recover, if he could; if they turned them down, he was to die: and if he
showed any reluctance to present his throat for the deathblow, there was
a scornful shout, Recipe ferrum! 'Receive the steel!' Many of us must
have seen casts of the most touching statue of the wounded man, that
called forth the noble lines of indignant pity which, though so often
repeated, cannot be passed over here:


'I see before me the Gladiator lie;
He leans upon his hand--his manly brow
Consents to death, but conquers agony.
And his droop'd head sinks gradually low,
And through his side the last drops, ebbing slow
From the red gash, fall heavy one by one,
Like the first of a thunder shower; and now
The arena swims around him--he is gone
Ere ceased the inhuman shout which hailed the wretch who won.

'He heard it, but he heeded no--this eyes
Were with his heart, and that was far away.
He reck'd not of the life he lost, nor prize,
But where his rude hut by the Danube lay,
There were his young barbarians all at play,
There was their Dacian mother--he their sire,
Butcher'd to make a Roman holiday.
All this rush'd with his blood--Shall he expire,
And unavenged? Arise ye Goths and glut your ire.'


Sacred vestals, tender mothers, fat, good-humored senators, all thought