Thence each
bellowed for silence, their deep-toned, resonant, loud, practiced voices
carrying to the upper colonnade everywhere. Silence, deep already since
Murmex received his death-wound and broken only by whispers, deepened. The
amphitheater became almost still. Into the stillness the heralds
proclaimed that next day the funeral games of Murmex Lucro would be
celebrated in the Colosseum where he had died; that all persons entitled
to seats in the Colosseum were thereby enjoined to attend, unless too ill
to leave their homes: that all should come without togas, but, in sign of
mourning for Murmex, wearing over their garments full-length, all-
enveloping rain-cloaks of undyed black wool and similarly colored umbrella
hats; that any person failing to attend so habited would be severely
punished; that the show would be worth seeing, for, in honor of the Manes
of Murmex, to placate his ghost, no defeated fighter would be spared and
all the victors of the morning would fight each other in the afternoon.
Surely the tenth day before the Kalends of January, in December of the
nine hundred and forty-fourth year of the City, [Footnote: 191 A.D.] the
year in which Commodus was nominally consul for the seventh time, and
Pertinax consul for the second time, saw the strangest audience ever
assembled in the amphitheater of the Colosseum.
Pages:
760
761
762
763
764
765
766
767
768
769
770
771
772
773
774
775
776
777
778
779
780
781
782
783
784