Beneath the terraces, behind the barred doors that punctuated the
marble wall which circled the arena, were Mauritian panthers that
had been entrapped with rotten meat; hippopotami from Sais, lured
by the smell of carrots into pits; the rhinoceros of Gaul, taken
with the net; lions, lassoed in the deserts; Lucanian bears,
Spanish bulls; and, in remoter dens, men, unarmed, that waited.
By way of foretaste for better things, a handful of criminals,
local desperadoes, an impertinent slave, a machinist, who in a
theatre the night before had missed an effect--these, together
with a negligent usher, were tossed one after the other naked into
the ring, and bound to a scaffold that surmounted a miniature
hill. At a signal the scaffold fell, the hill crumbled, and from
it a few hyenas issued, who indolently devoured their prey.
With this for prelude, the gods avenged and justice appeased, a
rhinoceros ambled that way, stimulated from behind by the point of
a spear; and in a moment the hyenas were disembowelled, their legs
quivering in the air. Throughout the arena other beasts, tied
together with long cords, quarrelled in couples; there was the
bellow of bulls, and the moan of leopards tearing at their flesh,
a flight of stags, and the long, clean spring of the panther.
Presently the arena was cleared, the sand reraked and the
Bestiarii advanced--Sarmatians, nourished on mares' milk;
Sicambrians, their hair done up in chignons; horsemen from
Thessaly, Ethiopian warriors, Parthian archers, huntsmen from the
steppes, their different idioms uniting in a single cry--"Caesar,
we salute you.
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