Seneca on the Gladitorial Games

Modern stereotypical impressions are that all Romans thoroughly enjoyed watching people being slaughtered in the arena. As in any society, there was a sizable segment of the population attracted to such blood spectacles. Passages from Seneca indicate that many others found them repulsive.

The arena has many uses, but oftentimes was used as the state's vehicle for executing criminals. What Seneca describes was no sport, it was simply executions carried out by the criminals themselves....no one survived. Seneca reacts to what he saw and cannot, in this case, restrain his moral indignation:

There is nothing more harmful to one's character that attendance at such spectacle, because vices more easily creep into your soul while you are being entertained. When I return from some spectacle, I am greedier, more aggressive, and more addicted to pleasurable sensations; I am more cruel and inhumane.........
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...........Now all niceties were put aside and it was pure and simple murder......In the morning, men are thrown to the lions and the bears; at noon, they are thrown to the spectators. The spectators demand that combatants who have killed their opponents be thrown to combatants who will in turn kill them and they make a victor stay for another slaughter. For every combatant, the outcome is certain death.