The weekly intelligencer. [volume] (Lexington, Mo.) 1891-1901, 1893-02-18
ANCIENT ROME.
DR.. Talmage Discourses on the
Colosseum and It's Lessons.
The terrible Slaughter In the Great Am
phitheater Til Heroism of Teloma-
chus-Modern BrutaIism-
The Last Judgment.

The terrible Slaughter In the Great Am
phitheater-The Heroism of Telema-
chus-Modern BrutaIism-
The Last Judgment.
In n Late sermon at Brooklyn Rev. T.
Dewitt Talmage ~discoursed from the
text Romans, l. ID: 81 am ready to
preach the Gospel to you that are at
ltuInc, alsu." The preacher said:
Rome. What a city it was when
Paul visited it! What a city it is now!
Rome! The place where Virgil sang
and Horace satirized, and Terence
laughed and Catalina ~conspired, and
Ovid dramatized and Nero fiddled, and
Vespasian prosecuted aud Sulla legis-
lated, and Cicero Numbered, and Aure-
Illus and Decius and Caligula and Julian
and Hadrian and Constantine and Au-
gustus reigned, and Paul, the apostle,
preached the gospel.
am not much of a draughtsman, but
l have in my memorandum book a
sketch which | made in the winter of
1883, when | went out to the gate
through which Paul entered Rome and
walked up the very street he walked
up to see somewhat how the city must
have looked to him as he came in on
the gospel errand proposed in the text.
Palaces on either side of the street
through which the little missionary ad.
vanced. Piled up wickedness. En-
throned accurseness. Tempted cruel
ties. Affairs to sham deities. Gloriied
delusions. Pillared, arched, domed,
turreted denominations. Wickedness of
all sorts at "a high premium, and right
eousness 099& per cent. off. And now
he passes by the foundations of a build
ing which is to be almost unparalleled
for vastness. You can see by the walls
which have begun to rise hat here is
to be something enough stupendous to
astound the centuries. Aye, it is the
Colosseum started.
OF the theater at Ephesus, where Paul
fought with wild beasts, of the temple
of Diana, of the Parthenon, of Pharaoh's
palace at Memphis and of other great
buildings, the ruins of which l have
seen, it has been my privilege to ad-
dress you, but a member of my family
asked me recently why l had not spoken
to you of the Colosseum at Rome, since
its moral and religious lessons are SO
impressive.
Perhaps, while in Rome, the law of
contrast wrought upon me. 1 had Wis
tied the Mamertine dungeon where
Paul was incarcerated. L had meas
ured the openings. at the top of the
dungeon through which Paul had been
let down, and it vas % inches by 20.
The ceiling, at its highest point was Z
feet from the floor, but at the sides
of the Don the ceiling was 5 feet
z inches. The room, at the widest,
was Is feet. There was a seat of
rock az feet high. There was a shelf
4 feet high. The only furniture
was a spiders web suspended from
the roof, which l saw by the torchlight
/ carried. There was the subterrane-
Gus passage from the dungeon to the
Roman forum, so that the prisoner
could be taken directly from prison to
trial
Although now a vast ruin, the Colos-
scum is so we'll preserved that we can
stand In the center and recall all hat
it once IA 1t is in shape ellipsoidal,
oval, oblong. 1t is, at its greatest
length, 612 feet. After it had furnished
seats for 81, 900 people it had room for
5000 more to stand, SO that 100. 900
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 Il few years
was marked: Section 6, Lowest Tier,
Seat No. 49," You understand that the
building was not constructed for an au-
dience to be addressed by human voice,
although l tested it with some friends
and could not be heard across it, but it
was made only for seeing and was
circular and at any point allowed
full view of the spectacle. The arena
in the center in Nlden times was
strewn with pounded stone OIL sand,
so as not to be too slippery with
human blood, for If 1t were too slippery,
it would spoil the fun. The sand
flashed here and there with sparkles of
silver and gold, and Nero added CHINA
bar and Caligula added chrysocolla.
The sides of the arena were composed
of smooth marble, eleven feet high, so
that the wild beasts of the 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
IL 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 the marble wall surrounding
the arena vas IL level platform of stone,
adorned with statues of gods and god
desses and the artistic efigies of
monarchs and conquerors. Here were
movable seats for the emperor and
imperial swine and swinesses with
which he surrounded himself. Be-
fore the place where the emperor
sat, the gladiators would walk immedi-
ately after entering the arena, crying:
..Hail, Cesarl Those about to die salute
thee" After the audience had assem-
bled, aromatic liquid oozed from tubes
distilled from pipes and rained gently
on the multitudes. and filed the air
with odors of hyacinth and ~heliotrope
and frankincense and balsam and
myrrh and saffron, so that Lucan, the
poet, says of it.:
Az once ten thousand saffron currents flow,
And rain their odors on the crowd below.
But where was the sport To come
from? Well, / went into the cellars
opening off from the arena, and | saw
the places where they kept the hyenas
and lions and panthers and wild boars
and beastly violence of all sorts, with
out food or water until made fierce
enough for the arena, and l saw the I'M
foreground rooms where the gladiators
were accustomed to wait until the
clapping of the people outside demand
ed hat they come forth armed to muir
der or to be murdered. All the ar
engagements were complete, as enough
of the cellars and galleries still re-
mained to indicate. What fun they
must have had turning lions without
food or drink for a week upon an I'M
armed disciple Of Jesus Christ! At the
dedication of this Colosseum. 5000 wild
beasts and 10, 900 immortal men were
slain; s % that the blood of men and
beast was not n brook, but a river, not
a pool, but u lake. Having been in
that way dedicated, be not sur
prised when ! tell you that EN-
peror Probus on one occasion threw
into that arena of the Colosseum 1000
stays, 1000 boars and 1000 ostriches.
What fun IL must have been! the sound
of trumpets, the o of wild beasts and
the groans of dying men! while in the
gallery the wives and children of those
down under the lions paw wrung their