Ancient Roman society is full of culture and the riches of the past. With the Roman Empire being one of the largest in the world, and in history, the span of the past to focus on is wide. One of the main focuses in Jerry Toners “The Day Commodus Killed a Rhino” is the Roman Games and what they brought to the Roman culture. Toner writes of the games themselves, the participants and spectators, and the overall reflection of the games on the Roman people and those around the games. If the Roman Empire was so powerful then why did so many of its own people die to the Roman games?
The Roman games were a cruel and awful thing that was entertaining to the Roman people. The games were held mostly in the coliseums which were enormous in size and structure. The people who participated it the games; the gladiators, slaves criminals, etc... were killed for fun and in horrible ways. In some instances the men were killed by lions which mauled the men to death then feasted on the lifeless body in front of the crowd. Also some criminals were tied to a post and had no choice but to basically watch themselves get eaten by animals and not even have a fighting chance at life. To have
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The reason why so many of their people died is because they had killed them. Either in battle or in the coliseum, many of the Roman people died for entertainment. One of the main focuses in Jerry Toners “The Day Commodus Killed a Rhino” is the Roman Games and what they brought to the Roman culture. As Toner wrote of the games themselves, the participants and spectators, and the overall reflection of the games on the Roman people and those around the games we find that people all around would be killed. So if the Roman Empire was so powerful then why did so many of its own people die to the Roman games? To keep power and to show everyone what the government was capable of. This was addressed to the christians, slaves and everyone in