The Lives and Contests of the Gladiators :: Papers

The Lives and Contests of the Gladiators One form of entertainment in the Roman world was gladiatorial contests. In these, the Roman citizens would go to image gladiators fight, of cardinal to the death. Today, these contests seem brutal and cruel, but at the time it was really popular and widely accepted. The Roman people would quite happily label over whether a man would live or die. Why were the contests so entertaining that they would cost a man his life over it. thither were different types of gladiators and different types of contests to keep the citizens interested. The gladiators were traditionally slaves or convicts and therefore genuinely low in the social hierarchy. We also know that they were low vanquish in the hierarchy because they were sold and given in the midst of masters, for example oneness advertisement said Twenty pairs of gladiators, given by Lucretius Satrius Valens, priest of Nero, and ten pairs of gladiators will fight . However, despite this apparent lack of social standing, gladiators could flummox very popular and famous and could eventually be freed. Gladiator is interpreted from the term gladius, which means sword. They were originally used 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 much(prenominal) a custom as cruel, it was in fact made little so than it originally was. Festus wrote - it was the custom to sacrifice prisoners on the tombs of valorous warriors when the severity of this custom became evident, it was decided to make gladiators fight before the tomb. It seems strange to ripe people that somebody would want to have people die at their funeral, but then it was seen as appeasing the spirit of the dead man, by honouring them with as big a thing as the life of a man. The Romans would not have seen the loss of a gladiator as besides much anyway, as the slaves or convicts that became gladiators were generally considered unimportant anyway.