Blood Sport

Primary Sources

Augustus, Res Gestae 22-23.

Seneca, Letters 7 (= L&R II 40), 37, 70.

J. A. Shelton, As The Romans Did: A Source Book in Roman Social History (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), pp. 342-344; sections 66, 105, 331-332, 337-341.

LR I 132 (pp. 357-9), 162: Charter for Urso, 44 B.C., LXX (p. 455), 172.

LR II 30 (Pliny, NH 37.11, p. 118), 40 (pp. 142-145), 50 (p. 181, first and fourth entries), 73 (p. 274 only), 74i (p. 276), 104 (p. 375, Cassius Dio on "Provincialization of the Praetorian Guard").

Secondary Sources

S. Brown, "Death as Decoration: Scenes from the Arena on Roman Domestic Mosaics," in Pornography and Representation in Greece and Rome (Oxford 1992), pp. 180-211.

T. E. J. Wiedemann, Emperors and Gladiators (Routledge, 1992), esp. chaps. 1-3.

C.A. Barton, The Sorrows of the Ancient Romans (Princeton 1993), pp. 11-46, 87-106.

P. Plass, The Game of Death in Ancient Rome (U. of Wisconsin Press, 1995), pp. 15-77.

Main Questions

What were the origins of the gladiatorial games? How did they change, both in form and as a social phenomenon, with the transition from Republic to Principate?

From which socio-economic strata of Roman society were gladiators drawn? From a sociological perspective, what was the function of the gladiator in Roman society? Did these shows in any sense make for Roman group solidarity? Did they serve as didactic and moral exempla? What is Barton's psychological reading of the gladiatorial games?