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The Ancient Roman civilization can be portrayed in many ways. It can be shown as a place of elegance, high culture and civilization, the model of civilized life, but when we look deeper, it shows a world of violence and murder, one which is debatably the most terrible of it's time. Of course, I speak of the gladiators. They were prisoners of war, slaves and criminals. And every so often, and emperor, senator or a …

…are part of this growing culture of war, elegance, and death. In publicly witnessing such punishment, citizens were reassured that the proper social order has been restored. In this display, the games reaffirmed the moral and political order of things, and the death of criminals and wild animals, the real and symbolic re-establishment of a society under threat. In the arena, civilization triumphed over the wild and untamed, over the outlaw, the barbarian, the enemy.