A Dictionary of Greek and Roman biography and mythology

an Asiatic monk and martyr, who is justly renowned for the act of daring self-devotion, by which he caused the gladiatorial combats at Rome to be abolished, and obtained for himself the honours of cantonization. In the year A.D. 404, in the midst of the spectacles of the amphitheatre, Telemachus rushed into the arena, and tried to separate the gladiators. The spectators, in the first moment of exasperation, stoned him to death, but the emperor Honorius proclaimed him a martyr, and soon afterwards abolished the gladiatorial combats, a measure which Constantine had in vain attempted, and which Honorius had long hopelessly desired to effect. (Theodoret. H. E. 5.26). Some doubt has been thrown upon the story, on account of the absence from the Theodosian Code of any edict of Honorius prohibiting such combats; but there was already such an edict by Constantine in existence, and no evidence can be produced to show that there were any gladiatorial fights after this period, although we know that the combats of wild beasts continued till the fall of the Western Empire. (Schröckh, Christliche Kirchengeschichte, vol. vii. p. 254, or 238, 2d ed.; Gibbon, 100.30, vol. v. p. 199, ed. Milman, with Milman's Note.)

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