The
gladiators, enraged at interference with their vocation, cut him down.
Stones, or whatever came to hand, rained down upon him from the furious
people, and he perished in the midst of the arena! He lay dead, and then
came the feeling of what had been done.
His dress showed that he was one of the hermits who vowed themselves to
a holy life of prayer and self-denial, and who were greatly reverenced,
even by the most thoughtless. The few who had previously seen him, told
that he had come from the wilds of Asia on pilgrimage, to visit the
shrines and keep his Christmas at Rome--they knew he was a holy man--no
more, and it is not even certain whether his name was Alymachus or
Telemachus. His spirit had been stirred by the sight of thousands
flocking to see men slaughter one another, and in his simple-hearted
zeal he had resolved to stop the cruelty or die. He had died, but not in
vain. His work was done. The shock of such a death before their eyes
turned the hearts of the people; they saw the wickedness and cruelty to
which they had blindly surrendered themselves; and from the day when the
hermit died in the Coliseum there was never another fight of the
Gladiators.
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