Roman Arena Research Articles

History of Italian Renaissance Art, 5th ed.

History of Italian Renaissance Art, 5th ed.

Lightning strikes.

Shortly before the open-air performance in the Roman arena of Il Trovatore on the night of July 6, 2002, Verona was assaulted by a severe thunderstorm. Even if bad weather had not been forecast, the day had been ominously muggy, yet few locals seemed prepared. The performance went ahead, and when, towards midnight, the Verdi was suspended it was simply because the air was deemed a little damp for strings. I do not know what Verona's lightning precautions are but in Italy a soggy Stradivarius is clearly a serious threat to civilised living. Treatment of neurotrophic keratopathy with substance-P-derived peptide (FGLM) and insulin-like growth factor IA 55-year-old woman was referred to us in October 1997. In January, 1997, she had experienced sudden onset of visual disturbance, pain, and hyperaemia in her left eye. She visited an ophthalmologist who diagnosed corneal epithelial erosion due to the hypolacrimation, and treated her with eye drops containing ofloxacin and hyaluronic acid. The epithelial erosion did not heal. She visited another ophthalmologist who added a therapeutic soft contact lens with no improvement. Full-Text PDF

Blood in the Arena: The Spectacle of Roman Power

. . bring[s] fresh perspectives to the study of the Roman amphitheater, situating the Roman arena within a larger cross-cultural framework of human sacrifice and providing important insights into the psychological dimensions of these public spectacles for the Roman viewer. --Classical World From the center of Imperial Rome to the farthest reaches of ancient Britain, Gaul, and Spain, amphitheaters marked the landscape of the Western Roman Empire. Built to bring Roman institutions and the spectacle of Roman power to conquered peoples, many still remain as witnesses to the extent and control of the empire. In this book, Alison Futrell explores the arena as a key social and political institution for binding Rome and its provinces. She begins with the origins of the gladiatorial contest and shows how it came to play an important role in restructuring Roman authority in the later Republic. She then traces the spread of amphitheaters across the Western Empire as a means of transmitting and maintaining Roman culture and control in the provinces. Futrell also examines the larger implications of the arena as a venue for the ritualized mass slaughter of human beings, showing how the gladiatorial contest took on both religious and political overtones. This wide-ranging study, which draws insights from archaeology and anthropology, as well as Classics, broadens our understanding of the gladiatorial contest and its place within the highly politicized cult practice of the Roman Empire.

Blood in the Arena: The Spectacle of Roman Power

." . . bring[s] fresh perspectives to the study of the Roman amphitheater, situating the Roman arena within a larger cross-cultural framework of human sacrifice and providing important insights into the psychological dimensions of these public spectacles for the Roman viewer." --Classical World From the center of Imperial Rome to the farthest reaches of ancient Britain, Gaul, and Spain, amphitheaters marked the landscape of the Western Roman Empire. Built to bring Roman institutions and the spectacle of Roman power to conquered peoples, many still remain as witnesses to the extent and control of the empire. In this book, Alison Futrell explores the arena as a key social and political institution for binding Rome and its provinces. She begins with the origins of the gladiatorial contest and shows how it came to play an important role in restructuring Roman authority in the later Republic. She then traces the spread of amphitheaters across the Western Empire as a means of transmitting and maintaining Roman culture and control in the provinces. Futrell also examines the larger implications of the arena as a venue for the ritualized mass slaughter of human beings, showing how the gladiatorial contest took on both religious and political overtones. This wide-ranging study, which draws insights from archaeology and anthropology, as well as Classics, broadens our understanding of the gladiatorial contest and its place within the highly politicized cult practice of the Roman Empire.

The Ideology of the Arena

The Roman arena is often described as an exotic or peripheral institution. Alternatively, it has been seen as a culturally central institution. In this case one traditionally assumes either that the arena is used to pacify the lower classes or that it expresses themes of violence at the heart of Roman society. In the first view the arena's politics are cynical; in the second they are often described as decadent or full of despair. While none of these readings should be neglected, this essay argues that the arena can be examined as a productive institution which helps in the maintenance of Roman social relations from the top to the bottom and from the violent to the banal. When viewed in the light of Louis Althusser's idea of the ideological state apparatus, the arena can be read as political and psychological without recourse to notions of cunning calculation or psychic crisis. The arena is not only normal, but it participates in the production of normativity. This study pays particular attention to the ways in which the arena enables a specific kind of vision of the Roman world. In this vision the Roman nobiles in general and, later, the emperor in particular are reaffirmed as legitimate authorities: the rulers perhaps need the arena more than does the mob. The arena is also a locus at which the relations of domination which subsist between Rome and its subjects and between the sexes are reproduced in both the social and theatrical senses: the arena stages culturally vital spectacles. Indeed the export of the arena into the Roman provinces also entails the exportation of the Roman social structures which the arena serves. The Romanness of the arena is in fact so pervasive that even many of the hostile appraisals of the arena which come to us from antiquity reproduce the hierarchical social vision which the arena enables even as the institution itself is repudiated. Accordingly all representations of the arena need to be read within the logic of the arena itself. The ideology of the arena has no outside.

The Roman arena in late-Republican Italy: a new interpretation

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Rabbi Simeon ben Lakish at the Gladiator's Banquet: Rabbinic Observations on the Roman Arena

Rabbi Simeon ben Lakish at the Gladiator's Banquet: Rabbinic Observations on the Roman Arena

II.—Excavations at Sparta, 1906: § 2.—The City Wall

From the 3rd till the 26th of May a series of trial excavations was made along the river bank, north of the precinct of Artemis Orthia. These resulted in the discovery of the Greek wall of the city and of traces of an, at present, nameless Heroön close to it. The following description begins from the south. (General Plan, Pl. VII.)The part of the wall found south-east of the Artemisium is, as far as it has at present been uncovered, of a normal type (Plate VII.). It is three metres thick, built of hewn limestone blocks laid in courses with irregular jointing. Not more than two courses are preserved, and they rest on a foundation of small stones and rough blocks. Most remarkable is the deep drain running out through the wall, which here comes obliquely from the cliff to the south, between the Roman building and the river. Where the Eurotas has eaten into the bank and destroyed part of the Roman arena, the wall also has been carried away. On the cliff (General Plan, O 16) a few trial pits produced one tile-stamp (of type 17, see p. 348), and revealed a long block of hewn rock, but the line of the fortification has still to be found here.