Anyone know? I heard an interesting story about a boy that hated the killing and ran out on the field to try to stop them. He was killed and after that people started leaving and they didn’t come back. Have any of ya’ll heard that story? If that is not the case, how did it stop?
Maybe they just ran out of gladiators.
Wildest Bill, I haven’t heard the story about the boy. It sounds apocryphal to me. However, I did find a link that gives an answer to your other question.
—Kris
My guess is that the rise of Christianity killed the sport of Gladiatorial combat. It’s pretty difficult to reconcile ‘Thou Shalt Not Kill’ with two guys fighting to the death for fun. Plus, considering that’s how a lot of Christians were killed in Rome, something tells me that after Constantine, the whole idea would leave a funny taste in some people’s mouths.
And I guess Tabithina’s link agrees with me (at least somewhat).
D’oh. Shoulda clicked on it.
Damn near as difficult to reconcile “Thou Shall Not Kill” and capital punishment, conversion by the sword, and burning “witches” at the stake, but plenty of Christians were and are able to to it. To paraphrase Gahndi - “If more Christians were like Christ, how much more pleasant the world would be.”
The difference, plnr (and please understand that I am not a Christian apologist, I am, in fact, an Atheist and extremely critical of Christianity, I’m merely playing devil’s advocate here), is that in all of those examples, you can say that ‘thou shalt not kill’ actually means ‘thou shalt not commit murder’ and as you are not committing murder, but doing good, you are not violating that commandment.
A gladiatorial game, however, would be far more difficult to argue as not being murder.
The fall of the Roman Empire and the economic collapse of Europe probably helped as well. Gladiators were usually bought as slaves and imported from far-flung parts of the empire. The Games were damned expensive entertainment.
I noticed the link made more of the point that the gladitorial games were seen as a remnant of the pagan era, something which the Christian Romans wanted to distance themselves from.
Like the “fall” of the Roman Empire itself, the disappearance of the gladitorial games was gradual. You can read about Romans, like Cicero, disapproving of the games as early as the 1st century AD, while Rome was still ostensibly pagan. Tastes change, and the increasingly civilized Roman slowly became less tolerant of the violence enjoyed by their ancestors. Christianity merely helped codify a belief system that didn’t support quite so much violence (unless it was for the Lord, of course ;-)).
I had heard a slightly similar story told once which I later learned was entirely fabricated. It was supposedly how Polycarp was killed. The way it went was that he (an old man, probably 86 or so) somehow got into the arena and was shouting at the crowd to end the madness and end the games. He was accidentally struck and killed by one of the gladiators, and as the story went the crowd (who had respected the old man) slowly exited the stadium and never came back.
In reality, Polycarp was killed in the stadium, but not like that. While some Christians were being killed, the crowd began shouting to get Polycarp and put him in there. He fled the city, but was found a few days later – he’d also had a dream of his pillow burning and decided to give himself up. He was taken into the stadium and asked to reject Christianity. After considering tearing him apart with wild beasts, it was finally decided to burn him at the stake, which is what happened. The only notable thing was when he was asked to “Swear by the fortunes of Caesar, repent, say ‘Away with the Atheists!’” (i.e. Christians), he turned, looked at the crowd, then looked up and said, “Away with the Atheists!”
He was martyred around 155 BC, long before the last games were held.
source : The Martyrdom of St. Polycarp, transl. Charles H. Hoole
Polycarp isn’t dead… 
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?postid=1506964#post1506964
I saw someone on our bike trail with a new product called The Gladiator. You attach your canine to it with a leash & you step on it & the pet pulls you along. Its prety spiffy looking & looks just like one of the roman ones, might be what you need WB.
handy… you never cease to amaze me.
“see word ‘Gladiator’ in topic + OP by Wildest Bill = post something completely unrelated to the topic”
:rolleyes:
Handy,
Your’re a trip.
Anyway thanks for the answers I wonder if the SDMB Polycarp might be able to shed some light on this question? Poly?
Well, the point was them Gladiators haven’t disappeared if you can be a modern Gladiator today with your canine. As a matter of fact, what probably happened to roman Gladiator’s was that they ran out of animals:
“After wounding each other for awhile the
spectators would become bored so archers would shoot the exhausted
animals with arrows from the stands. By using these animals in such a
way the Romans managed to wipe out thousands of animals and either
captured or drove away entire species. Now, the hippopotamuses were
no longer seen in Egypt, lions disappeared from Assyria and elephants
no longer lived in northern Africa.”
http://ga.essortment.com/romangladiators_rfye.htm
“Sometimes also the main arena was flooded, and naval battles were fought with boats.”
http://www.iol.ie/~coolmine/typ/romans/enter2.html
I wondered if they used fish?
Uh, if he died in 155 BC then I don’t think he could have been a Christian. Think about it.
Also, gladiatorial games had their origin in pagan ritual. The oldest form was having two slaves fight as a sort of human sacrifice.
The collapse of the Roman empire pretty much ended gladiatorial combat. But over in the eastern Roman Empire everyone was absolutely insane over chariot racing. Byzantium had regular riots over the races, worse than modern football (soccer) hooligans.
Let’s not forget that bullfighting is a remnant of gladiator-type contests.
Oops. Big mistake on my part.
That should be 155 A.D., not B.C.
Sort of - it wasn’t a boy, it was a Christian monk called Telemachus. Doing a web search on him (try “Saint Telemachus”) suggests there’s some doubt about his identity and whether he existed at all, but the story was good enough for Gibbon. From Chapter 30 of Decline and Fall:
“The pathetic representations of Prudentius were less effectual than the generous boldness of Telemachus, an Asiatis monk, whose death was more useful to mankind than his life.(58) The Romans were provoked by the interruption of their pleasures; and the rash monk, who had descended into the arena, to separate the gladiators, was overwhelmed under a shower of stones. But the madness of the people soon subsided: they respected the memory of Telemachus, who had deserved the honours of martyrdom; and they submitted, without a murmur, to the laws of Honorius, which abolished for ever the human sacrifices of the amphitheatre. The citizens, who adhered to the manners of their ancestors, might perhaps insinuate that the last remains of a martial spirit were preserved in this school of fortitude, which accustomed the Romans to the sight of blood, and to the contempt of death: a vain and cruel prejudice, so nobly confuted by the valour of ancient Greece and of modern Europe!”
Since it’s Gibbon, it’s worth quoting the footnote as well:
“58. Theodoret, 1. v. c. 26. I wish to believe the story of St. Telemachus. Yet no church has been dedicated, no altar has been erected, to the only monk who died a martyr in the cause of humanity.”