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Now, you wouldn't have to stay back in those days, but if you had the opportunity to go back to when Rome was in it's zenith and watch a gladiator game would you? As morbid as it may seem I would want to
No more morbid then watching professional football, boxing, and MMA fighting. Contrary to popular belief, gladiator fights were rarely to the death. This is another myth/urban legend.
Well, there were some massacres using prisoners, conmdemned to death or whole towns considered dangerous...but not involving professional gladiators from a school of gladiator.
Cristians used those examples for propaganda.
Roman had a rather rough, uncultivated taste....just as the famous play "The donkey of Apolonius".
Nero, the best emperor there was vilified by historians, hated gladiator games.
You know whats funny here to me is when my mom would watch the news and here about shootings in the city she would say .....what is the world coming too ?? And I would look at her and say .... well mom in the very old days people used to throw others to the lions to get eaten so maybe the world has grown up a little. Ron
Now, you wouldn't have to stay back in those days, but if you had the opportunity to go back to when Rome was in it's zenith and watch a gladiator game would you? As morbid as it may seem I would want to
And if you captured into slavery and sent to the gladiator fights.
* And against you, released evil, big guy with an ax murderer? How would you feel?
Gladiatorial games were actually not nearly as deadly as is widely perceived. According to research, a man had about a 90% chance of not being killed in a contest. Gladiators were very expensive. It cost a lot of money to keep them. Good food, lodging, training, clothing, weapons and armor, and the best medical care available had to be provided. Because of this, the owner did not want them to perish, but to survive and fight again some other day.
The games were put on as spectacles of showmanship, not as just butchery. Two men hacking away at each other in a bare sandy arena until one of them was dead was only an occasional scenario. The whole idea was to put on a good show, not just killing, and the Romans were pretty creative according to early records. In the modern sense, think pro wrestling mixed with a rock concert. The gladiators were actually the rock stars of that era. As such, they were very popular and desirable to women. A succesful, popular, attractive gladiator often had his choice of women, and even a high born Roman woman might have a gladiator as her lover.
Yup. But gladiators slaughtering slaves or Christians were another matter. Lots of guts, blood and agony with little danger to the expensive gladiator.
You're correct in the overall view of how those ancient colluseums were, though… Races of all kinds were extremely popular, as were athletic events, grand costume dioramas and theatricals, exotic parades of animals, singers and poets. And all going on in a jumble that we will never experience these days.
One thing our modern eyes would not be prepared for was the forest of winged penis statuary that was an integral part of Roman life. They were made into wind chimes, huge statues, little pendants to be worn by small children, painted. and tiled on home floors and walls everywhere, and were completely taken for granted. The winged penis was the universal Roman sign of good luck and a protection against bad luck. These days, we prefer a horse shoe or a rabbit's foot.
You know reading about this stuff never ceases to amaze. I mean the emperors were so detailed in their concern on the populace as the massacres occurred that they made sure that the statues around the arenas where all this was risking place had veils all over them. Have to say those guys thought about everything when it came to witnessing the killing of people!
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Ron
