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

This book examines two forms of Roman `institutional' violence:
gladitorial combat and political suicide, attempting to explain
and correlate the social and psychological significance of these
phenomena.

Paul Plass is professor emeritus of Classics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He is the author of Wit and the Writing of History, also published by the University of Wisconsin Press.