Gladiatorial Combat In Rome :: Gladiators, Chariots, Roman Games

Gladiatorial contests (munera gladitoria), hold a central place in ourperception of papistic behavior. They were also a big influence on how Romansthemselves ordered their lives. Attending the games was one of the practicesthat went with being a Roman. The Etruscans who introduced this type ofcontest in the sixth vitamin C BC, are credited with its development but its theRomans who made it famous. A surviving feature of the Roman games was when agladiator fell he was hauled out of the field by a slave dressed as the Etruscandeath-demon Charun. The slave would carry a hammer which was the demonsattribute. Moreover, the Latin term for a trainer-manager of gladiators(lanista), was believed to be an Etruscan word. (450) Gladiators of Ancientcapital of Italy lived their lives to the absolute fullest.Gladiatorial duels had originated from funeral games given in order tosatisfy the dead mans need for blood, and for centuries their principleoccasions were funerals. The first gladiatorial combats therefore, took placeat the sculpture of those being honored, but once they became public spectaclesthey moved into amphitheaters. (283) As for the gladiators themselves, an auraof religious sacrifice continued to hang about their combats. Obviously closelyspectators just enjoyed the massacre without any remorseful reflections. Evenancient writers felt no pity, they were aware that gladiators had originatedfrom these holocausts in honor of the dead. What was offered to appease thedead was counted as a funeral rite. It is called munus (a service) from being aservice due. The ancients thought that by this sort of spectacle they rendereda service to the dead, after they had made it a more cultured form of cruelty.The whimsey was that the souls of the dead are appeased with human blood, theyuse to sacrifice captives or slaves of poor quality at funerals. Afterwards itseemed good to obscure their impiety by qualification it a pleasure. (6170) So afterthe acquired person had b een trained to fight as best they can, their trainingwas to learn to be killed For such reasons gladiators were sometimes known asbustuarii or funeral men. Throughout many centuries of Roman history, thesecommemorations of the dead were still among the principle occasions for suchcombats. Men writing their wills often made provisions for gladiatorial duelsin connection with their funerals. Early in the first century AD, the people ofPollentia forcibly prevented the burial of an official, until his heirs had beencompelled to provide money for a gladiators show. (1174)It was in Campania and Lucania that the gladiatorial games came to their