This is another bit of history I enjoyed today.
"Misha Glenny and guests discuss the countless venues across the Roman Empire which for over five hundred years drew the biggest crowds both in the Republic and under the Emperors.
The shows there delighted the masses who knew, no matter how low their place in society, they were much better off than the gladiators about to fight or the beasts to be slaughtered.
Some of the Roman elites were disgusted, seeing this popular entertainment as morally corrupting and un-Roman. Moral degradation was a less immediate concern though than the overspill of violence.
There was a constant threat of gladiators being used as a private army and while those of the elite wealthy enough to stage the shows hoped to win great prestige, they risked disappointing a crowd which could quickly become a mob and turn on them.
With Kathleen Coleman, James Loeb Professor of the Classics at Harvard University, John Pearce, Reader in Archaeology at King’s College London and, Matthew Nicholls, Fellow and Senior Tutor at St John’s College, Oxford
Producer: Simon Tillotson"*
Picture; mosaic depicting a gladiatorial fight from the villa Nennig,** dating from the first century AD, 2021, https://www.flickr.com/photos/168399512@N02/51134391753/ Author TimeTravelRome, Licensing w:en:Creative Commons attribution This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.***
*The Roman Arena BBC Radio 4, In Our Time, https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m002qj85
**Nennig is a village in the Saarland, Germany, part of the municipality of Perl. It is situated on the river Moselle, opposite Remich, Luxembourg.
***Roman Villa Nennig, https://www.visitsaarland.co.uk/poi/detail/roman-villa-nennig-c859e1607c
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