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Essay / Research Paper Abstract
8 pages in length. Animals and sports have had a long-standing love/hate relationship: For man, the benefits are more times than not skewed in his favor for conquest; for the animal, the spectacle known as entertainment is nothing more than an attempt at fighting for his life. For the Roman gladiators, animal slaughter was mere folly – a precursor to the real event: human-to-human massacre. It is interesting, however, the extent to which the Roman Government went in order to supply these events with the massive numbers of animals required, often scouring the Roman Empire and beyond as a means by which to capture and retrieve the thousands upon thousands of various species tagged for such a dreadful fate. Bibliography lists 12 sources.
Page Count:
8 pages (~225 words per page)
File: LM1_TLCVenat.rtf
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Unformatted sample text from the term paper:
more than an attempt at fighting for his life. For the Roman gladiators, animal slaughter was mere folly - a precursor to the real event: human-to-human massacre. It
is interesting, however, the extent to which the Roman Government went in order to supply these events with the massive numbers of animals required, often scouring the Roman Empire and
beyond as a means by which to capture and retrieve the thousands upon thousands of various species tagged for such a dreadful fate. "At vast expense the Roman government
imported animals from every corner of the known world--tigers from India, leopards from Asia minor; lions, elephants and other creatures from Africa; wild bulls from Northern Europe; and so on"
(Casson, 1975, p. 94). The exploit that took place to help stir the crowd into a frenzy prior to the main event was the gladiatorial combat of hunting, otherwise called
the venatio. Once gathered up from different parts of the Roman empire these exotic - and sometimes not so exotic - animals were stalked, poked, prodded and ultimately killed
by the bestiarius, or beast fighter, during the morning and afternoon before the man-to-man gladiatorial combat took place. The way in which the animals were collected speaks of quite
dichotomy, in that after being captured by bush beaters and others on horseback, who used nets and shields to snare their prey (Dunkle, 2002), they were then transported with the
best of food and care to make sure they were healthy upon arrival and ready for slaughter. A weak animal did not make for a worthy adversary (Futrell, 1998).
"Gladiatorial games and beast hunts allowed Romans to celebrate their mastery over the empire. The destruction of beasts, brought to Rome from all corners of the empire, symbolised
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