The Iola register. [volume] (Iola, Allen County, Kansas) 1875-1902, 1893-02-24
ANCIENT ROME.
Dr.. Talmage Discourses on the
Colosseum and Its Lessons.
The Terrible Slaughter in the Great Am
phitheater-The HeroIsm of TeIema-
chus-Modern BrutaIism-
The Last Judgment.

In late sermon at Brooklyn Rev. T
Dewitt Talmage discoursed from tbs
text Romans. l. Is: 81 am ready t.
preach the Gospel to you that are a
Rome, also" The preacher said:
Rome! What a city it was wher
Paul visited it, What a city it is now
Rome! The place where Virgil sang
and Horace satirized, and Terence
laughed and Catalina conspired, anC
Ovid dramatized and Nero fiddled, and
Vespasian prosecuted and Sulla legis
lated, and Cicero Numbered, and Azure
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
I have in nv memorandum book a
sketch which l made in the winter OF
1899, 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 adj
vanced. Piled up wickedness En-
throned accurseness. Tempted cruel
ties Affairs 10 sham deities GlOrified
delusions. Pillared, arched, domed,
turreted denominations Wickedness of
all sorts at a high premium, and right
eousness 9)a[ per cent off. And now
he passes by the foundations of build
ing which Is 10 be almost unparalleled
for vast8csS You can see by the walls
which have begun to rise that 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 ParthepOn, of Pharaoh's
palace at Memphis and of other great
buildings, the ruins of which | have
seen, it has been my privilege to adj
dress you, but a member of my family
asked me recently why 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- l had Wis
tied the Mamertine dungeon where
Paul was incarceTated | had meas
ured the openings at the top of the
dungeon through which Paul had been
let down, and it was % inches by %.
The ceiling, at its highest point was z
feet from the floor, but at the sides
of the room the ceiling was feet
inches. The room, at the widest,
was Is feet. There was a seat of
rock "a feet high. There was a shelf
4 feet high. The only furniture
was spiders web suspended from
the roof, which 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 The dungeon was built out of
volcanic stone from the Albano mount
aims. Oh, il was dismal and terrific
place. 1ou never saw IA coal-hole so
dark or SO forbidding. The place was
20 me a nervous shock, for / remem-
bered that was the best thing that the
being, except one, that it ever saw,
and that from that place Paul went out
TO die. From that spot 1 visited the
Colosseum, one of the most astounding
miracles of architecture that the world
ever saw. Indeed, ! saw it morning,
noon and night, for it threw a spell on
me from which / could not break away
Although now vast ruin, the Colos-
scum is so well preserved that we can
stand in the center and recall all that
it once was. 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
$1,000 more to stand, so that 100000
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 a few years
was marked: Section 6, Lowest Tier,
Seat No. IS" You understand that the
building was not constructed for an au-
dience to he 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 olden times was
strewn with pounded stone or sand,
so as not to be too slippery with
human blood, for if it were too slippery,
il would spoil the fun. The sand
flashed here aud 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
II 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 was d 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, Caesar! 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