Potentially Interesting Roman History
Episode XXXI
The spectacular games put on by Pompey in his second consulship (55 BC) on the dedication of his theatre and the Temple of Venus Victrix were attended by the writer Cicero. In Letters to Friends, He writes that although the spectacles put on were incredible, the excess and the slaughter began to feel empty. The crowd had seen it so many times that, by the end, they began to feel nothing but sympathy for all the beings that were killed.
“If you ask me, the games were of course most magnificent; but they would not have been to your taste; that I infer from my own feelings ... For my feeling of cheerfulness was extinguished by the spectacle of such magnificence - a magnificence which, I am sure, it will not disturb you in the least to have missed seeing. For what pleasure can there be in the sight of 600 mules in the Clytaemnestra, or of 3,000 bowls in the Trojan Horse, or of the varied accoutrements of foot and horse in some big battle? ...
There remains the wild-beast hunts, two a day for five days - magnificent; there is no denying it. But what pleasure can it possibly be to a man of culture, when either a puny human being is mangled by a most powerful beast, or a splendid beast is transfixed with a hunting spear? And even if all this is something to be seen, you have seen it more than once; and I, who was a spectator, saw nothing new in it. The last day was that of the elephants, and on that day the mob and crowd was greatly impressed, but manifested no pleasure. Indeed the result was a certain compassion and a kind of feeling that that huge beast has a fellowship with the human race.”
(Cic. Fam. 7.1)
The most essential features of the Roman games were chariot races, wild animal fights and gladiatorial combat. In the latter, criminals and slaves equipped with various types of weapons and armour were pitted against other gladiators or wild beasts. The elite, including Emperors and Senators, played a significant role in providing these lavish shows to keep the people happy and, hence, peaceful. Happy people forget to riot.
As many as fifty days of the year could be dedicated to the games, and in addition, there was a revival, in the Imperial period, of Greek-style athletic meetings, which had declined since the heyday of the Greek city-states. The exchange went the other way, with Roman-style games becoming more popular in the Hellenic world. Famous old festivals of the past were revived, and new ones were organised across the Empire. A new, Empire-wide athlete’s guild, with Hercules as the patron god, was established, with imperial patronage and favour. The guild’s members, all professional athletes, toured the Empire competing at various meetings and enjoyed extraordinary honours, privileges and wealth, including the right to pensions from their home cities as rewards for their victories.
Here, Fronto, the rhetorician and advocate, reminds us that not everyone gets the dole of free grain or bread but that everyone - and he means everyone - gets the free shows.
“It was the height of political wisdom for the Emperor not to neglect even actors and the other performers of the stage, the circus, and the arena, since he knew that the Roman people is held fast by two things above all, the grain supply and the shows, that the success of the government depends on amusements as much as on serious things. Neglect of serious matters entails the greater detriment, of amusements the greater unpopularity. The money largesses are less eagerly desired than the shows; the largesses appease only the grain-doled plebs singly and individually, while the shows keep the whole population happy.”
(Elements of History xvii)
Juvenal’s famously withering sarcasm about Rome’s moral decline is just the best-known of a series of descriptions of the population’s—of all classes—fervent enthusiasm for actors, gladiators, and horses.
“The people which once bestowed imperium, fasces, legions, everything, now foregoes such activities and has but two passionate desires: bread and circus games.”
(Juv. x. 78-81)
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