apostolicfathers0201clem - Carmel Apologetics

THE GENUINENESS. 55
populace (see Friedlaender Sittengeschichte Roms ii.
pp. 127, 142, 188,
222)'. After his second Dacian triumph in a.d. 106 he celebrated
games which lasted a hundred and twenty-three days, and in which
about 11,000 wild and tame beasts were slaughtered and 10,000
gladiators fought (Dion Cass. Ixviii. 15). For these murderous contests
the i^rovincial governors must have had orders far and wide to
supply human victims as well as animals. Thus we must picture companies
of soldiers, like those who guarded Ignatius, converging from all
as the
quarters of the empire to Rome, and bringing thither their several contingents
of victims, whom they had gathered on their route, just
escort of Ignatius appears to have picked up prisoners at Philippi on
the way (Polyc. Phil. 9),
and probably others elsewhere of whom
nothing
is told us.
But indeed we are not left to conjecture on this point. There is
direct evidence that the provinces were requisitioned for this purpose.
In the Digests passages are quoted from the work of the jurist Modestinus,
who wrote during the reign of Ale.xander Severus and later, On
Punishments, as follows :
The governor ought not, at the pleasure of the people, to release persons
'
condemned to wild-beasts ; but, if they are of such strength or skill that
they would make a worthy spectacle for the Roman people, he ought to
consult the emperor'-. Howbeit it is made unlawful by a rescript of the
deified Severus and of Antoninus for condemned criminals to be transferred
from one province to another without the permission of the emperor^.'
This passage imphes, (i)
That persons condemned to wild beasts,
^
The language in which the younger
Pliny {Pancg. 33, 34) commends Trajan
for these exhibitions is highly instructive ;
'
Visum est spectaculum...quocI ad pulchra
vulnera contemptumque mortis accenderet,
cum in servorum etiam noxiorumque
corporibus amor laudis et cupido victoriae
cerneretur. Quam deinde in edendo liberalitatem,
quam justitiam exhibuit, omni
affectione aut intactus aut major. Impetratum
est quod postulabatur ; oblatum
quod non postulabatur
'. The inhuman
savagery of this wholesale bloodshed
does not for a moment trouble the
panegyrist. The emperor
is lauded because
he gave the people more of it than
they asked for. Pliny's panegyric was
written before the Dacian triumph, and he
is therefore referring to the earliest years
of Trajan's reign.
"
Not for leave to send them to Rome,
as Hilgenfeld supposes {Zeitschr.f. IViss.
Thcol. XVII. p. 99), but for leave to release
them, as the context shows.
^ Digest, xlviii. 19. 31 ''Idem \Modestinns\
libro tertio de Poenis. Ad bestias
damnatos favore populi praeses dimittere
non debet ;
sed si ejus roboris vel artificii
sint ut digne populo Romano exhiberi
possint, principem consulere debet.
Ex provincia auiem in provinciam transduci
damnatos sine permissu principis
non licere divus Severus et Antoninus
rescripserunt '.
See Friedlaender Sittengeschichte
Roms II. p. 204.
23—2