The Lure of the Arena: Social Psychology and the Crowd at the Roman Games Review

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The Lure of the Arena: Social Psychology and the Crowd at the Roman Games ReviewConfession first: I became a huge fan of Prof. Fagan (whom I never met) after listening to his courses on Roman history for the Teaching Company. I also read (and reviewed on amazon) his quirky book Bathing in Public in the Roman World.
The Lure of the Arena brings the bloody sights and wild sounds of the Roman arena into the peaceful corner of the modern world in which you happen to read this book. A typical arena performance began with the killing of wild animals in the morning, slowed down for public executions around lunch time, then went into high gear with gladiatorial fights in the afternoon. Prof. Fagan quotes historical sources to illustrate all three stages and the crowd's reaction to them.
Were Romans alone in finding the sight of people and animals tormented and killed so appealing? From well before the Roman times, through public executions in medieval and not so medieval Europe, up to our modern Ultimate Fighting, people across millennia and cultures have been drawn to public displays of violence. Still, no society has made a public spectacle out of violence as Rome did. Why?
Professor Fagan suggests four reasons: slavery conditioned Romans to see certain classes of people as wholly expendable; the Roman world was awash with brutality, violence, and degradation of the weak and powerless; Rome's dehumanizing focus on hierarchy and status; pain and death were omnipresent, with life expectancy of about 25 years. He masterfully weaves historic sources with the results of modern experimental psychology to make the experience of the arena almost palpable - he channels ancient Rome for us, while explaining it at the same time.
This book helped cure me of a certain romantization of Rome. I used to think that there was this wonderfully civilized society where a person could travel from Britain to North Africa without fear, which was destroyed by invaders and from within and leaving in its wake forests full of beasts, illiteracy, savages, and isolated villages hunkered down for the Dark Ages. Now, reading about mass murder of Christians and Jews in the arena, it becomes clear why there were people who welcomed the fall of Rome.The Lure of the Arena: Social Psychology and the Crowd at the Roman Games Overview

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