The Glamorization of Violence in Ancient Rome Bridget Bracken In modern popular culture, one of the first things to be associated with ancient Rome is the gladiatorial games. It’s no wonder that the combination of glorious spectacle and cruel violence draws in a modern audience as it once did in ancient times. While the gladiatorial games are seen as the epitome of normalized cruelty in ancient Rome, this should be viewed as a misconception. Ultimately, while gladiatorial games and chariot racing were two of the most influential and often discussed forms of regimented Roman violence, slavery was the epitome of normalised ancient cruelty.
There’s no doubting gladiatorial games were an essential part of Roman culture and continue to play an important part in our understanding of it today. Due to the game’s free
entrance,
they
were
one
of
the
more
popular
forms
of
public
entertainment
available to the wider population. This popularity contributes to the modern perception that ancient Romans were bloodthirsty and thrived on the consumption of violence. As Toner stated, “to us violence has negative moral implications, but for the Romans it did not”. In the context of the gladiatorial games, it was less the violence that was key, and more the style in which said violence was executed.
Gladiatorial games traditionally took place in the wake of important military victories – often the gladiators were prisoners of war, if not local slaves. This context displays that the gladiatorial games were about showing off both the degree of power Rome held over its enemies, and the strength of its internal power structures. Emphasis is therefore well-placed on the cultural importance of gladiatorial games in comparison to the chariot races, as gladiatorial games played a crucial role in imperial propaganda. By blindly taking the gladiatorial games to be the most important – and therefore most cruel and violent – form of ancient Roman spectacle, this propaganda persists to this day; without questioning this, ancient Rome is still viewed the way which ancient Roman emperors wanted it to be.
Furthermore, any condemnation of the violence of the gladiatorial games had less to do with the actual brutality, and more to do with a disdain for the lower classes. Seneca betrays this perspective when he writes of that after “all niceties were put aside, it was pure
and
simple
murder”.
Cicero
echoes
this
sentiment
when
he
questions
“what
pleasure can a civilized man find when … a helpless human being is mangled by a very strong animal”. Evidently, Cicero and Seneca are not inherently opposed to the death of gladiators, as long as the appropriate conventions are observed; stylized violence is
30
