[email protected]://www.twitter.com/seth4nerds Are you not Entertained? “What gladiator, when he has lain down in defeat and was ordered to receive the deathblow, drawn back his neck? So effective is the force of practice, preparation, and habit.” A history of gladiatorial Combat in ancient Rome, the people the places and the events. Gladiatorial combat was not unlike that depicted in ridley Scotts Gladiator. For this episode, I had to go back and rewatch it, one of my absolute favorites. This episode is mostly brought to you from one source with a few others mixed in, which to be honest made my life way (e) easier. The title of the book is Gladiators: violence and spectacle in Ancient Rome by Roger Dunkle. gladiator games from the very beginning of their history at Rome were closely associated with funerals. The connection between a gladiator show and honouring the memory of a dead wife might be hard for us to fathom. The presentation of gladiatorial combat was called by the Romans a munus, a Latin word that meant ‘duty’or ‘gift’ and by extension ‘funeral honours’, an obligation performed for, or a gift given to, the dead. Georges Ville says that throughout the Republic the word munus had the general meaning of ‘spectacle’, a show given as a gift to the people by Roman magistrates or even private citizens. Therefore, the word munus could also refer to the spectacles called ludi in honour of the gods, consisting of entertainments such as theatrical presentations and chariot racing, or to a gladiatorial spectacle, which until the late first century BC was given only in honour of the dead. By the early empire, the primary meaning of munus had become ‘gladiatorial combat’, driving out the general meaning of ‘spectacle’. The reason for this was the immense popularity of gladiator games. All spectacles were ‘gifts’ to the Roman people, but as Ville points out, gladiatorial combat was ‘the gift par excellence to the people’ The ancients thought that performing this spectacle was a duty to the dead, after they tempered it with a more humane atrocity. For, once upon a time, since it had been believed that the souls of the dead were propitiated by human blood, having purchased captives or slaves of bad character, they sacrificed them as part of funeral ritual. Later they decided to mask the impiety as entertainment. And so those they had purchased and trained in what arms and in whatever way they could, only that they might learn to be killed, they soon exposed to death on the appointed day of the funeral. Thus, they sought consolation for death in homicide. This was the origin of the munus. however, categorically disassociates human sacrifice from Roman funerals: ‘there is no evidence at all that the Romans at any period thought that any such human sacrifices were appropriate in connection with funerals’. Gladiators with their intense desire for victory and readiness to accept death only as a last resort did not make good sacrificial victims. One essential requirement of an effective sacrifice was the complicity, either real or fictional, of the victim. Moreover, not every gladiatorial match ended in death; in fact, as we shall see, many did not One cannot help but think, especially during the Republic when there were constant wars, that spectators at a munus were reminded of Roman military success as they watched gladiatorial combat in the amphitheater, particularly with the appearance of gladiator types called the Samnite, Gaul, and Thracian, all recalling one-time enemies of Rome One thing to remember always, these were people captured or enslaved by Rome's quest for power, land, and domination. Always remember that these were people, slaves some of them ex-military but some civilians. They did not all, deserve this type of death. There is little doubt, however, that gladiatorial games, even if they were not strictly speaking human sacrifice, were in origin funeral offerings in honour of--- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/seth-michels66/support
