Murderous Games: Gladiatorial Contests in Ancient Rome
historytoday.com
historytoday.com
I'm not sure that's true. Remember that Germany and Austria were centers of Western civilization, culture, arts and learning before WWII, yet look at the bloodthirsty practices they embraced. Other European countries did similar things in their overseas colonies.
We are not immune; human nature hasn't changed. We are made of the same stuff as Romans, Nazis, ISIL members, Serb ultranationalists and Rwandan Hutu nationalists. Currently it seems there's a public movement to embrace hatred as a norm, and violence, including war internationally and firearms domestically, as an acceptable solution to problems. If those become norms I worry about the next steps.
The closest European parallel seems to be Prussia, especially from the time of Frederic the Great onwards. It is the most complete example of the nation in arms I can think of. Yet even they lacked the casual brutality of the Romans.
http://laphamsquarterly.org/states-war
It's an amazing collection of documents on war, across history and cultures, from Homer to the US invasion of Iraq, written by everyone from participants to victims to experts to scholars to poets.
After reading it, my strong impression that was that Rome was brutal, but so has been almost everyone else.
Not so recently normalised behaviour was to watch the Iraq war whilst having one's teevee dinner, although televised, there was fresh killings every evening in your living room, without the inconvenience of mess or smell! TV ratings were good!!!
I also believe it is a bit rich to criticise how the Romans treated 'beasts'. Unless you are vegetarian or vegan. We are the true masters of imprisoning and torturing animals efficiently. Plus we don't have existential threats from 'beasts', in Roman times some type of bear could eat you alive on your trip back from the pub.
[1] https://www.quora.com/Why-did-the-Nazis-use-Roman-symbols
Israel has a little more open to civilians carrying weapons, but it's still a lot more restricted than in the US. But fine, have Israel, even though the culture there still doesn't really match up (and there's a strong strain of anti-Israel sentiment in the US anyway). I'll just point out that I said 'tend'.
In a philosophy class, the teacher explained us that the system used for the Shoah minimized the number of bloodthirsty lunatics needed (mostly the few that made the actual killing).
So perhaps, for the majority, human nature has gotten better, but, for the rest it has stayed unchanged/ gone worst?
I wonder about that. In Eastern Europe, they encouraged local angry mobs to kill their fellow Jewish citizens. In the concentration camps, it was an industrial process, requiring many employees to operate, guard, etc.
As for “local angry mobs to kill their fellow Jewish citizens”, do you have any source for it? I think it’s the first time I hear about it. Even so it would have been a limited number of people, compared to the number killed in the camps.
The Circus Maximus was built over 400 years before the Coliseum, and could hold over twice as many people by conservative estimates. It was only in the very late Republic to early Empire that gladiatorial combat gained widespread attention in Rome itself, having previously been limited to smaller arenas in towns throughout the empire (and a funeral ritual prior to that).
Aspiring candidates would 'save' the death of a parent for a while, so they could give the funeral games at election time.
P.S. actually, I believe that was the case with Caesar, mentioned in the text as one of the givers of ostentatious games.
That's the legal definition. Not the only definition.
To act as though someone using this term is simply unaware that it was legal, and needs a lesson on Roman law, is simply to be obtuse.
Nevermind I found a scan of the article that had it (1983!) http://i.imgur.com/Fs4KjO3.png
I guess 21st century bull-fighting fits in here somehow.
Which partially explains the high quality of the piece. I wasn't expecting it and was surprised. Harder to find nowadays.
It's not a simple minded rant, and has a good lot of factual historical details, accurate as far as I can tell as someone way less expert than the author.
The perspective on the facts is also reasonable, if not fashionable (nowadays it goes more "yuck, not us.")
Was this scanned? This looks like an OCR error.
We still kill billions of animals each year for pleasure (Eating when the calories aren't needed)
Besides movies and games, of course.