Were gladiatorial games real or the WWE of the time?
Were gladiatorial games real or the WWE of the time?
Owen Campbell
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Jack Campbell
They were completely real all right.
But definitely entertainment was the top priority. It was different back then, what we today would see as barbaric slaughter was just a everyday norm.
Brayden Mitchell
WWE only they’d really kill slaves/criminals/animals/prisoners/etc
Gladiators were expensive to train and house, and had followings the same way modern athletes do. If Tom Brady and Peyton Manning killed one or the other, how do you sell rematch tickets?
Not that it DIDNT happen, but gladiators actually killing other gladiators was a rarity and an exception rather than the norm.
Chase Smith
they were real but fatalities were not as common as popular media portrays it.
Charles Jones
fun fact: Marcus Aurelius thought that the games ought to be bloodless show-bouts. Romans simply weren't going to have it
Chase Roberts
Nerf hoplomachus
Andrew Butler
>It was different back then, what we today would see as barbaric slaughter was just a everyday norm.
Oh wow. They never told me that in history class. It's a shame most people don't know that.
Eli Rodriguez
Gladiatorial games weren't a single type of performance. You had the duels to the death and you had showboat-y first blood matches, using different types of gladiators.
The average fight would have been something between mma and wwe (but with weapons and lotsa blood) between highly trained slaves and professional free gladiators, but sacrificial showings where bouts were pretty much dances existed, just like prisoners getting thrown to the grinder in deathmatches existed.
Luis Rogers
This is accurate. Gladitorial games were wide ranging in their activity from duels to the death, to first blood exhibition matches, to celebratory battle renactments, to watch exotic animals tear slaves apart.
It largely depended on what the games were being dedicated to
Leo Green
Yes, but keep in mind that it was a balancing act. Any games organizer who didn't kill enough gladiators was seen as stingy tightwads. Just like how NASCAR fans say that they don't go for the crashes but cheer and watch intently when one happens, gladiator fans went to the show expecting to see at least a few murders and would have been disappointed and thought the games totally lame if they didn't get that.
It was also cruelly hierarchical. Murmillo and Retiarius were the rock stars of the ancient world, and were a considerable investment that investors were loathe to part with. However lower class gladiators like bestiarius were made up of the wretched dregs of society, and could find themselves being ripped apart by their own animals for something as simple as not training a lion properly and having it freak out when its unleashed in the arena in front of thousands of screaming Romans, you basically have to drive lions to the point of insanity to get them to feed on humans in this manner. Other gladiators would have been made up of POWs whom Romans would have had no compunction about slaughtering, these were the gladiators who might have been hired to fight at a house party, and it was considered part of the novelty of Roman culture was to go to somebody's house and watch two foreigners brutally murder each other for fun and entertainment, with bonus points if they were fellow countrymen.
Lucas Nguyen
And lets not forget the state executions. Half the time they would just go around rounding up people who were in the wrong place at the wrong time, call them "criminals" without so much as a show-trial, and feed them to the grinder of public entertainment. Commodus was notorious for one time having his praetorians round up all the legless cripples in the city, tying them all together so that they resembled a giant, allowing Commodus to go around with a club brutally murdering them one by one, and when he was finished pronounced that he had just "defeated a giant".
It was the state executions which got the Roman games their reputation for depravity and massive amounts of bloodshed
Dylan Morgan
>tying them all together so that they resembled a giant, allowing Commodus to go around with a club brutally murdering them one by one, and when he was finished pronounced that he had just "defeated a giant
I have trouble believing this
Charles Nelson
Attested to by Cassius Dio as one of the things that turned the general public against Commodus
> And this story was believed, too, because he had once got together all the men in the city who had lost their feet as the result of disease or some accident, and then, after fastening about their knees some likenesses of serpents' bodies, and giving them sponges to throw instead of stones, had killed them with blows of a club, pretending that they were giants.
penelope.uchicago.edu
Luis Roberts
Most wounds were real, people died. At the same time, many if not most fights were not to the death and when the wounds happened it was often done in a more dramatic manner.
Owen Fisher
if the gladiators put on a good show, they could get out of it alive. There is one account of two very famous gladiators duking it out in the arena, and they obviously choreographed their fight so they'd both survive, all the while still being convincing enough to please the crowd.
Thomas Brown
Look at how popular cockfighting, dogfighting and bullfighting are in Mexico. That's about the brow gladiatorial fights were.
Nathaniel Davis
what's that book?
Hudson Green
Is that the only source? It seems rather sketchy, to be honest.
Ryder Thomas
Cassius Dio is where we get virtually all of our information about Commodus. He's generally considered to be a reliable source, especially when it comes to something as high profile as events which took place in the games witnessed by thousands of people
James Morris
Landon Morales
Ethan Williams
Blake Green
>That's a cute lorica squamata Did your barbaric greek husband give it to you?
How did Samtacus Raimus get away with it?
Jackson King
Is this propaganda pro or anti-Italy? Ghost legionary is cool and all but it basically says "we're the baddies"
Ian Baker
Are we the bad guys Mario?
Lincoln Bell
Cartels in Mexico have literal gladiatorial fights with the people they capture, giving them knives, hammers and screwdrivers and forcing them to go at it to survive.
Charles Davis
The latter except for when the Noxii were sent into the amphitheater.
Jace Smith
>Not that it DIDNT happen, but gladiators actually killing other gladiators was a rarity and an exception rather than the norm.
You're exaggerating. They'd have to at least get a cut or stab for one to win the fight and that's got a high chance of infection and death.
It wasn't the blood bath people think but it wasn't this dainty no death thing either.
Carter Rivera
No, the Gladiator Games were television/radio: It started out with a legitimate purpose and became pure entertainment from there. The Circus, however, was pure entertainment right from the start and served as nothing but Bread and Circuses (Obviously), akin to modern sports like the NFL.
Colton White
>it basically says "we're the baddies"
To you maybe, but in reality soldiers always fashion themselves in similar ways. If you go look up us marines motivational bullshit, you'll see that they have no issue depicting themselves as essentially "brutal murderers", "ice cold assassins", demons, etc. It may look baddy-ish or cringey as fucking shit, but it works and everybody does it.
Jason Reyes
>Marcus Aurelius
Skeletons and ghosts were always cool apparently, it's not just a modern trend
Carson Stewart
ugh, didnt mean to quote Marcus Aurelius, dont know how that ended up there
Jonathan Cooper
Except to the Chinese
Roman Surgery was pretty good, and Gladiatorial fights are why they developed it as much.
Dylan Peterson
...
Jordan Howard
>ywn witness Rome in its full glory
Legitimately sad desu
Camden Bennett
Romans were degenerate scum. Germanics were the good guys.
Cameron Sanders
*Nails enemies to trees and has gay orgies on their entrails*
DATS RITE