He could see the future scars crawling across his body. Entering the large building the group turned to a row of cell type rooms no bigger than 32 square-foot. He and a fellow slave were given a room by the arch to the outside. The following day a rude awakening at dawn was followed by an evaluation, where they all lined up and were given armour. A battle pursued a line of weapons were handed to him, facing off with the kind man who gave him the answer to his question previously. Aelius had a trident while his opponent had a net. They fought for hours neither coming out on top as the victor. When the next group was up the two collapsed into a pile. Covered in cuts they nursed their wounds with sour expressions. The next ferocious battle began and they retired to their cramped rooms. The battles continued and Aelius became stronger and was able to run faster. After a month Aelius trained hard and long from sun up to sundown and was ready to fight a true gladiator. As a result of the tough training Aelius finally had his chance to…
Ridley Scott’s Gladiator (2000), was the first film set in the ancient world produced since the 1960s. Since then, there have been many more films made set in the ancient world. The question is, why was Gladiator able to revive the ancient world genre? After seeing films like Ben-Hur and Spartacus, two of the greatest films ever made set in the ancient world. it is hard not to see the cinematic cues that Gladiator takes from these films. Ben-Hur follows the story of Judah Ben-Hur after he was betrayed by his childhood friend and seeks revenge against the man who wronged. In Gladiator, we have Maximus go on a quest for vengeance after the new emperor has ordered him executed and kills his family. From Ben-Hur we know that this kind of story is not one likely to go our of fashion. Even modern movies that are not set in the ancient world have a story like this.…
When reading about the Roman gladiator games as well as the chariot races and theater events, it can be quite difficult to truly envision what it was like for the participants and the spectators of such events. The participants in such activities were overall viewed as low-class citizens. Gladiators, charioteers and actors in the theater all “had little more status than slaves.” The participants of the games were meant to entertain the spectators, and nothing else. Besides the fact that the participants were seen as low class, they also faced very brutal conditions in the games. The gladiators and charioteers were susceptible to violent, gory deaths. For gladiators, often times their throats were cut and the knives eventually made their way to the gladiator’s hearts. Another possible outcome for gladiators, was being ripped to pieces by various animals. Whether their death came by combat with another gladiator or by animal, it was nothing short of gruesome. This gruesomeness though, was enjoyed by many. Chariot…
By currently taking this History & Philosophy of Sports class, this film “Gladiator” establishes the whole scenery during the time period of ancient Rome. In the film, it introduced Gladiator battles. These Gladiator battles reflected as entertainment to society, as well as, being a survival setting between life and death. Not only they would compete for survival, but they would compete to become the best. By this time, Commodus, is the new Roman emperor and he fears that Maximus could use his heroic ability to dethrone him and become emperor himself. Maximus would use his fame and popularity as a gladiator to invoke further damage to Commodus' insecure dominance of the devoted Roman people, hoping to influence them to restore their lost values and overcome the corruption that…
A gladiator was a trained warrior who fought bloody battles to entertain the ancient romans. According to tradition, gladiators were introduced to Rome in 264 B.C., when Decimus Junius Brutus had three pairs of gladiators fight during his father's funeral. The games soon became very popular soon after. The gladiatorial games could be compared to that of a present day circus. Gladiators were usually prisoners of wars, prisoners who committed serious crimes, or slaves. The Romans built many structures and amphitheaters such as the Colosseum. The Colosseum could seat up to fifty thousand to eighty thousand, but usually had an average audience of approximately fifty thousand. The amphitheater had the most updated technology of the time. For…
The Roman Gladiators were a unique example of competition in Roman Empire. During the period of the Roman Republic the newly recruited Gladiators were at first conscripted to the gladiator schools from slaves, criminals and prisoners of war. They had no choice, they were forced to take the role as a gladiator. The life a gladiator was strict and harsh.…
Gladiators were not always popular, but weren’t always the ones already marked for death either. The gladiators were given prizes for pleasuring the audience with a remarkable show because they were everything in the Games. Similarly, the tributes of The Hunger Games came from various districts with different standings—the smaller the number the smaller the standing—in the country. Their presence leads to fear. Their death brought agony. Their victory brought suffering. Their defiance brought…
The seating and thoughts on the entertainment of Roman gladiators is similar to the audience experience of the Hunger Games. The Capitol watched the Hunger Games happily while people in the Districts watched painfully as young people from their district died. The Capitol watched the Hunger Games from their homes, seated and in plazas, which was much more luxurious than the Districts sitting in their homes and outside on outdated televisions and the projector. Much like the seating at the Colosseum, the Districts did not have the privilege of comfortable seating compared to the people in the Capitol. The audience experience of Roman gladiators and the Hunger Games were similar because the admission fee for both was free. This was because the leaders wanted to control the people watching the gladiatorial…
According to Kathleen Coleman, in paragraph 4, this discovery gave us a vivid impression of what it was like to live and train as a gladiator. This discovery showed us a lot more about how gladiators lived and trained in their daily lives. In these buildings their were heated floors for winter training, plumbing, hospitals, and also graveyards near by as stated in paragraph 7. In the training school at least 80 gladiators lived and trained at the school year round as stated in paragraph 8. Also, one or two people slept in a 32- square-foot-cell and their was a wing that was separate from the cell that their trainers slept as stated in paragraph 8.…
The practice of armed men fighting to the death originated in Etruria, in central Italy, probably as a funeral sacrifice. The first gladiatorial exhibition in Rome was in 264BC, when three pairs of gladiators fought as part of a funeral celebration. By 174BC, at a 3-day spectacle, 37 pairs participated. Julius Caesar's large-scale exhibitions (300 pairs on one occasion) prompted the Roman Senate to limit the number of contestants. The largest contest of gladiators was given by the emperor Trajan as part of a victory celebration in AD107 and included 5000 pairs of fighters. The emperor Domitian in AD90 presented combats between women and between dwarfs. Mostly males, gladiators were slaves, condemned criminals, prisoners of war, and sometimes Christians. Forced to become swordsmen, they were trained in schools called ludi, and special measures were taken to discipline them and prevent them from committing suicide. One gladiator, Spartacus, avenged his captivity by escaping and leading an insurrection that terrorized southern Italy from 73 to 71BC. A successful gladiator received great acclaim; he was praised by poets, his portrait appeared on gems and vases, and patrician ladies pampered him. A gladiator who survived many combats might be relieved from further obligation. Occasionally, freedmen and Roman citizens entered the arena, as did the insane Emperor…
Gladiator is a historical dramatic film set in Ancient Rome. It depicts the storyline of a general betrayed by the emperor’s son, of which he then ascends the gladiatorial battlefield to challenge him once again. The movie was made in the year 2000, and was shot in three separate locations spanning from England, Malta and Morocco. The characters in the play were depicted by actors such as Russell Crowe as Maximus the betrayed general, Joaquin Phoenix as Commodus the emperor’s son and Connie Nielsen as Lucilla Commodus’ sister. Gladiator in my opinion, is a moderately accurate historical representation of the events that took place in the latter half of 2nd century AD.…
Rome started in 753 B.C. and ended in 476 A.D. Rome is most likely the reason why the United States is like today. Trade was vital to Rome and the city of Rome itself has tremendous environmental advantages. They had Gladiators, horse racing and theater. Rome’s government was the most helpful.…
Football is an inherently flawed sport. It calls upon men to sacrifice their bodies and minds by using their heads as battering rams over and over again. In his Offensive Play, a 2009 article in the New Yorker, Malcolm Gladwell explains “much of the attention in the football world, in the past few years, has been on concussions—on diagnosing, managing, and preventing them—and on figuring out how many concussions a player can have before he should call it quits. But a football player’s real issue isn’t simply with repetitive concussive trauma. It is, as the concussion specialist Robert Cantu argues, with repetitive subconcussive trauma. It’s not just the handful of big hits that matter. It’s lots of little hits, too (Gladwell).” There is no extricating the thousands of little hits from football.…
Most of the gladiators were slaves or condemned prisoners who were trained for the fighting in special gladiatorial schools (Spielvogel, 185.) The gladiators were trained and bought by the lanista which literally translates into trainer of gladiators. Gladiators were a big investment to the lanista, so not many of the slaves died. The gladiators were treated better than most slaves in that they got fed on a good diet and they were given expert medical attention.…
Gladiator fights were a brutal, barbaric way of entertainment. These battles were fought man vs. man, man vs. beast and beast vs. beast. The fighters were trained in schools. Criminals and slaves were sent to these schools. At the schools the gladiators were trained on everything up to how to die correctly. The acts performed in the games were considered choreography. Because of this, when a gladiators opponent was left-handed it was considered a special event because they were only taught how to fight right handed men. But to become a gladiator one must go through 3 major steps. One, they had to swear their lives to the gods of the underworld. Two, they had to sign with a “manager” to keep track of their shows. And three, a physical examination…