this post was submitted on 13 May 2024
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This magazine is for sharing artwork of historical events, places, personages, etc. Scale models and the like also welcome!

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 7 months ago

The Romans themselves noted that the games of the arena were often too bloody for foreigners who had not been raised to enjoy such things - and their contemporaries were not exactly 'delicate'. So it's certainly gruesome.

But another matter is that a scene like this, of an unarmed man being torn apart by animals, is more akin to a public execution than the gladiator games - those sentenced to die in this way, noxii, were men convicted of (what the Romans saw as) serious offenses.