HKB
spite of his pity, was of this opinion. And Suetonius counted the sufferings which Nero heaped upon the partisans of the new and mischievous superstitions as among his laudable measures.
These sufferings were something frightful. Such refinements of cruelty had never been seen. Almost all those arrested were of the humiliores (the poorest classes). The sentence of these unfortunates, when it concerned high treason or sacrilege, was to be thrown to the beasts, or to be burned alive in the amphitheatre. One of the most hideous traits of Roman manners was that of making a fête, a public amusement, of these tortures. The amphitheatres had become places of execution: the tribunals furnished the victims. The condemned of the entire world were forwarded to Rome for the provisionment of the circus and the amusement of the people. At this time derision was added to the barbarism of these tortures. The victims were kept for a feast day, to which was given, without doubt, an expiatory character. "The morning spectacle," consecrated to the combats of animals, presented an appearance hitherto unknown. The condemned, covered with the tawny skins of beasts, were hurried into the arena, where they were torn by dogs. Some were crucified: others, reclothed with tunics steeped in oil, wax, or resin, were bound to posts, and reserved to light up the evening fêtes. When the day lowered, these living torches were ignited. For this spectacle, Nero offered his magnificent gardens beyond the Tiber, which occupied the site of the present Borgo, the Square, and the Church of St. Peter. Near by was a circus commenced by Caligula, in which the middle of the Spina was marked by an obelisk brought from Heliopolis (the same one which in our day stands in the centre of the Square of St. Peter). This place had already been the scene of massacres by the light of torches. Caligula, in one of his walks, decapitated a certain number of consular personages, senators, and Roman ladies, by the light of torches. The idea of replacing lanterns by human bodies impregnated with inflammable substances had occurred to the ingenious Nero. Burning alive was not a new mode of suffering; it was the ordinary penance of incendiaries: but it had never been made a system of illumination. By the light of these hideous torches, Nero, who had established the custom of evening entertainments, showed himself in the arena, sometimes mingling with the people in the dress of a charioteer, sometimes conducting his chariot and seeking applause. Women and young girls were involved in these horrible games: a fête was made of the nameless indignities which they suffered. Under Nero, the custom was established of compelling the condemned to play in the amphitheatre some mythological part entailing the death of the actor. These hideous operas, where mechanical science attained to prodigious effects, were very popular. The miserable wretch was introduced into the arena, richly costumed as god or hero devoted to death. He then represented by his suffering some tragic scene of the fables consecrated by sculptors and poets. Sometimes it was the furious Hercules burned on Mount [OE]ta, tearing the waxed tunic from his skin; sometimes Orpheus torn in pieces by a bear; Dædalus thrown from heaven, and devoured by beasts; Pasiphæ struggling in the embraces of the bull; Attys murdered. Sometimes there were horrible masquerades, in which the men were dressed like priests of Saturn with a red cloak, the women as priestesses of Ceres with fillets on the brow; finally, at other times, some dramatic work of the time, in which the hero was really condemned to death as Laureolus; or the representations were those of such tragic acts as that of Mucius Scævola. At the end of these hideous spectacles, Mercury, with a red-hot iron wand, touched each corpse to see if it moved. Some masked valets, dressed like Pluto or Orcus, dragged away the dead by the feet, killing with hammers all who still breathed. The Christian ladies of the highest respectability even suffered these monstrosities. Some played the rôle of the Danaïdes, others that of Dirce. It is difficult to say what fable furnishes a more bloody picture than that of the Danaïdes. The suffering which all mythological tradition attributes to these guilty women was not cruel enough to suffice for the pleasure of Nero and the habitués of his amphitheatre. Sometimes they were led out bearing urns, and received the fatal blow from an actor figuring as Lynceus. Sometimes these unhappy beings went through the series of the sufferings of Tartarus before the spectators, and only died after hours of torments. The representations of Hell were quite à la mode. Some years previous (the year 41), some Egyptians and Nubians came to Rome, and made a great success in giving evening performances, in which they displayed in order the horrors of the subterranean world, conforming to the paintings of the burial-places of Thebes, notably those of the tomb of Seti I.