Gladiators At Rome Essay - 1,010 words

Gladiators at Rome Rome was a warrior state. Since the state was a great fighting state in their time, the wars sort of formed the
gladiatorial contest in ancient Rome. The Romans were fascinated and pleasured by violence, bloodshed, and human suffering the
gladiatorial games. They greatly enjoyed gladiatorial contests just as we enjoy modern types of sport. The gladiatorial contests
began at the reign of their first emperor Augustus to pay tribute to their warrior traditions. The Romans built artificial battlefields
within amphitheaters in cities and towns for public entertainment. It is very obvious that gladiatorial contest were important because
of the enormous size of the amphitheaters.

In A.D. 80, the Colosseum, which seated fifty thousand people, was used to accompany a hundred days of games. On one of the days
three thousand men fought and on another day nine thousand animals were killed. The public killings of men and animals were a
Roman rite believing that this was a religious sacrifice. Everyone in Rome was not entertained by these barbaric acts. The
philosophers and Christians lobbied against such events. To little effect the gladiatorial games continued until the early fifth century
A.D.

and wild-beast killings went on until the sixth century. Evidence suggests that the contest was part of the Roman funeral process. A
Christian critic named Tertullian at the end of the second century wrote, Once upon a time, men believed that the souls of the dead
were propitiated by human blood, and so at the funerals they sacrificed prisoners of war of slaves of poor quality bought for the
purpose. In 246 B.C., two nobles in honor of their deceased father, held the first recorded gladiatorial event with only six gladiators.
But over the next two hundred years, the contests started to become common and gain popularity resulting in the increase of
gladiatorial shows. An example of a gladiatorial show was in 46 B.C. when Julius Caesar dedicated the games to his dead daughter
and the victory over Gaul and Egypt. Caesar didnt have only the traditional individual fights, but also he had fights between whole
detachments of an infantry and between squadrons of cavalry who were mounted on horses and elephants. The games consisted of
professional gladiators, prisoners of war, and death row criminals.

After the popularity of the gladiatorial games, the religious value still remained. Those who attended the games were dressed up as
gods. The slaves were dressed up as the god of Mercury. The people who dragged away the dead bodies were dressed as Pluto, the
god of the underworld. When Christians were persecuted, the were sometimes led around the arena in a procession dressed up as
priests and priestesses of pagan cults, before the were thrown to wild beast naked. All of these events performed presented human
sacrifice for religious purposes and in the memory of the dead.

At the end of the last century B.C., politics became involved in the gladiatorial games, and the games were viewed more as
entertainment than religious and commemorative ceremonies. The contests were public performances held in the social center of the
city, the Forum. The publ
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Gladiators At Rome