The Death Of The World’s Greatest Death Sport
Understanding why Rome's gladiatorial games came to an end begins with understanding what gave birth to them
vocativ.com
Intro:
By Patrick Wyman
Oct 25, 2016 at 1:22 PM ET
On a hard stone seat of the Colosseum in in the year 106 AD, Rome’s late-summer sun beats down on the back of your neck. A joyous mood hangs over the metropolis of nearly a million people, the political and cultural center of the hyperpower that dominates the Mediterranean world and beyond, from the deserts by the Euphrates River near modern day Iraq, to Scotland’s lonely moors and glens.
The Emperor Trajan has returned to the city from Dacia, today’s Romania, with celebration on his mind. His two-year campaign of conquest beyond the Danube River has proven victorious, with a new province added to the Roman Empire and hundreds of thousands of exotic barbarian prisoners in tow. To mark this accomplishment, Trajan has decreed an unprecedented gift to the people of Rome: 123 days of parties, festivals, and, above all, games.
Packed in with more than 50,000 fellow enthusiasts, you watched the beast fights this morning, as skilled hunters fought against an exotic array of imported animals, including lions, tigers, bears, elephants, and even giraffes.
The public executions came afterward, as convicted criminals and some of the Dacian barbarians Trajan brought back suffered an array of gut-wrenching fates.
But now it’s time for the gladiators. As entertaining as it is to watch the slaughter of exotic animals, as empowered as you feel drinking in the maintenance of social order through the grisly death of criminals and barbarians, only the gladiators can offer the kind of well-matched professional skill that speaks to you as a connoisseur of death and violence.
You have a favorite, a strapping German secutor from beyond the Rhine River with 30 bouts in the Colosseum under his belt and a public profile so immense that cheap pottery emblazoned with his name and image is distributed as far away as Britain.
This time, the secutor’s sword, shield, and helmet are matched against the weighted net and trident of a retiarius. The German plays it smart, using slick footwork to avoid his opponent’s net and then picking his spots to explode forward, putting him safely inside the reach of the trident.
Disarmed and planted on the ground, the retiarius raises two fingers to ask for mercy. Trajan stands in his palatial, private box and considers the crowd’s response. A disappointing performance, the tens of thousands in the arena decide, and they chant in unison for the death of the retiarius. The emperor agrees. He pulls his thumb, held parallel to the ground, in a slashing motion.
The victorious German stabs deep into the defeated net-man’s throat, and the crowd—aristocrat and day laborer, shopkeeper and senator, rich and poor, male and female—explodes in a spasm of euphoria.
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