Yesterday I was teaching on Gladiators in my Religion and Sports class. I had two good questions that generated a lot of discussion in both sections of my class and I thought I would share them here. The first is in the context of the traditional origins of gladiatorial combat in funeral games:
"Why honor the dead with more death?"
The second question is more about the general Roman psyche:
"Why did they enjoy this so much?"
The discussion following both questions, by the way, at some point touched upon gladiatorial combat as a form of human sacrifice.
So, how would you answer these questions?
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