Roman Gladiator Research Paper

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Blood, sweat, and tears. These three things were very common in the lives of the gladiators in ancient Rome. However, there is a lot more to them than many people tend to understand. The gladiators weren’t simply brutal warriors who wanted to kill each other just to survive another day. They were people who fought with purpose and usually with good reasoning. They played a crucial role in roman society and actually, in a way, helped to define ancient Rome as the complex and war-minded civilization we know it was today. Gladiators were first introduced to Rome in 264 BCE, when the sons of Junius Brutus (A founder of the Roman republic and one of Julius Caesar’s assassins) put on a gladiatorial battle with three pairs of slaves at…show more content…
The battles became larger and larger as wealthy aristocrats took the idea and used it for themselves. These religious ceremonies then started to become public performances, typically sponsored by political figures who wanted to gain popularity in Rome. They became games to entertain the people and were far less religious-oriented than they were initially. The performances eventually made their way into one of the greatest architectural feats in human history: The Roman Colosseum. The Colosseum was originally planned by the emperors Nero and Vespasian, but was finished by Titus in 80 CE, who got all of the credit. It had four levels (three of them arched) and could hold 50,000 people at once. That is almost as much as modern-day football stadiums. It also had an intricate set of stairways to filter the thousands of people each day. The Colosseum had a huge arena where the gladiators battled each other and other animals, entertaining all of Rome. It had an underground network where trap doors could be used to surprise the fighters and create more interesting battles. The Colosseum is an incredible monument which shows the true power and violent nature of Rome, and it played an important role in the lives of the

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