and the Cæsars were at liberty to indulge their private lusts with a profuseness of expenditure which surpasses the calculations of all modern luxury, and to display their public magnificence with a prodigality which leaves the feeble despots of later days immeasurably behind them in the splendour of their wickedness, the sports of the amphitheatre were conducted upon a scale to which the Consuls of the republic had scarcely dared to aspire. Caligula, on his birth-day, gave four hundred bears, and as many other wild beasts, to be slain; and on the birth-day of Drusilla, he exhibited these brutal spectacles, continued to the succeeding day on a similar scale *. Claudius instituted combats between Thessalian horsemen and wild bulls; and he also caused camels to fight for the first time with horses. Invention was racked to devise new combinations of cruelty. Many of the emperors abandoned themselves to these sports with as passionate an ardour as the uncultivated multitude. Sensuality debases as much as ignorance, because it is ignorance under another name. Claudius rose at daylight to repair to the Circus, and frequently remained, that he might not lose a single pang of the victims, while the people went to their afternoon meal. Sometimes, during the reigns of Claudius and Nero, an elephant was opposed to a single fencer; and the spectators were delighted by the display of individual skill. Sometimes, hundreds and even thousands of the more ferocious beasts were slaughtered by guards on horseback; and the pleasure of the multitude was in proportion to the lavishness with which the blood of man and beast was made to flow. The passion for these sports required a more convenient theatre for its gratification than the old Circus. The Colosseum was commenced by Vespasian, and completed by Titus (A.D. 79). This

* Dion. lib. lix.

enormous building occupied only three years in its erection. Cassiodorus affirms that this magnificent monument of folly cost as much as would have been required for the building of a capital city. We have the means of distinctly ascertaining its dimensions and its accommodations from the great mass of wall that still remains entire; and we may not improperly bestow a few pages upon its description. Such a building can never again appear in the world, because mankind have learned that the expenditure of princes upon useless monuments to their own pride and power, can only be wrung from the hard labours of the people themselves; and that the wealth thus diverted from the channels of usefulness, perpetuates the abuses of misgovernment, and at the same time impedes the progress of the many in knowledge and comfort. Public happiness and the ostentation of despotism cannot exist together.

The Colosseum, which is of an oval form, occupies the space of nearly six acres. "It may justly be said to have been the most imposing building, from its apparent magnitude, in the world; the pyramids of Egypt can only be compared with it in the extent of their plan, as they cover nearly the same surface *." The greatest length, or major axis, is 620 feet; the greatest breadth, or minor axis, 513 feet. The outer wall is 157 feet high in its whole extent. The exterior wall is divided into four stories, each ornamented with one of the orders of architecture. The cornice of the upper story is perforated for the purpose of inserting wooden masts, which passed also through the architrave and frieze, and descended to a row of corbels immediately be

*The Architectural Antiquities of Rome, by E. Cresy and G. L. Taylor: a work of equal accuracy and splendour, to which we are indebted for the subsequent details of the arrangements of the building.

low the upper range of windows, on which are holes to receive the masts. These masts were for the purpose of attaching cords to, for sustaining the awning which defended the spectators from the sun or rain. Two corridors ran all round the building, leading to staircases which ascended to the several stories; and the seats which descended towards the arena, supported throughout upon eighty arches, occupied so much of the space that the clear opening of the present inner wall next the arena is only 287 feet by 180 feet. Immediately above and around the arena was the podium, elevated about twelve or fifteen feet, on which were seated the emperor, senators, ambassadors of foreign nations, and other distinguished personages in that city of distinctions. From the

podium to the top of the second story were seats of marble for the equestrian order; above the second story the seats appear to have been constructed of wood. In these various seats eighty thousand spectators might be arranged according to their respective ranks; and indeed it appears from inscriptions, as well as from expressions in Roman writers, that many of the places in this immense theatre were assigned to particular individuals, and that each might find his seat without confusion. The ground was excavated over the surface of the arena in 1813; a great number of substructions were then discovered, which by some antiquaries are considered to be of modern date, and by others to have formed dens for the various beasts that were exhibited. The descriptions which have been left by historians and other writers of the variety and extent of the shows, would indicate that a vast space and ample conveniences were required beneath the stage, to accomplish the wonders which were, doubtless, there realized in the presence of assembled Rome. We subjoin, from Messrs. Cresy and Taylor's work, an interior view,