Note 787 — Chapter XVIII · THE MORAL EVOLUTION SINCE THE INCOMING OF DEMOCRACY: THE NEW SOCIAL AND INTERNATIONAL CONSCIENCE

Telemachus was an Asiatic monk who journeyed to Rome for the purpose of making a protest against the bloody spectacles. “The Romans were provoked by the interruption of their pleasures; and the rash monk, who had descended into the arena to separate the gladiators, was overwhelmed under a shower of stones. But the madness of the people soon subsided; they respected the memory of Telemachus, who had deserved the honors of martyrdom; and they submitted without a murmur to the laws of Honorius, which abolished forever the human sacrifices of the amphitheatre” (Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, chap. xxx).