To Donatus 7

Now if you turn your eyes and face to the cities themselves, you will meet a throng sadder than any solitude. A gladiatorial show is prepared, so that blood may delight the lust of cruel eyes. The body is filled out with stronger foods for vigour, and the robust bulk of the limbs grows fat with muscle, so that, fattened for punishment, it may perish at a higher price. A man is killed for the pleasure of a man, and to be able to kill is a skill, a practice, an art: crime is not only committed but taught. What can be called more inhuman, more bitter? It is a discipline to be able to kill, and it is glory to kill. What is this, I ask you, of what kind is it, when men throw themselves to wild beasts whom no one has condemned, of sound age, of fair enough form, in costly clothing? Living, they are adorned for a voluntary funeral, and the wretches even glory in their own evils. They fight with beasts not for a crime but out of madness. Fathers watch their sons; a brother is in the arena and his sister is at hand; and though a more lavish provision for the show may increase the price of the spectacle, so that the mother may be present at her own griefs, alas! the mother even pays for it. And at such impious and dreadful spectacles they do not think that they are parricides with their eyes.