Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
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It's Tom Holland here, and I have teamed up with the great Mary Beard to bring you four episodes on what we together have decided are the four most iconic themes in ancient history. And today, we're looking at gladiators. Here's a short extract of that episode. Hello, everybody, and welcome to the last of our sensational classically-themed bonuses for you, our beloved members.
The great Mary Beard is still here. Obviously, her main focus at the moment is Instant Classics, her sensational podcast with Charlotte Higgins. But back in the mists of time, she co-authored a book on the Colosseum, probably the most iconic building in the whole of Rome, kind of great emblem of the Roman Empire. And so for our final episode, what else could we do but gladiators?
We've done an episode on the Colosseum and the rest of its history. We've done one on gladiators. But what we haven't done is an episode on the most famous of all gladiators, namely Spartacus. So I thought that that's what we would structure today's episode around.
But Mary, before we come to Spartacus, can I just ask you, suppose you had the opportunity to go back in a time machine and to watch a gladiatorial show. Do you think you would avail yourself of that opportunity?
I don't know.
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Chapter 2: What are the origins of gladiatorial combat?
I mean, it puts you on the spot, doesn't it? I've written about gladiators. I've researched them. And then am I going to say, no, I wouldn't go and have a look? I think that when it comes to kind of morals, I'd have to say to myself, look, you went to see Gladiator 1 in the movies and you went to see Gladiator 2. Now, okay, those weren't real.
of violence that you saw was staged, CGI and all the rest, but it sure looked real. So I wonder what the difference is between watching that at the movies and watching it in the open air with real human beings. And I think that's a slightly more profound question than it might sound.
Do you think that the obvious fascination that people have for the idea of gladiators Is that telling us anything about what people find interesting in ancient Rome per se, do you think?
It's quite difficult. If you quiz people and put them on the spot just like you put me on the spot, they will say, oh, you know, this is one of the... There are many blots on the national record of Rome, but gladiators comes pretty high in the list of the unacceptable about Rome.
I think that you have to weigh that against the fact that thousands, hundreds of thousands of little model gladiators are still bore outside the Coliseum. That until the photograph trade was banned, people paid a lot of money to have their own photographs taken outside the Coliseum with people pretending to be gladiators. I think that we probably need to look quite carefully
at our own fascination.
Right. So, I mean, the implication of that is that the interest that people feel in gladiators, the obvious fascination is speaking to something perhaps that is deep within all humans rather than being culturally specific to Rome, do you think?
Well, I'm trying to avoid saying that, but I can see why you lost my answer in that way. I think that one of the things, and I don't know whether this is universal or culturally specific, one of the things that attracts people to Rome is that sense of over-the-topness. And that's over-the-topness when it comes to sex, when it comes to violence, when it comes to cruelty.
And, you know, maybe Rome remains a place where we can explore that side of ourselves, but safely under the kind of alibi that this is all about ancient history.
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Chapter 3: Who was Spartacus and what made him legendary?
And the descriptions of the number of people who are passing through the slave markets there gives you a very vivid sense of the kind of the dislocation that Roman power is bringing to the East.
People visit Delos now. It's one of the glorious islands of the Mediterranean. Its past is absolutely admired in slavery and its profits. And certainly a lot of that comes from war. But when we were talking about Julius Caesar, we talked about pirates. I mean, one of the ways that the pirates in the Mediterranean arrived
are making their living is they kidnap someone, they might kill them in the end. More profitable, if they can't get a ransom, is to sell them into slavery.
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