Those About to Die

During five centuries of popularity, the Roman games, or ludi, started out as celebrations no more heinous than the average neighborhood carnival and grew into a spectacles of pointless massacre that slaughtered thousands of people and animals every month.  The games were so popular that they became a national institution through which millions of people―animal trappers, gladiator trainers, horse breeders, shippers, contractors, armorers, stadium attendants, doctors, promoters and businessmen of all kinds―made a living. In fact, the Roman economy was so dependent on their success that any attempt to terminate the games or to restrict their barbarity meant certain economic collapse.

Stadiums were everywhere and thousands of citizens flocked to see the unthinkable. Gladiators, chariot races, parades, fights between a vast assortment of wild animals―elephants and rhinos, buffalo and tigers, and leopards and wild boars, rape and bestiality, mock battles and naval combats were scheduled over a period of several days or even weeks, so that crowds were entertained by a continuous stream of exhibitions. They demanded innovation and emperors complied―each attempting to trump the last in order to sustain interest and fuel glutted appetites.  The crowds shouted and screamed and laughed and betted as men, women, children and animals were hacked, crucified, torn to pieces, ravished, burned, and drown.  The acts were inconceivable; the numbers staggering. A gathering of biographies, paintings, and other historical evidence  would create a treatise worth noting, but like other great novelists, Daniel Mannix has gone beyond the facts, and has prepared the scenes, added script, and brought the games to life.

So, why? Why did the games to develop into nothing short of sadistic debauches?  Why did no one stop them?  In the last and most stunning chapter the author addresses the question that historians and philosophers have pondered for over fifteen hundred years. Today the reasons presented by the author for consideration are more significant than ever before. His observations are sobering. His conclusions  profound. This is the book you will never forget.