Thousands of animalswere necessary for the games: when the Colosseum was inaugurated, 9.000 animals were killed, and Suetonius affirms that 5.000 wild beasts were presented to the audience in one single day. Even if these figures are exaggerated, nevertheless in North Africa lions and elephants disappeared, hunted for centuries in order to provide for the games. …
Staged huntswere a parody of reality inspired by the Roman taste for fake and imitation, but there were other shows that were even more fantastic, peculiar of the Roman feeling for nature. In the silvae, painters, technicians and stage architects reconstructed a false scenery in the arena, with trees and bushes made to resemble a forest …
In the year 73 BCa group of thirty or maybe seventy gladiators from the school of Lentulus, in Capua, near Naples, revolted and fled on the Vesuvius. They chose as leaders Spartacus, Crissus and Enomaos. Spartacus was a gladiator, from Thrace; little is known of him; the historian Appianus says he was a Roman soldier, …
