The Last Gladiator

THE Victory Games began harmlessly enough, but soon the gladiators leapt into the arena. Death was all around, while happy crowds punched the air and shouted themselves hoarse.

Suddenly, a frail old man in a tattered robe ran onto the sandy floor, pushing the giant gladiators apart, pleading with them to stop their madness.

The spectators rose as one man against this self-righteous spoilsport, this enemy of fun, and cheered as sword and stone battered him into the sand.

But in a blink of an eye, the mood changed. Someone had recognised him, as a monk from the Greek east on a pilgrimage, a man even the most thoughtless respected.

One broken body troubled and troubled this generation, as tens of thousands had never troubled the generations before it.

So when Emperor Honorius, a Christian, decreed that gladiators would never step into that arena again, Rome made no protest. Where so many had died before, no man ever died again.