but worldly things are the devil’s.”
If those men are brave, why are their souls held cheap and infamous? Tertullian writes in Chapter XXII of On the Spectacles: “For the very authors and administrators of the spectacles—the charioteers, actors, athletes of the exercise-ground, and those most beloved men of the arena—to whom women subject their cheap souls or those men even their bodies, for whose sake they commit the things they censure: from the same quarter from which it magnifies them, society casts them down and diminishes them; indeed, it manifestly condemns them by ignominy and diminution of civil status, keeping them from the curia, the rostra, the senate, the equestrian order, and all other honors and ornaments together. How great is their perversity! They love those whom they punish; they depreciate those whom they approve. They magnify the art and stigmatize the artist. What sort of judgment is it, that someone should be disgraced by the things through which he merits favor? Indeed, how great a confession of an evil thing it is that its authors, although most acceptable, are not without a mark of disgrace.”
I finish, and give this one admonition: if for constancy you desire blood, you have Christ’s. Tertullian, On the Spectacles, Chapter XXIX.