They Called It Entertainment
THE amphitheater was charged with excitement. Tens of thousands were gathered for one of ancient Rome’s most thrilling spectacles. Pennants, roses, and colored tapestries gaily decorated the arena. Fountains spouted perfumed water, tingeing the air with pleasant aromas. The wealthy were bedecked in their most resplendent attire. The chatter of the crowd was punctuated with outbursts of laughter, but the frivolity of this multitude belied the horror of what was about to occur.
Before long the ominous blast of the tubæ summoned a pair of gladiators to battle. The crowd was in a frenzy as the contestants began slashing at each other with merciless savagery. The clanging of swords could barely be heard above the spectators’ deafening cheers. Suddenly, with a swift maneuver, one combatant brought his opponent to the ground. The fate of the felled gladiator was now in the hands of the onlookers. If they waved their handkerchiefs, he would live. With a single gesture of their thumbs, the assembly—women and girls included—ordered the death stroke. Within moments the lifeless body was dragged off the arena floor, the blood-soaked soil was tilled with shovels, fresh sand was scattered, and the crowd prepared itself for the rest of the bloodbath.
To many living in ancient Rome, that was entertainment. “Even the strictest moralists raised no objection to this delight in bloodshed,” says the book Rome: The First Thousand Years. And the gladiatorial game was just one form of decadent entertainment that Rome offered. Real-life naval battles were also staged for the amusement of bloodthirsty spectators. Even public executions were held, at which the condemned criminal would be bound to a stake and devoured by famished wild beasts.
For those whose tastes were not as sanguinary, Rome offered an assortment of stage plays. At the mimes—short plays about everyday life—“adultery and love affairs were the principal themes,” wrote Ludwig Friedländer in Roman Life and Manners Under the Early Empire. “The language was full of vulgar turns of expression, and the humour coarse, with an abundance of grimaces, scurrilous gestures, and, above all, grotesque dances to the flute.” According to The New Encyclopædia Britannica, “evidence exists that acts of adultery were actually performed on the mime stage during the Roman Empire.” With good reason Friedländer called the mime “the most frankly outrageous of the farces in immorality and obscenity,” and he added: “The lewdest scenes were the most applauded.”a
What about today? Has man’s taste in entertainment changed? Consider the evidence, as discussed in the following article.
[Footnote]
a At times, an execution would be performed onstage to lend realism to a dramatic production. The book The Civilization of Rome notes: “It was not unusual for a criminal condemned to death to take the actor’s place at the catastrophic moment.”
[Picture Credit Line on page 3]
The Complete Encyclopedia of Illustration/J. G. Heck