Game of Death in Ancient Rome: Arena Sport and Political Suicide (Wisconsin Studies in Classics) - Hardcover

Plass, Paul

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0299145700 ISBN 13: 9780299145705

Publisher: University of Wisconsin Press, 1995

Synopsis

    Our taste for blood sport stops short at the bruising clash of football players or the gloved blows of boxers, and the suicide of a politician is no more than a personal tragedy. What, then, are we to make of the ancient Romans, for whom the meaning of sport and politics often depended on death? In this provocative, thoughtful book, Paul Plass shows how the deadly violence of arena sport and political suicide served a social purpose in ancient Rome. His work offers a reminder of the complex uses to which institutionalized violence can be put.
    Violence, Plass observes, is a universal part of human life, and so must be integrated into social order. Grounding his study in evidence from Roman history and drawing on ideas from contemporary sociology and anthropology, he first discusses gladiatorial combat in ancient Rome. Massive bloodshed in the arena, Plass argues, embodied the element of danger for a society frequently engaged in war, with outsiders—whether slaves, criminals, or prisoners of war—sacrificed for a sense of public security

About this title

About the Author

Paul Plass is professor of Classics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Edition details

• Publisher: University of Wisconsin Press
• Publication date: 1995
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0299145700
• ISBN 13: 9780299145705
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 300