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484 DARKNESS AND DAWN
brows an aureole of light. They thought to flatter the people,
but made them vile by a carnival which showed that their
natures had become a mixture of the tiger and the ape.
The jubilee of massacre began with cruel flagellations, for
the intention was to combine amusement with utility and to
represent these unnumbered agonies as a festival of expiation.
So low had the Romans sunk since the days when
they had believed that the wrath of the gods had been kindled
because before some public games a master had scourged his
slave round the arena !
As they wished to add derision to torture, it did not suffice
them that at these piacular displays men should merely
fight with wild beasts who would soon be glutted with the
multitude of victims. A novelty was devised for the delight
of the spectators.
The first batch of martyrs were clad in the skins of wolves
and leopards and torn to death by hordes of fierce and hungry
dogs.
Others had to take part in mythologic operas. Among
them was the soldier Urbanus. Clad in the guise of Hercules
on (Eta, he was burned alive upon a funeral pyre. Another
martyr, Celsus, had to figure as Mucius Sceevola, and to burn
his hand to ashes in a flame upon an altar, with the promise
that his life should be given him if,
in carrying out his
historic role, he would voluntarily consume his right hand,
and not once shrink. Vitalis had to take his part in the
favourite drama of Laureolus, in which character, after being
made a lau