A hand coloured magic lantern slide circa 1900. Saint Telemachus (also Almachus[1] or Almachius) was a monk who, according to the Church historian Theodoret,[2] tried to stop a gladiatorial fight in a Roman amphitheatre, and was stoned to death by the crowd. The Christian Emperor Honorius, however, was impressed by the monk's martyrdom and it spurred him to issue a historic ban on gladiatorial fights. Frederick George Holweck gives the year of his death as 391. [3] The last known gladiatorial fight in Rome was on 1 January 404 AD.