[zzzpaz]

Same millions of lives were lost to accomodate the current United States of America.

Perhaps we should avoid looking at historical events with the current judgement and ideology.

It was a different world then and execution were pretty normal (so was slavery for example, which US have kept till 1863)

[DrSiemer]

A huge amount of people being slaughtered in a single location purely for entertainment is not really something you can offset by the amount of lives lost for the "benefit" of half a continent. It's a useless comparison.

Besides that, it isn't necessary to drag the USA into every bad situation that has ever occurred.

[zzzpaz]

It's not necessary to drag USA, but it's just an example of how stupid these arguments are. Historical facts needs to be analysed with the lens of what was considered normal at that time not with the lens on what we consider to be normal today. As many slaves were used also to build the pyramids for example or to some extend modern slavery is a thing in some countries (look at how Qatar is handling the construction of the stadiums for the 2022 fifa world cup). Why aren't we offended by what happen today as we've the right sensibility to understand this things?

If that was not a great similitude is this a good one instead:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_of_U.S._Marines_urinat...

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abu_Ghraib_torture_and_priso...

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_in_post-invasio...

This are pretty much modern and new example, instead of paying so much attention to what happened 2000 years ago you should consider to fight in order to avoid this things to happen again. Instead of doing some empty consideration on pretty old facts.

[DrSiemer]

Most of the people here will be aware of all the examples you link to, and are generally appalled by them. But the fact that the world is still not perfect does not somehow prevent us from looking at the past through the lens of today's moral standards.

Can you at least admit that we, as a species, have grown, because we no longer employ grand scale death pits?

Someone can be offended by both historical atrocities AND the Qatar situation. The first we cannot change, the second we can still have some influence on. I would argue this is something we do more because something like the colosseum exists to remind us, not less.

[ggsp]

Honest question—what is the purpose of being offended at something that happened during e.g. Roman times?

[beachy]

If not Roman times, then how about Nazi times, now approaching a century ago? Where do you draw the line?

[zzzpaz]

You draw the line the same way history draws it. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_time_periods

We're in the contemporary era and things that happened in the Nazi time are still relevant. While things that happened in the ancient era are, by definition, ancient.

So if you want speak about history a good start is to try to study it first.

Otherwise next time we're discussing on how aggressive were people in the Neolithic and how stupid were the law in the Code of Hammurabi

[DrSiemer]

In the context of discussing the value of the colosseum I used the wrong word here.

The simple remark that started this was just someone expressing wonder over how many people must have died there, purely for the entertainment of the masses.

The point that zzzpaz appears to make is that we should be ambiguous to anything that happened in the past, because at the time those things were commonplace.

Surely there is some better word that covers both the amazement about countless colosseum deaths and feeling resentment towards modern day atrocities, but I can't think of one. The fact that these things are not really connected is actually the point I am trying to make.

[zzzpaz]

> The point that zzzpaz appears to make is that we should be ambiguous to anything that happened in the past, because at the time those things were commonplace.

Please don't put word in my mouth as I never said what you just mentioned.

If you want speak about history you need to consider the era that we are referring to. So yes, in the ancient time these things were commonplace (Romans, Greeks, Egyptian and Babylonian), in the contemporary era these are not.

You can't use modern time logic to fight against ancient times. Otherwise next time we can spend the afternoon to speak about the code of Hammurabi and how stupid these laws were.

A good start is to learn about the historic periods and understand how to put things into perspective before being offended by random fact far away

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_time_periods

[ALittleLight]

I think you "ambivalent" rather than "ambiguous".

I agree that there is no reason to judge the past with their "moral lens". Of course the people in ancient Rome (in total) thought it was okay to kill people in the Coliseum - they were the ones doing it and watching it.

[rantwasp]

we totally should look at historical events with the current “lens”. That’s the only way preventing us from regressing.

Also, slavery is alive and well today. Just because it’s not called slavery does not make it okay. We are still killing people in mass - it’s just that it’s conveniently hidden from the “civilized” world

[peoplefromibiza]

> we totally should look at historical events with the current “lens”.

No, there are things that Romans did better than us today, even looking at them with current lenses, but that are hard to replicate in our times given the complexity of our society, the conflicts, the political systems, and, last but not least, the vastly better education and influence the general population has.

We should learn from past mistakes though.

If we apply basic statistic, deaths/years of activity, in the Colosseum died ~1 thousand humans every year.

It's more or less the number of people shot and killed by the U.S. police every year.

That's what we should do better because, of course, we're not sending people to fight to death or against lions anymore.

To me, that looks like a solved problem.

[akiselev]

If US police officers killed 1,000 people a year for four centuries, it'd be about 0.13% of the present population of the United States. If I'm reading this right, a single city forced the rest of the Roman empire to violently sacrifice an equivalent of at least 40% of the city's population (which peaked at 1 million iirc) for their own amusement. How is that comparable to the fatalities caused by law enforcement officers operating on behalf of over 320,000,000 people, in any lens?

[zzzpaz]

This comment is so weak. Human life cannot be counted in percentage as every life matter.

I'm surprised that doesn't even have down votes.

[peoplefromibiza]

Rome was an empire that extended from Atlantic Ocean to the middle east, from England to Egypt, it wasn't just Rome.

and existed 2 thousand years ago, one would think that we learned something during the looooong period that separate us from ancient Romans, don't you think?

Wanna look at history with modern eyes?

Why don't we look at modern times with history eyes as well?

[akiselev]

The Roman empire didn't have television or powered transportation that allowed millions of people across the empire to visit the capitol for a weekend. This wasn't entertainment broadcast to the entire empire, it was a single arena with a little more than 50,000 seats - the vast majority of which were allocated by social class and only accessible to the residents of the city. The only relevance the rest of the empire has is as a source of sacrifices for the bloodsport.

I'm looking at history through the eyes of basic arithmetic and logic, a skill mastered by the Greeks well before Rome was founded. Comparing 400,000 deaths among a city of 1,000,000 to 400,000 deaths in a country of 320,000,000 is ridiculous, regardless of each respective groups' motivations and moral context.

[ALittleLight]

There's a fundamental problem with comparing arena deaths to police killings which is that they aren't like kinds. In other words, it's not like the Romans only killed people in arenas and their law enforcement never killed anyone.

I highly doubt Roman methods of law enforcement killed fewer per capita people than modern methods. Not to mention things like crucifying slaves.

[hef19898]

These blood sports were a political show of force as much as entertainment for the people. Showing the world that you could afford to sacrifice, or risk, the lives of expensive, highly trained slaves for entertainment tells would be adversaries a lot about your resources and relentlessness.

[peoplefromibiza]

> The Roman empire didn't have television or powered transportation that allowed millions of people across the empire to visit the capitol for a weekend.

That's where you are wrong.

Roman empire was as globalized as ours today, if not more, given the means of transport of their times.

> This wasn't entertainment broadcast to the entire empire, it was a single arena with a little more than 50,000 seats

2 thousands year ago.

still there.

a building in Miami collapsed few days ago. Built in 20th century.

Maybe it isn't simply "an arena with little more than 50,000 seats" but a marvel of human history...

Anyway, shows went on for days, sometimes weeks, all day long, so that anyone could attend them.

So counting the seats in the Colosseum is not the right way to measure how popular the shows were.

> 400,000 deaths among a city of 1,000,000

in 4 hundred years (actually the games lasted for a thousands year, but the peak period is shorter).

mostly slaves brought back to Rome from countries defeated in war.

I've specifically talked about police killings because police is supposed to protect people, not kill them.

What will future historian think of that in your opinion?

If you wanna talk about fatalities in ancient history, you should also take into account the general mortality rate.

Of course in a battle arena people died, but it was probably much less dangerous to fight in the Colosseum than living in Caledonia, on the other side of the Hadrian's wall.

We shouldn't argue of what we don't know. It's an exercise in futility.

«the only thing we learn from history is that we learn nothing from history»

edit: to make it clearer why counting bodies is misleading: gladiators became freemen after 6 years on average, 15-20 fights in total. They earned a lot of money and were popular figures, some of them were immensely popular (think about Spartacus). As free men many of them had enough saved to become owners and trainers and earned a respected position in the society. It wasn't uncommon for a gladiator to stay on the job after becoming a free man because it was an highly rewarding activity. They knew their fate, but they decided to keep fighting anyway.

Now fast forward to 2021 and think about Mike Tyson going back on the ring at the age of 54, even though it could kill him. Would you consider the people watching the match savages because they are paying to watch 2 men punching each other in the face?

[zzzpaz]

Yes is still alive in many places US included. But this comment is just stupid, everybody knows what happened in the colosseum so does everybody knows that major civilizations were build on top of genocides. North and south America, Australia are just a few recent example of the great British empire.

You don't want to consider it an historical relique? That's ok, but then don't bother to visit countries that have been aggressive since inception