But then, by making his suffering ridiculous, you enlist against the sufferer, some real, and all would-be manliness, and do much to stifle any false sentiment of compassion.

The philosophic emperor, having no great taste for sport, and asserting here a personal scruple, had greatly changed all [240] that; had provided that nets should be spread under the dancers on the tight-rope, and buttons for the swords of the gladiators.

But the gladiators were still there.

Their bloody contests had, under the form of a popular amusement, the efficacy of a human sacrifice; as, indeed, the whole system of the public shows was understood to possess a religious import.

Just at this point, certainly, the judgment of Lucretius on pagan religion is without reproach-- Tantum religio potuit suadere malorum.
And Marius, weary and indignant, feeling isolated in the great slaughter-house, could not but observe that, in his habitual complaisance to Lucius Verus, who, with loud shouts of applause from time to time, lounged beside him, Aurelius had sat impassibly through all the hours Marius himself had remained there.