Slashdot Mirror
Colosseum Lift That Carried Wild Animals Into Arena Rebuilt
An anonymous reader writes: Archaeologists have built a replica of the lift that was used to move lions and other wild animals into the Colosseum 1,500 years ago. It is estimated that a million animals may have been killed in the history of the arena. It took a year and a half for the archaeologists and engineers to build the 23ft-high timber lift, using only materials that would have been available to the ancient Romans. Gary Glassman, a director who made a documentary about the project said, "One of the reasons we are attracted to the Colosseum is because of the incredible violence that went on here. The question it poses is, how could such an advanced culture have staged such bloody spectacles? The Colosseum is a snapshot in stone, a physical embodiment of the culture of Rome."
the Triskelions in Star Trek - got off on blood sports.
The Running Man - Bread and Circuses for a collapsed US economy.
Rollerball - street hockey and motorcycles.
Death Race 2000 - Cannonball Run with real cannonballs.
Death Race - like the preceding, but laps around a prison island and the entire country's putting bets on. Kinda like The Running Man but with miniguns. And Tombstones. Gotta love those Tombstones.
The first King novel I ever read was his masterpiece "The Long Walk". Death Race 2000 but without the cars. Published as part of the Bachman anthology in 1985.
More recently, we have Battle Royale and its Hollywood ripoff, The Hunger Games.
See, the Romans had it right. Give the plebs just enough food to survive and keep them entertained, they stay compliant and content. Hence, "Bread and Circuses".
Political debates have me rolling my eyes so much I think I got optical whiplash. I should sue. - Foamy The Squirrel
I clicked on the link and saw all the pictures. Sadly the Colosseum still looks like a ruin, and the government of Italy has no money to halt the decay let alone a restoration to former glory.
As a Rome Total War player and an aficionado of all things Roman, I would love to see the Colosseum as it was originally. Yes I realize a restoration would cost billions and modern Italy as a PIIG nation cannot afford it. It really speaks to the immense power, wealth and engineering skill of the ancients that they BUILT this thing so long ago.
I still keep hoping that some internet billionaire will take it upon himself as his life achievement to do a full restoration and that I will get to see it before I die. Barring that, I hope someone will do a very high quality rendering of every inch of the original Colosseum that we can navigate freely in Oculus VR. Maybe even host virtual games with thousands of online participants and spectators.
how could such an advanced culture have staged such bloody spectacles?
We're the dominant predator on the planet. We didn't get here by being friendly.
We don't have large teeth.
We don't have claws.
We're not overly big or strong.
We use our brains to figure out how to hunt and kill prey.
Pretty much all reasonably intelligent animal kill for entertainment.
Arguably, the question should be "how could a less advanced culture have staged such bloody spectacles?"
All kinds of engineering talent, organizational expertise, a logistics and trade network that spanned the Mediterranean world; were necessary to run something like the Colosseum. Those loads of wild animals(some pretty exotic) and ample supplies of variously trained gladiators don't just deliver themselves, you know; nor is building that much stadium seating with rocks and manual labor exactly trivial.(Never mind the 'let's flood the place and have a lethal naval battle' days, those are a huge pain.)
Any mangy barbarian can enjoy drunken brawling, hunting, and the occasional duel or dog fight; but bloody spectacle is something best left to the experts.
Has anyone given a thought to the possibility that the Roman civilisation could get "so advanced" BECAUSE they had such violent entertainment, providing both an 'escape valve' / release mechanism for violent tendencies, as well as a demonstration of how bad things can get when violence is let loose rampant in society in general? ... then extrapolate. ...
Think of American Football in comparison - fake / controlled violence of two teams head-butting a ball across a field for the sake of sport
(And if you hold the position that American Football isn't violent, then why do players need more body armour than any in other team sport in existence?)
The abhorrence for violence is a rather newly developed cultural trait in western 'civilised' society and the way that question is being framed is a judgemental way of projecting that cultural value onto the ancient Romans:
"how could such an advanced culture have staged such bloody spectacles?"
It's a rather emotional way of asking, unless taken literally, when the answer is "by using slaves and wild animals and staging violent scenes in a controlled environment such as a theatre" - duh
While advanced culture, there is the human worry that they are not tough enough to handle the world. Watching gladiators kill lions and elephants is the same as use watching Zombie movies. Half of the interest is what is going on in your head, you try to figure out what you would do in their place.
Then the outcome will normally please you.
The gladiator dies, validating that your different approach is better
The animal dies when the gladiator does what you would do, validating your idea.
The animal died with a different method, then you learned a new survival idea.
The moral issue of human and animal life, can so easily be shoved away with propaganda (still today) that for most of the population it doesn't even occur to them.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
And however you doll up humanity today, it is merely an illusion that anything has changed since then.
Pinker's The Better Angels of Our Nature makes a case that, however bad things look today, the past was much much more violent. Actually his book tries to ask why things have improved so much. Part of our modern feeling that today is terrible, is because we are more sensitive and more empathetic than we've ever been before, so we notice stuff more than we used to. Of course, caveats, not all the planet is living in the 21st Century today, but there is a trend. And we hope it continues. So yes, we are still pretty crappy as humans, but let's not start believing that we are irredeemable—we have made a lot of progress and that means we can make more progress in universal empathy and care and compassion.
Umm, no. Rome had a miniscule army for most of its history, when compared to its population. That's the advantage of an Empire as opposed to a city-state or similar flyspeck "nation".
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"