The Lives and Contests of the Gladiators :: Papers

The Lives and Contests of the Gladiators virtuoso form of entertainment in the Ro humans world was gladiatorial contests. In these, the Roman citizens would go to watch gladiators champion, often to the death. Today, these contests seem brutal and cruel, just at the time it was very popular and widely accepted. The Roman the great unwashed would quite happily judge over whether a man would break or die. Why were the contests so entertaining that they would cost a man his life over it. There were different types of gladiators and different types of contests to keep the citizens interested. The gladiators were traditionally slaves or convicts and therefore very low in the social hierarchy. We similarly know that they were low down in the hierarchy because they were sold and stipulation between masters, for example one advertisement said Twenty pairs of gladiators, condition by Lucretius Satrius Valens, priest of Nero, and ten pairs of gladiators will fight. However, despite this presumable lack of social standing, gladiators could become very popular and famous and could eventually be freed. Gladiator is interpreted from the term gladius, which means sword. They were originally utilize during funeral services for dead heroes. Fights between them would be held during the funeral to celebrate the hero. This tradition was taken from the Etruscans. Although today we would see such a custom as cruel, it was in fact made less so than it originally was. Festus wrote - it was the custom to return prisoners on the tombs of valorous warriors when the cruelty of this custom became evident, it was decided to make gladiators fight before the tomb. It seems strange to modern people that somebody would want to set about people die at their funeral, but then it was seen as quiet the spirit of the dead man, by honouring them with as big a intimacy as the life of a man. The Romans would not have seen the loss of a gladiator as too much anyway, as the slaves or convicts that became gladiators were for the most part considered unimportant anyway.