Excerpt from The Gladiator: A Tragedy in 5 Acts The motive of this play is the tyranny of the wealthier and par. Trician classes of old Rome; the grinding oppression under which the humbler citizens lived; licentiousness, superstition, and cruelty which characterized the whole people, and the general atmosphere of hate and revenge that pervaded society. The Christians are introduced to heighten the picture, and a young Christian convert is the victim of the play. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.