8 ms·

How were gladiators portrayed in ancient Rome?

51 points by diodorus 3y ago

number6 3y ago
The third time this week that I thought about the Roman Empire
- gadders 3y ago
  Those are rookie numbers.
- elzbardico 3y ago
  You should think more about it.
- hotnfresh 3y ago
  Context: a thing on social media right now is women asking husbands/boyfriends how often they think about the Roman Empire, and then giggling and expressing surprise when the answer is, in every case, more than “almost never”.
  - runjake 3y ago
    I don't get it. Why? (My personal answer would be "multiple times a day.") Edit: https://knowyourmeme.com/editorials/guides/why-do-men-think-about-the-roman-empire-so-often-the-viral-question-and-roman-empire-tiktok-trend-explained https://knowyourmeme.com/editorials/guides/why-do-men-think-... Edit2: It has nothing to do with power and little to do with battles. It's more about society, governance, and culture.
    - rhplus 3y ago
      I mean, in July and August I’m forced to think about it every single day.
      - boomboomsubban 3y ago
        While the other ten months only imply that you should think about it. Those Latin words and Roman gods could have come from anywhere!
    - hotnfresh 3y ago
      The humor seems to come from there being a large body of people (mostly women, evidently?) who don’t realize anyone who’s not, like, a classics professor, thinks about the Roman Empire more than almost-never, and another (evidently mostly men?) who don’t get how someone could think about it less than at least once a week, assuming they think about anything at all. I’m firmly in the “how do you not?” camp. The mutual confusion between these two groups is the joke, I think. Another facet may be the implication that all these men must be obsessed with Rome or want a return of the Roman Empire or something, which is also a funny notion, but I don’t think that’s usually the case. There are dozens of other things I think about at least as often, personally, and the common thread is that they have lots of connections to various topics I’m interested in, not some obsession with e.g. Rome. For my part, Rome is heavily connected to all of philosophy, politics, European, Maghreb, and Near-East history, literature, and film (it’s a common setting or topic, even when not directly the topic, as in the Coen’s Hail Caesar) and since I’m interested in all those things, I mean, yeah, obviously I think about it at least once a day. I also think about various ancient Greek states daily, and Sumer and Ancient Egypt at least once a week, and often much more, I’d guess. Doesn’t mean I’m particularly obsessed with any of them, they’re just strongly connected to a ton of my interests.
      - flkiwi 3y ago
        Pretty sure I passed some sort of test with my wife when I told her "Oh, think about it and not in the context of it coming up in a book or legal concept, but just sit and ponder the Empire? Once every six months or so?" but then rapidly lost ground when I continued, "Maybe slightly more if you include the Republic, the Byzantine Empire, and any of the purported successor entities like Tsarist Russia or the Ottomans." The equally amusing thing is the trend to ask "What is the Roman Empire for people who don't think about the Roman Empire?" The answer for a SHOCKING number of people is Tom Holland lip syncing 'Umbrella'. And as astonishing and inconceivable as that is to me--that someone could think about that multiple times per year, much less the more frequent schedule my wife, who is deeply, boldy intelligent, joyously admits to--I'm reminded that that's EXACTLY how they feel about people who think about Rome. So I just shrug and say "well people like different things."
    - dylan604 3y ago
      It's just another Women are from Venus, Men are from Mars type of thing that sounds like a typical article from Cosmo discussed at the hair salon. The irony of my comment is not lost and is intended
    - dfxm12 3y ago
      Because people post reactionary stuff like this online, unprompted: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37646138 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37646138
      - chimpanzee 3y ago
        Why do you consider that post to be “reactionary”?
        hotnfresh 3y ago
        Supporting a prior state of affairs over the current one (in this case, older forms of money and monetary policy; and maybe also economic systems and/or attitudes toward colonialism, it’s not entirely clear which aspects the poster intends us to understand as causing the claimed price consistency) is what “reactionary” means.
        chimpanzee 3y ago
        Yes thank you, that is what “reactionary” means. But the post only mentions the Romans in order to draw a comparison (albeit likely based on faulty information), and then asks how others feel about it. This isn’t support for past eras. It’s a curiosity into the current state of affairs using as comparison the only available reference: the past. Your own difficulty in understanding the poster’s intent underlies the problem with the “reactionary” label. They could simply be misinformed. Misinformation leads to dissonance, surprise and curiosity. Which leads to posting online to settle their inner confusion/questions.
        hotnfresh 3y ago
        I read the poster’s question as leading due to extensive interaction online with that kind of sea-lioning or otherwise promoting a point of view (always one of a few, and mostly clustered in one ideological area that definitely includes love of precious metal standards) by posting (often wrong or biased) sources, framing them a certain (also often wrong) way, then asking what others think about that. It’s also a great way to accomplish (classical) trolling, by making a post that’s weak and controversial (so, invites replies, including from those who will refute it poorly, which is the OP’s lead—in to goad them further by responding only to weak rebuttals) but can hide behind ignorance or naivety (“I really wasn’t sure, I was just asking”) to skirt moderation. But there’s a tiny chance it’s not any of that and the poster really is, literally, just asking questions. From the form and topic of the post, I give it about, I dunno, a 3% likelihood. [edit] why do I judge this almost certainly not a genuine question born of curiosity? There are several clues, but the post leads with “reminder that…” This indicates a ready line of argument and/or beloved second-hand ideological factoid the poster has picked up and has ready to mind. The post almost certainly has a slant, and if it does, yes, it’s reactionary.
- flkiwi 3y ago
  In my head, there's now a "Number of days since I thought about the Roman Empire" sign and it just went to 0 when I read this headline. Though I feel like this should sneak by on a technicality, namely that I didn't think about it.
- rdtsc 3y ago
  Are you just interested in history and noticing it? Of course, we always see links to the wonderful site https://acoup.blog https://acoup.blog by Dr. Bret C. Devereaux on HN, so maybe that's why?
- ramoz 3y ago
  I think of the roman empire every time I look in the mirror
hk1337 3y ago
It' interesting how American Football is perceived as more violent when Rugby exists and is a lot more brutal. Futból (in Spanish to distinguish it) in its simplest form seems non-violent but the players can be just as merciful and the fans just as bad.
- taeric 3y ago
  Is rugby more brutal? More kinetic, I easily agree with. Reading the data, it seems that concussions are indeed higher in rugby, such that that should be concerning. That said, the specialization allowed by American Football results in some people that can hit far harder than should be encouraged. Especially true in youth sports, in my mind, as growth just isn't even by age for people. At least in professional leagues you can somewhat control for that.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - atourgates 3y ago
    I subscribe to the perspective that brain injuries are the injuries that matter most in sports, so that's what I focus on in the "what's more dangerous" question. I had believed that rugby carried a lower concussion risk because of the lack of padding/helmets changed player behavior, but it looks like that's not the case. This[1] is one of the best analysis/discussions I found. It references this[2] 2021 meta-analysis as the most expansive. A few key quotes: > This meta-analysis demonstrated rugby has the highest concussion risk, followed by American Football, ice hockey, and wrestling. > Meanwhile, a 2015 study in the British Journal of Sports Medicine looked at 13 articles that addressed sports concussion rates. It found that rugby placed first, with a rate more than three times higher than ice hockey and eight times higher than American football. > One paper, published in 2016 in the American Journal of Sports Medicine, looked at NCAA Division I injuries over three seasons for both sports. The authors found that the overall injury rate was about three times higher in rugby than in American football, and that a subset of this, the concussion rate, was about 2.5 times higher in rugby than in football. The authors deemed these differences to represent a "substantially higher" risk for rugby. TL;DR: Rugby's probably the most dangerous for concussions and overall injury of any major team sport. [1] https://www.wral.com/story/fact-check-biden-says-football-is-more-dangerous-than-rugby/20828386/ https://www.wral.com/story/fact-check-biden-says-football-is... [2] https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/23776916-concussion-risk-across-sports https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/23776916-concussion-...
jncfhnb 3y ago
The article states that the gladiators were just slaves to be treated as disposable but I thought this wasn’t actually true. In the sense that they were fairly expensive and they didn’t want them killing each other all the time and they weren’t exactly casting lots of them into free for all death matches.
- TheCaptain4815 3y ago
  Yup that's true and my favorite history youtuber, ToldInStone (PHD in Ancient Roman Studies), covers this in one of his books - "Naked Statues, Fat Gladiators, and War Elephants". Highly recommend it, it's a bunch of short stories on tales n myths about the ancient world which he goes into detail on.
0xdeadbeefbabe 3y ago
> They’re both fabulously wealthy societies that nevertheless tolerated immense inequality. For example, we tolerated an article equating Rome to the USA.
- CobrastanJorji 3y ago
  The USA, like many countries, loves equating itself to Rome. We've been doing it from day 1. Look at our buildings. Look at the Society of the Cincinnati. All our mottos are in Latin (except "In God We Trust," which we picked up in the 1950s and kept in English presumably because foreign languages were for commies). Comparing oneself to Rome is a beloved hobby of nations around the world.
hennyting 3y ago
Guy has an extremely surface level and superficial take on American Football. His diatribe against football sounds like something a 15 year old faux-marxist would write...Football is a complicated sport. It's incredibly difficult to piece together the real chess game that's taking place but once you do, and once you understand the orchestration that goes into play calling (defense and offense), it unlocks the incredible nature of the sport. It's a real time war-game that's orchestrated by coaches and players on the field... You have a coach that invents defensive schemes on the fly (Bill Belichek) vs a coach that will scour the history of teh sport and call a play last seen in a 1940's rose bowl (Andy Reid).
- SoftTalker 3y ago
  Yeah, I watch football for casual time-filling on Sunday afternoon but I know that I know just enough to realize I'm only seeing about 10% of the game.
- fimoreth 3y ago
  Interesting, where would you suggest someone starts if they’ve never seen that side of the sport?
- boppo1 3y ago
  Idgaf about football for the most part, but I’m interested in understanding plays. Is there a primer on the theory or something out there? I learned everything I know about football from a cellphone 16 bit football game.
  - chikenf00t 3y ago
    YouTube is a great resource for this. Channels like The QB School, Football Analysis, and AllexRollinsNFL just name a few examples. Getting a 22 man view with a knowledgeable guide is a great way to understand the thought that goes into each play.
wizofaus 3y ago
My only question is why AC/DC? Surely American bands have produced enough great sports worthy anthems that you needn't import music from the other side of the world (where "football" means something entirely different, and gridiron is very much an extreme niche activity)? Though I do remember an ex who grew up in the states assuming Acka Dacka must be a US band due to the "knocking me out with those American thighs" line!

51 points by diodorus 3y ago

number6 3y ago

The third time this week that I thought about the Roman Empire

gadders 3y ago
Those are rookie numbers.
elzbardico 3y ago
You should think more about it.
hotnfresh 3y ago
Context: a thing on social media right now is women asking husbands/boyfriends how often they think about the Roman Empire, and then giggling and expressing surprise when the answer is, in every case, more than “almost never”.
- runjake 3y ago
  I don't get it. Why? (My personal answer would be "multiple times a day.") Edit: https://knowyourmeme.com/editorials/guides/why-do-men-think-about-the-roman-empire-so-often-the-viral-question-and-roman-empire-tiktok-trend-explained https://knowyourmeme.com/editorials/guides/why-do-men-think-... Edit2: It has nothing to do with power and little to do with battles. It's more about society, governance, and culture.
  - rhplus 3y ago
    I mean, in July and August I’m forced to think about it every single day.
    - boomboomsubban 3y ago
      While the other ten months only imply that you should think about it. Those Latin words and Roman gods could have come from anywhere!
  - hotnfresh 3y ago
    The humor seems to come from there being a large body of people (mostly women, evidently?) who don’t realize anyone who’s not, like, a classics professor, thinks about the Roman Empire more than almost-never, and another (evidently mostly men?) who don’t get how someone could think about it less than at least once a week, assuming they think about anything at all. I’m firmly in the “how do you not?” camp. The mutual confusion between these two groups is the joke, I think. Another facet may be the implication that all these men must be obsessed with Rome or want a return of the Roman Empire or something, which is also a funny notion, but I don’t think that’s usually the case. There are dozens of other things I think about at least as often, personally, and the common thread is that they have lots of connections to various topics I’m interested in, not some obsession with e.g. Rome. For my part, Rome is heavily connected to all of philosophy, politics, European, Maghreb, and Near-East history, literature, and film (it’s a common setting or topic, even when not directly the topic, as in the Coen’s Hail Caesar) and since I’m interested in all those things, I mean, yeah, obviously I think about it at least once a day. I also think about various ancient Greek states daily, and Sumer and Ancient Egypt at least once a week, and often much more, I’d guess. Doesn’t mean I’m particularly obsessed with any of them, they’re just strongly connected to a ton of my interests.
    - flkiwi 3y ago
      Pretty sure I passed some sort of test with my wife when I told her "Oh, think about it and not in the context of it coming up in a book or legal concept, but just sit and ponder the Empire? Once every six months or so?" but then rapidly lost ground when I continued, "Maybe slightly more if you include the Republic, the Byzantine Empire, and any of the purported successor entities like Tsarist Russia or the Ottomans." The equally amusing thing is the trend to ask "What is the Roman Empire for people who don't think about the Roman Empire?" The answer for a SHOCKING number of people is Tom Holland lip syncing 'Umbrella'. And as astonishing and inconceivable as that is to me--that someone could think about that multiple times per year, much less the more frequent schedule my wife, who is deeply, boldy intelligent, joyously admits to--I'm reminded that that's EXACTLY how they feel about people who think about Rome. So I just shrug and say "well people like different things."
  - dylan604 3y ago
    It's just another Women are from Venus, Men are from Mars type of thing that sounds like a typical article from Cosmo discussed at the hair salon. The irony of my comment is not lost and is intended
  - dfxm12 3y ago
    Because people post reactionary stuff like this online, unprompted: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37646138 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37646138
    - chimpanzee 3y ago
      Why do you consider that post to be “reactionary”?
      - hotnfresh 3y ago
        Supporting a prior state of affairs over the current one (in this case, older forms of money and monetary policy; and maybe also economic systems and/or attitudes toward colonialism, it’s not entirely clear which aspects the poster intends us to understand as causing the claimed price consistency) is what “reactionary” means.
        chimpanzee 3y ago
        Yes thank you, that is what “reactionary” means. But the post only mentions the Romans in order to draw a comparison (albeit likely based on faulty information), and then asks how others feel about it. This isn’t support for past eras. It’s a curiosity into the current state of affairs using as comparison the only available reference: the past. Your own difficulty in understanding the poster’s intent underlies the problem with the “reactionary” label. They could simply be misinformed. Misinformation leads to dissonance, surprise and curiosity. Which leads to posting online to settle their inner confusion/questions.
        hotnfresh 3y ago
        I read the poster’s question as leading due to extensive interaction online with that kind of sea-lioning or otherwise promoting a point of view (always one of a few, and mostly clustered in one ideological area that definitely includes love of precious metal standards) by posting (often wrong or biased) sources, framing them a certain (also often wrong) way, then asking what others think about that. It’s also a great way to accomplish (classical) trolling, by making a post that’s weak and controversial (so, invites replies, including from those who will refute it poorly, which is the OP’s lead—in to goad them further by responding only to weak rebuttals) but can hide behind ignorance or naivety (“I really wasn’t sure, I was just asking”) to skirt moderation. But there’s a tiny chance it’s not any of that and the poster really is, literally, just asking questions. From the form and topic of the post, I give it about, I dunno, a 3% likelihood. [edit] why do I judge this almost certainly not a genuine question born of curiosity? There are several clues, but the post leads with “reminder that…” This indicates a ready line of argument and/or beloved second-hand ideological factoid the poster has picked up and has ready to mind. The post almost certainly has a slant, and if it does, yes, it’s reactionary.
flkiwi 3y ago
In my head, there's now a "Number of days since I thought about the Roman Empire" sign and it just went to 0 when I read this headline. Though I feel like this should sneak by on a technicality, namely that I didn't think about it.
rdtsc 3y ago
Are you just interested in history and noticing it? Of course, we always see links to the wonderful site https://acoup.blog https://acoup.blog by Dr. Bret C. Devereaux on HN, so maybe that's why?
ramoz 3y ago
I think of the roman empire every time I look in the mirror

hk1337 3y ago

It' interesting how American Football is perceived as more violent when Rugby exists and is a lot more brutal. Futból (in Spanish to distinguish it) in its simplest form seems non-violent but the players can be just as merciful and the fans just as bad.

taeric 3y ago
Is rugby more brutal? More kinetic, I easily agree with. Reading the data, it seems that concussions are indeed higher in rugby, such that that should be concerning. That said, the specialization allowed by American Football results in some people that can hit far harder than should be encouraged. Especially true in youth sports, in my mind, as growth just isn't even by age for people. At least in professional leagues you can somewhat control for that.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- atourgates 3y ago
  I subscribe to the perspective that brain injuries are the injuries that matter most in sports, so that's what I focus on in the "what's more dangerous" question. I had believed that rugby carried a lower concussion risk because of the lack of padding/helmets changed player behavior, but it looks like that's not the case. This[1] is one of the best analysis/discussions I found. It references this[2] 2021 meta-analysis as the most expansive. A few key quotes: > This meta-analysis demonstrated rugby has the highest concussion risk, followed by American Football, ice hockey, and wrestling. > Meanwhile, a 2015 study in the British Journal of Sports Medicine looked at 13 articles that addressed sports concussion rates. It found that rugby placed first, with a rate more than three times higher than ice hockey and eight times higher than American football. > One paper, published in 2016 in the American Journal of Sports Medicine, looked at NCAA Division I injuries over three seasons for both sports. The authors found that the overall injury rate was about three times higher in rugby than in American football, and that a subset of this, the concussion rate, was about 2.5 times higher in rugby than in football. The authors deemed these differences to represent a "substantially higher" risk for rugby. TL;DR: Rugby's probably the most dangerous for concussions and overall injury of any major team sport. [1] https://www.wral.com/story/fact-check-biden-says-football-is-more-dangerous-than-rugby/20828386/ https://www.wral.com/story/fact-check-biden-says-football-is... [2] https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/23776916-concussion-risk-across-sports https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/23776916-concussion-...

jncfhnb 3y ago

The article states that the gladiators were just slaves to be treated as disposable but I thought this wasn’t actually true. In the sense that they were fairly expensive and they didn’t want them killing each other all the time and they weren’t exactly casting lots of them into free for all death matches.

TheCaptain4815 3y ago
Yup that's true and my favorite history youtuber, ToldInStone (PHD in Ancient Roman Studies), covers this in one of his books - "Naked Statues, Fat Gladiators, and War Elephants". Highly recommend it, it's a bunch of short stories on tales n myths about the ancient world which he goes into detail on.

0xdeadbeefbabe 3y ago

> They’re both fabulously wealthy societies that nevertheless tolerated immense inequality. For example, we tolerated an article equating Rome to the USA.

CobrastanJorji 3y ago
The USA, like many countries, loves equating itself to Rome. We've been doing it from day 1. Look at our buildings. Look at the Society of the Cincinnati. All our mottos are in Latin (except "In God We Trust," which we picked up in the 1950s and kept in English presumably because foreign languages were for commies). Comparing oneself to Rome is a beloved hobby of nations around the world.

hennyting 3y ago

Guy has an extremely surface level and superficial take on American Football. His diatribe against football sounds like something a 15 year old faux-marxist would write...Football is a complicated sport. It's incredibly difficult to piece together the real chess game that's taking place but once you do, and once you understand the orchestration that goes into play calling (defense and offense), it unlocks the incredible nature of the sport. It's a real time war-game that's orchestrated by coaches and players on the field... You have a coach that invents defensive schemes on the fly (Bill Belichek) vs a coach that will scour the history of teh sport and call a play last seen in a 1940's rose bowl (Andy Reid).

SoftTalker 3y ago
Yeah, I watch football for casual time-filling on Sunday afternoon but I know that I know just enough to realize I'm only seeing about 10% of the game.
fimoreth 3y ago
Interesting, where would you suggest someone starts if they’ve never seen that side of the sport?
boppo1 3y ago
Idgaf about football for the most part, but I’m interested in understanding plays. Is there a primer on the theory or something out there? I learned everything I know about football from a cellphone 16 bit football game.
- chikenf00t 3y ago
  YouTube is a great resource for this. Channels like The QB School, Football Analysis, and AllexRollinsNFL just name a few examples. Getting a 22 man view with a knowledgeable guide is a great way to understand the thought that goes into each play.

wizofaus 3y ago

My only question is why AC/DC? Surely American bands have produced enough great sports worthy anthems that you needn't import music from the other side of the world (where "football" means something entirely different, and gridiron is very much an extreme niche activity)? Though I do remember an ex who grew up in the states assuming Acka Dacka must be a US band due to the "knocking me out with those American thighs" line!