People who view the populations of ancient civilizations as primitives are trapped by an inability to look past the modern technology that surrounds us. From an evolutionary perspective, our mental circuitry is no different from that of our ancestors who lived centuries and even millenia ago.
Some people, including historians, have described the barbaric atmosphere of ancient Rome that surrounded the gladiatorial games. Fik Meijer, author of History's Most Deadly Sport: The Gladiators takes issue with this perspective:
A quick scan through the history books reveals just how recently pbulic displays of violence like those in the arena were still going on in one form or another.
The ancient Romans created the Aqueducts, a sophisticated plumbing system that ranks as one of the foremost achievements of the ancient world; hydraulic mining; straight roads; the odometer; the dome; and more. They also contributed to the sciences of law, language, art, and literature.
Do these sound like primitive people? If they were not primitive, how do we explain their well documented enjoyment of watching people and animals being slaughtered? Meijer asks himself whether he would have been an enthusiastic witness to the gladiatorial games had he lived in ancient Rome. Would any of us?
The origin of the games are difficult to determine. They may have evolved from Etruscan (and later Roman) funeral ceremonies, in which men fought one another in armed combat, perhaps as a testament to the glory of the person being buried (or to Rome).
Prior to the second century BC, chariot races were popular, with citizens pledging allegiance to their favorite "color" for life. This does not seem unlike some of the fervent devotion Americans have to their football or basketball teams or most of the rest of the world has to their soccer (football) teams.
In the second century BC, wild animals hunts were introduced to the arenas. These evolved to damnatio ad bestias, or death by animals, where some military deserters (and later accused slaves) were torn to death in front of an audience.
The events continued to grow in scope, frequency, and violence and persisted for hundreds of years, ending sometime in the 5th or 6th centuries AD. They were a way for emperors to demonstrate their complete dominion over man and beast, life and death.
From their inception, the gladiator games appear to have had their detractors, including Cicero and Seneca. Opposition to the games ratcheted up with the continued spread of Christianity. For a time, Christians were thrown into the arena, a practice believed to be halted by Emperor Constantine in the 4th century.
Are we so different? Meijer finds several parallels in history to the Roman games, such as the Holocaust (a common comparison), and public executions in old England, modern China and modern Arabia.
For me, the closest parallel that comes to mind in American society, not mentioned by Meijer, is lynching. Thousands of lynchings have taken place in America. From 1880 to 1951, the Tuskegee Institute documented 3,437 lynchings of African Americans and 1,293 lynchings of whites--largely in the south (hundreds are known to have occurred prior to 1880). Lynchings declined after this time but persisted into the 1960s.
People celebrated lynchings, which were sometimes attended by hundreds of thousands of spectators, who brought their wives and children along. Torture was often part of the display, and people took body parts and photographs (sometimes of themselves with the victims) as souveniers. Sometimes food was served.
As for animal combat, enjoyed by ancient Romans, dog fighting and cock fighting still have some popularity in this and other countries.
Meijer points out that while we no longer have public acceptance for brutality against other people, the violence we absorb through movies and video games continues to escalate.
In western society we still witness cruelties of a kind that would not have seemed out of place in ancient Rome. Form and medium have changed, but untold cruelty is still with us. Bloody wars, revenge killings in the criminal underworld, street fighting, murder, torure and sadism -- we have television programmes and films devoted to every one of them.
How many violent films have been made in the past 50 years? Countless thousands. Action films get bloodier all the time and there is no lack of avid consumers for cruelties of the kind seen in films by directors such as David Lynch and Quentin Tarantino.
Computer games broke the bounds of decency a long time ago. Blowing off heads has become so routien that it no longer disturbs us and the entertainment industry is doing very well out of it.
He acknowledges that this is fictional violence and that banning it would be impossible in light of its astronimcal sales. He also questions whether there is a parallel between spectator sports like boxing and gladiator games:
Each punch ratchets up the spectators' enthsuiasm, especially if it leaves one man slumped against the ropes after taking so many blows to the head. A 'killer punch' is shown in minute detail...at normal speed and in slow motion.
He notes that Mike Tyson even volunteered to fight a lion--for 30 million dollars!
Although most of the violence that permeates our culture is fictional, yet depicted with ever-increasing realism, Meijer's point is that, like the ancient Romans, we are neveretheless fascinated with violence, blood, and gore.
One day my 17-year-old son brought home "Mad World" for the Wii. The violence is presented somewhat comically, yet blood is the only color in the black and white game and stands out as a stark visual. Despite this comic book styling, Mad World is nonetheless brutal:
As a star contestant on Death Watch, your job is to cause as much carnage as humanly possible. Considering Jack has a chainsaw attached to his arm, he's definitely cut out for the job. Each area is loaded with enemies and, not coincidentally, plenty of sharp objects, weapons, and environmental hazards. It's not too hard to put two and two together, especially with a well-integrated tutorial from your sponsor.
For every bone-crushing brutality you inflict on your fellow man in any given level, you're rewarded with points, which add up to unlock new weapons, bloodbath challenge mini-games, and main event boss battles. The more pain and suffering you can inflict on one enemy, the more points you get for your kill combo.
My objection to the game came partly from the psychological aspect of it--earning points based on inflicting maximum amounts of pain. Is this really what it takes for some people to enjoy a game now? Would many people who enjoy--even seek out--this kind of violence be the same people who would have enjoyed gladiator games?
How many steps away are we, really, from being as brutal as those in ancient Rome? Based on this book by Meijer, perhaps not as far as we think.
Consider the nonplussed reaction some Americans have had to reports of government-condoned torture at Guantanamo and torture in Iraq. How many people who hold tailgating parties outside the prison at Huntsville, Texas, where they kill more criminals than almost anywhere else in the US, would be just as enthusiastic watching the most loathed of criminals torn apart by animals? We already have people on the right cheering about the assassination of physicians like Dr. Tiller and homosexuals like Matthew Shephard. How far would they go if they were not held in check by society at large?
It is a question to which I hope we never learn the answer.