Rensselaer Republican, Volume 25, Number 25, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 16 February 1893 — ANCIENT ARENAS. [ARTICLE]

ANCIENT ARENAS.

Historic Cmoltios and Modem Parallels. Sketch of a Banian Holiday—The Coliseum of Ancient Home—Or. Talmagt’i •• » Sermon. —— Dr, Talraage- preach eel afr- Brookiyn, last Sunday. Subject: ‘‘Rome and the Coliseum.’ 1 Text: Romans i, 15—“ lam ready to preach the gospel to you that are at Rome also.” He said: Rome! What a city it was when Paul visited it! What is it now! Rome! The place where Virgil.sang and Horace satirized and Terence laughed and Catiline conspired and Ovid dramatized and Nero fiddled -and Vespasian persecuted and Stlllh legislated and - Cicero and Aurelius and Pecius and Caligula and Julian and Hadrian and Constantine and Augutus reigned and Paul the Apostle preached the gospel. Of the theater at Ehpesus where Paul fought with wild beasts, the temple of Diana, of the Parthenon, of Pharaoh's palace at Memphis and of other great buildings the mins of which I have seen, it has been my privilege to address you, but a member of my family asked me recently why I had not spoken to you of the Coliseum at Setae, since its moral and religious lessons are so impressive.

Perhaps while in Rome the law of contrast wrought upon me. I had visited the Mamertine dungeon where Paul was incarcerated, f had measured the opening at the top of the dungeon through which Paul had been let down, and it was 23 inches by 26. The ceiling at its highest point was 7 feet from the floor, but at the sides of the room the ceiling was 5 feet 7 inches. The room at the widest was 15 feet. There was a seat of rock 1* feet high, xhere was a shelf 4 feet high. The only furniture was a spider’s web suspended from the roof, which I saw by the torchlight I carried. There was the subterraneous passage from the dungeon to the Roman forum, so that the prisoner could betaken directly from prison to trial. The. dungeon was built out of volcanic stone from the Albano mountains. Oh, it was a dismal and terrific place! You never saw coal hole so dark or so forbidding. The place was to me a nervous shock, for I remembered that was the best thing the world would afford the most illustrious being except one that it ever saw, and from that - place Paul went to dio. From that spot I visited the Coliseum, one of the most astounding miracles of architecture that the world ever saw. Indeed I saw it morning, noon and night, for it threw a spell on me from which I could not break away. Although now a vast ruin, the Coliseum is so well preserved that we can stand in the center and recall all that it once was. It is in shape ellipsoidal. oval, oblong. It is at its greatest length 612 feet. After it lad furnished scats for 87,000 people it had room for 15,000 more to stand, so that 10,000 people could sit and stand transfixed by its scenes of courage and martyrdom and brutality and horror. Instead of our modern tickets of admission,they entered by ivory check, and a check dug up near Rome within a few years was marked, “Section 6, Lowest Tier, Seat No. 13.’’

The sides of the arena were composed of smooth marble 11 feet high, so that the wild boasts of tho arena could not climb up into the audience. On the top of these sides of smooth marble was a metal railing having wooden rollers which easily revolved, so that if a panther should leap high enough to scale the wall and with his paw touch any of those rollers it would revolve and drop him back again into the arena.— Back of this marble wall was a platform of stone adorned with statues of gods and goddesses and the artistic effigies of monarchs and conquerors. The outside wall is incrusted with marble and had four ranges, and the three lower ranges had 89 columns each and arches after arches: and on each arch an exqusite statue of a god or a hero. Up to a 180 feet soared the Coliseum. It glittered and flashed and shone with whole sunrises and sunsets of dazzlement. At the dedication of this Coliseum 9,000 wild beasts and 10,000 immortal men were slain, so that the blood of men and beasts was not a brook, but a river; not a pool, but a lake. The corpses of that arena were put on a cart or dragged by a hook out through what was called the Gate of Death. an excitement it must irave been when the two combatants entered the arena, the one with sword and shlpld the other with net and spear! The swordsman strikes at the man with the net and spear. He dodges the sword and then flings the net over the head of the swordsman and jerks him to the floor of the arena, and the man who flung the net puts nis foot on the neck of the fallen swordsman and, spear in hapcL looks up ioto,the galleries, as mhch as to shy.‘‘Shall I let hiprup, for shall I plunge this his bddfy nnJJI h|sJs The audience had two signs, either ■of which they might give. If they waved their nags, it mount spare the fallen contestant. If they turned thear thumbs down, it meant slav him. Occasionally tho audience would wave their nags, and the fallen would be let up, but that Was too ,‘tame sport for most occasions, and •generally the thumbs from tho galleries ware turned down, and with that sign would be beard the accom-

r 1 1 H-L--- ■ . .. -V • fraying shout of “Kilt! Kill! Kill! fflr ; •• . • But ad this was to be By the outraged sense of public decency? No. There is only one thing that has ever stopped cruelty and sin, and that is Christianity, whether you like its form or not, that stopped this massacre of centuries. One day while, in the Coliseum. a Roman victory was being celebrated, and 100,000 enraptured spectators were looking down upon two gladiators in the arena stabbing and slicing each other to death, an Asiatic monk of the name of Telemaehus was so overcome by the cruelty that he leaped from the gallery into the arena and rail in between the two swordsmen and pushed first, one back and then the other back and broke up the coptest. * Of course the audience was affronted at having their sport stopped, and they hmled ston e at the head of Telemachus until he fell dead in the arena. But when the day was passed and the passions of the people had cooled off they deplored the martyrdom of the brave and Christian Telemachus, and as a result of the overdone cruelty the human sacrifices of the Coliseum were forever abolished. What a good tiling, say you, that such cruelties have ceased! My friends, the same spirit of ruinous amusements and of moral sacrifice is abroad in the world today, tol though it takes" other shapes. That pugilism is winning admiration in this country is positively proved by the fact that years ago such collision was reported in a half dozen lines of newspaper, if reported at all, and now it takes the whole side of a newspaper to tell what transpired between the first blood drawn by one loafer and the throwing up of the Sponge by the other loafer, and it is not the newspapers’ -fault, for the newspapers give only what the people want, aud when newspapers put carrion on your table it is because you prefer carrion. The same spirit of brutality is seen to-day in many hr. ecclesiastical, court when a minister is put on trial. Look at the countenances of the prosecuting ministers, and -not in all cases, but in many cases, you will find noth big but diabolism inspires them. When I read a few days_ ago that the Suprenie Court of the United States had appropriately adjourned to pay honors to two distinguished men,and American jour’ alism. north, south, east and west w>rat into lamentations over their departure and said all complimentary things in regard to them, I asked: When did the nation lie about these men? Was it when during their life it gave them malediction or now since their death when bestowing upon them beatification? One-half the world is down, and the other half is up, and the half that is up has its heel on# the half that is down. If you, as a boss workman, or as a contractor, or as a bishop, or as a state or national official or as a bishop, or a potent factor in social life, or in any way are oppressing any one, know that the same devil that possessed the Ro-nton-Coliseum oppresses you. The Diocletians are not all dead. The cellars leading into the arena of life’s struggle are not all emptied of their tigers. The vivisection by young doctors of dogs and cats and birds most of the time adds nothing to human discovery, but is only a continuation of Vespasian’s Coliseum. But I am glad to say it to the same old heaven, and in all that world there is not one ruinland never will be a ruin. Not one of the pearly gates will ever become unhinged. Not one of the amethystine towers will ever fail. Not one of the mansions will ever decay. Not' one of* the chariots will ever be unwheeled. Not one of the thrones will ever rock down. Oh, make sure of heaven, for it is an everlasting heaven! Through Christ the Lord get ready for residence in the eternal palaces. The last evening before leaving Rome for Brindisi and Athens and Egypt and Palestine I went alone to to the Coliseum. There was not a living soul in all the immense area. Even those accustomed to sell curios at the four entrances of the building had gone away. The place was so overwhelmingly silent I could hear my own heart beat with the emotions arouvsed by the place and hour. I paced the arena. I walked down into the dens where the hyenas were once kept. I ascended to the place where the emperor used to sit. I climbed up on the galleries from which the mighty throngs of paople had gazed in enchantment. □ Then, as I stood there, there came to me a burst of echoes, yrhich seemed throbbing with the prayers and, songs and groans of Christians who had expired in that arena, and they seemed to say, “How much it cost to serve God in ages past, and thankful modem centuries ought to be that the persecution which reddened the sands of this amphitheater have been abolished.' 1 -y -- :J - 1 And then I'questioned the echoes, saying, “Where is Enqperpr Titus, i who sat here?” The answer came; “Gone to judgment,’N, “Where is Emperor Trajan, who sat here?" “Gone to judgment." “Where Is Emperor Maxlmin us; whq sat here?* \‘Gone all the multitudes who clapped and shouted waved flags to let the vanquished uu, of- to have thSra. slain nut thumbs down?”. The echoes answered, “Gone to judgment." : 1 inquired, “All?" And they answered, Instead of the ‘•gpcttk-essyT’ why npi get ovor the law by calling it a plaoo foi "whist” parties.