Note 135 — Chapter VII · ANCIENT CHRISTIANITY AND ITS OPPONENTS
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On the other hand, with the single exception of the case of the gladiatorial combats (which had been denounced in the first century by the pagan Seneca,135 and in the fourth by the pagan Libanius, but lasted in Rome long after Christianity had become the State religion;136 while the no less cruel combats of men with wild beasts were suppressed only when the finances of the falling Empire could no longer maintain them),137 the vice of cruelty seems to have been in no serious degree cast out.138 Cruelty to slaves was certainly not less than in the Rome of the Antonines; and Chrysostom139 denounces just such atrocities by cruel mistresses as had been described by Horace and Juvenal. The story of the slaying of Hypatia, indeed, is decisive as to Christian ferocity.140