In general, however, the parts of these festivals to which the people looked forward with liveliest anticipation were those public entertainments, commonly known as “the games” or “sports,” which were provided for them free of cost.  The expense was theoretically borne by the state—­whether from the exchequer of the emperor or from that of the senate and the state did indeed spend as much as six or eight thousand pounds upon a particular celebration.  But, both in Rome itself and in the provinces, it was practically obligatory that the public officer who had charge of a given festival for the year should spend liberally of his own upon it.  No man either at Rome or in a provincial city could permit himself to be elected to such a public position unless he was prepared to disburse a sum perhaps as large as the subvention given by the state.  The more he gave, particularly if he introduced some striking or amusing addition to the ordinary shows, the more popular he became for the time being.  In the Roman world you must pay for your ambitions, and this was the most approved way of paying.  We might moralise over the enormous frivolity which could waste day after day thousands and thousands of pounds upon such transitory pleasures, instead of conferring lasting benefits in the way of hospitals or schools.  But it is not the object of this book to moralise.  We may feel confident that the Roman populace, if offered the choice, would have voted for the chariot-races or the gladiators, not for the college or the hospital.

[Illustration:  FIG. 78:  BOXING-GLOVES.]

The entertainments provided were of several kinds, by no means equally popular.  There were plays in the theatres; there were contests of running, wrestling, boxing, throwing of spears and disks, and other “events,” corresponding to our athletic sports; there were chariot-races in the Circus, answering to our horse-races at Epsom or Newmarket; and there were spectacles in the amphitheatre, to which, happily, we have no modern parallel.  These included huntings and baitings of animals, fights with wild beasts—­performances far more dangerous than those of the Spanish bull-ring—­and, above all, the combats of the gladiators or professional “swordsmen.”  So far as there exists a later analogue to the last it is to be found in the more chivalrous tourney in the lists, but the resemblance is not very close.  Least valued among the real Romans were the athletic sports.  For genuine enjoyment of these we must look to the Greek part of the empire.  At Rome they appeared tame, for the mind of the Roman populace was naturally coarse in grain; what it delighted in was something sensationally acrobatic, or provocative of a rather gross laughter, or else involving a thrilling anticipation of danger and bloodshed.  In taste the Romans were in fact similar to those modern spectators who love to see a man plunge from a lofty trapeze into a narrow tank, with a reasonable chance of breaking his neck.