World expert and film consultant debunks 3 gladiator myths

Big Think ^ | NOVEMBER 14, 2023 | Jonny Thomson

[Red Badger]

Rome Ping!......................

[DCBryan1]

[Red Badger]

I knew that was coming!....................

[higgmeister]

What does The Metatron think about that?

[SkyDancer]

Early football. I wonder how football would have been played back then.

[Red Badger]

There would have been no ‘Roughing the Passer’ rule..............

[Red Badger]

The archangel?..................

[bert]

Here’s what Bing AI Provided:

Table of Contents
Did Gladiator fights have rules?
Documents of Suetonius
Digression: why were all roman emperors called caesar?
End of digression
How does Suetonius document proof the rules of Gladiator fights?
Conclusion
Did Gladiator fights have referees?
Who were the referees of Roman gladiator fights?
Sources
https://neutralhistory.com/did-gladiator-fights-have-rules/

[tomkat]

Hooow predictable !               (:-)LOL

[DesertRhino]

Now, about those Christians and lions....

[higgmeister]

https://www.youtube.com/@metatronyt/videos

[SkyDancer]

Illegal clanging of swords?

[PUGACHEV]

I suppose the author is right under certain circumstances, limited perhaps to top level professional gladiators, but there was still plenty of blood and death in the arena on any given day. The whole point of the Meridiani, which preceded the evening’s gladiatorial event, was the death and slaughter of whatever unfortunates found themselves at the center of the day’s entertainment. And that’s not to mention the spectacles where whole groups of people were put to death for dramatic or sometimes even comic effect.

[Tell It Right]

IIRC there were variations of Medieval Ball (sometimes called Mob Ball or Mob Football). It was not regularly played -- pretty much when the men of a village or two villages would get bored in between wars. So there were no regular rules. It pretty much involved one side trying to get the ball (sometimes made from an inflated pig's bladder, hence the name "pigskin" today) to the goal zone at the other team's village

...
by any means necssary.

People would get killed or wounded for life.

This is somewhat what early American football looked like a century and a half ago when a few young men at ivy league schools started doing it. They were recreating Medieval Ball, but somewhat toned down. Not toned down enough to keep all of them alive (the early "progressives" tried to ban football because of this, but Teddy Roosevelt himself had seen a football game and thought it had merit, so he's one of the ones who encouraged not banning it but establishing safety rules).

[Red Badger]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metatron

[Red Badger]

I thought it evolved from Rugby.............

[Red Badger]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rugby_union#History

[Verginius Rufus]

I’ve been to the Colosseum in Rome and to the Colosseum in Oakland, and didn’t see any gladiators at either of them.

[NorthMountain]

Death on the football field was so common in the 1920s that the sport was nearly banned.