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History of Roman Gladiators

Uploaded by bdogg on Apr 25, 2007

History of Roman Gladiators

The subject on Ancient Rome I am writing about is Roman Gladiators. To watch men kill each other was what the Roman loved to watch. It was entertaining to the Romans. They took pleasure in watching elaborate show that involved danger to life and bloodshed. Originally they were for funerals but turned into holidays then into ways to exploit for political purposes. When holidays were announced all public business stopped and all citizens had a holiday. In this paper I will talk about where they fought, who fought and how they fought. Senators or rich men originally paid for gladiatorial games. They were used to get votes so they could become reelected.

The participants of the gladiatorial games mostly consisted of slaves, prisoners of war, and condemned criminals. The captives of war were the most exciting to watch because of their experience in fighting. The crimes committed that turned people into gladiators were murder, treason, robbery, and arson. Later when supply of fighters was running low, judges condemned people with minor offenses to fight in the arena. Many Christian martyrs were thrown in to the arena because of their refusal to sacrifice to the emperor. And sometimes free men fought also. By the end of the Republic era almost have of the gladiators were free men. Free men who volunteered were social outcasts, desperate men, and violent men. Also many ex-gladiators who were popular were always asked to fight again. Even though they volunteered they had to sign a contract saying they were the master gladiator slaves. There were three gladiatorial schools or ludis where slaves were trained to become fighters. There were 3 of these and 1 was for training to fight against beasts like lions and tigers. In Judea the ruler of this territory was able to eliminate many rebellious Jews by organizing gladiatorial games which killed hundreds of Jews. Gladiatorial contest lasted all day and the people were given free food and drink.

There were many different kinds of fighters. This is because the host of the games wanted to make the games as interesting and as fun to watch as possible to the spectators The host actually purchased gladiators the gladiators depending how they fought and previous battle experience. Gladiators with different styles of fighting paired together, and this created a more intriguing match up. Some of the types of gladiators...

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Uploaded by:   bdogg

Date:   04/25/2007

Category:   Roman

Length:   4 pages (931 words)

Views:   5248

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