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THE GLADIATORS' SCHOOL 323
of the gladiators.
It was ordered that he should fight, as
soon as lie was trained, in some great display. Onesimus
saw that the young Briton shared his own disgust at the
orgies of ribald talk in which their fellows indulged. The
two had no other friends, and they were drawn together
for mutual defence against the rude horse-play of their
comrades. Glanydon was one of the class of gladiators
called Samnites, who fought in heavy armour, while, after
various trials, the trainer (lanista) decided that the exceptional
activity of Onesimus marked him out for the work
of a net-thrower (retiarius). Their training had to be hurried
on at the utmost speed, for the games were to take place
within a month.
The other gladiators sometimes talked of their lot with
pretended rapture. They spoke of the liberal supply of food,
of the presents sent them, of the favour with which they
were regarded by fair ladies even by the wives and
daughters of great patricians of the fame they acquired, so
that their prowess and the comparison of their merits was
one of the commonest topics of talk at Roman dinner-parties.
They boasted of the delight of seeing their likenesses painted
in red on the play-bills ;
of the shouts with which a favourite
fighter was welcomed of the
;
yell of applause which greeted
them when they had performed a gallant feat ;
of the chance
of retiring with wreaths and gifts and money, when they had
earned by their 1
intrepidity the wooden foil.
'
Poor wretches,' said Onesimus to '
Glanydon ; they do not
talk of the panic which sometimes seizes them, and how they
are howled at when, in ignominious defeat, they fly to the end
of the arena to beg for their lives ; how, when they see overwhelming
odds against them and grim death staring them in
the face, they are still driven into the fight with cracking
scourges and plates of iron heated red hot nor
;
but what is
the use of talking of all this, Glanydon
?
you know it all
better than I do.'
'
Brutal, bloody, slaves and women, are these Eomans,' cried
*
Glanydon. The Druids of my native land served the gods
with cruel rites, but they did not play with death as though
it were a pretty toy, as these weaklings do. And to think
1
Note 35. The Gladiators' School.