Can any man
read without shuddering that it was the practice among this atrocious
gang to have all the multitude of unhappy prisoners of both sexes,
and of all ranks and ages,--who annually graced the triumphs of their
generals, taken off and murdered just at the moment when these
generals reached the Capitol, amid the shouts of the multitude, that
their joys might be augmented by the sight or consciousness of the
sufferings of others? (See Hooke's _Roman History_, vol. iii, p. 488;
vol. iv, p. 541.) 'It was the custom that, when the triumphant
conqueror tumed his chariot towards the Capitol, he commanded the
captives to be led to prison, and there put to death, that so the
glory of the victor and the miseries of the vanquished might be in
the same moment at the utmost.' How many millions of the most
innocent and amiable of their species must have been offered up as
human sacrifices to the triumphs of the leaders of this great gang!
The women were almost as brutalized as the men; lovers met to talk
'soft nonsense', at exhibitions of gladiators. Valeria, the daughter
and sister of two of the first men in Rome, was beautiful, gay, and
lively, and of unblemished reputation.
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