The Roman Arena

Misha Glenny and guests discuss the countless venues across the Roman Empire which for over five hundred years drew the biggest crowds both in the Republic and under the Emperors. The shows there delighted the masses who knew, no matter how low their place in society, they were much better off than the gladiators about to fight or the beasts to be slaughtered. Some of the Roman elites were disgusted, seeing this popular entertainment as morally corrupting and un-Roman. Moral degradation was a less immediate concern though than the overspill of violence. There was a constant threat of gladiators being used as a private army and while those of the elite wealthy enough to stage the shows hoped to win great prestige, they risked disappointing a crowd which could quickly become a mob and turn on them.

→ Listen on BBC Sounds website

Guests

• Kathleen Coleman No other episodes
  James Loeb Professor of the Classics at Harvard University
• John Pearce No other episodes
  Reader in Archaeology at King's College London
• Matthew Nicholls 6 episodes
  Fellow and Senior Tutor at St John's College, Oxford

Reading list

• The Sorrows of the Ancient Romans: The Gladiator and the Monster
  C. A. Barton (Princeton University Press, 1993) Google Books →
• Gladiators: Violence and Spectacle in Ancient Rome
  Roger Dunkle (Pearson, 2008) Google Books →
• The Lure of the Arena: Social Psychology and the Crowd at the Roman Games
  Garrett G. Fagan (Cambridge University Press, 2011) Google Books →
• Blood in the Arena: The Spectacle of Roman Power
  A. Futrell (University of Texas Press, 1997) Google Books →
• The Roman Games: A Sourcebook
  A. Futrell (Blackwell Publishing, 2006) Google Books →
• The Colosseum
  Keith Hopkins and Mary Beard (Profile, 2005) Google Books →
• Gladiators at Pompeii
  Luciana Jacobelli (The J. Paul Getty Museum, 2003) Google Books →
• Gladiators and Caesars: The Power of Spectacle in Ancient Rome
  Eckart Kohne and Cornelia Ewigleben (eds.) (University of California Press, 2000)
• Spectacles of Death in Ancient Rome
  Donald Kyle (Routledge, 1998) Google Books →
• The Gladiators: History's Most Deadly Sport
  F. Meijer (Souvenir, 2004) Google Books →
• The Day Commodus killed a Rhino: Understanding the Roman Games
  Jerry Toner (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2014) Google Books →
• The Roman Amphitheatre from its Origins to the Colosseum
  K. Welch (Cambridge University Press, 2007) Google Books →
• Emperors and Gladiators
  T. Wiedemann (Routledge, 1992) Google Books →

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Programme ID: m002qj85

Episode page: bbc.co.uk/programmes/m002qj85

Auto-category: 937.06 (History of ancient world; Rome - Social and cultural history)