Ever wondered how you would react to a gladiatorial show? We actually have a story about how a young man, who detested such fights, reacted to the games
"[Alypius] had gone on to Rome before me to study law [...] he had been utterly opposed to [gladitorial] spectacles and detested them, [but] one day he met by chance a company of his acquaintances [...] they drew him, resisting and objecting vehemently, into the amphitheater, on a day of those cruel and murderous shows.
He protested to them [but] they dragged him on in [...] Alypius kept his eyes closed and forbade his mind to roam abroad after such wickedness. Would that he had shut his ears also! For when one of the combatants fell in the fight, a mighty cry from the whole audience stirred him so strongly that, overcome by curiosity and still prepared (as he thought) to despise and rise superior to it no matter what it was, he opened his eyes and was struck with a deeper wound in his soul than the victim whom he desired to see had been in his body.
[...] as soon as he saw the blood, he drank in with it a savage temper, and he did not turn away, but fixed his eyes on the bloody pastime, unwittingly drinking in the madness -- delighted with the wicked contest and drunk with blood lust. [...] He looked, he shouted, he was excited, and he took away with him the madness that would stimulate him to come again"
Augustinus - Confessions 8.13
Image of a gladiator funerary stele in Izmir.

Comments
Post a Comment
We can do better!