Gladiators, Funerals, and Roman Schadenfreude
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?