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 The Rommt Empire to the Triumph of Christianity 279 of battle. Like the old Greek lyric poets (p. 159) he had been caught in the dangerous current of his time, and, as he was swept along in the violent stream of civil war, he had -with diffi- culty struggled ashore and at last found secure footing in the general peace. From the vantage ground of the Emperor's Fig. 116. Roman Amphitheater at Pola, Dalmatia Every large Roman town had a vast arena, or amphitheater, in which thousands of spectators could be seated to watch the public fights between professional swordsmen (gladiators) and between men and wild beasts. The emperors and rich men paid the expenses of these combats. The greatest of these arenas was the Colosseum at Rome. The one here represented is at Pola, in Dalmatia, and shows that a Roman town of perhaps forty thousand inhabitants was supplied with an amphitheater, holding no less than twenty thousand spectators, who must have assembled from all the region around. The seats have dis- appeared and only the outside of the building remains forgiveness and favor he quietly watched events as the tide swept past him, and then finding his voice he interpreted the men and the life of his time in a body of verse, which forms for us an undying picture of the Romans in the age of Augustus. The poems of Horace will always remain one of the greatest legacies from the ancient world, a treasury of human life as