Spectacles in ancient Rome

The spectacles in ancient Rome were numerous, open to all citizens and generally free of charge; some of them were distinguished by the grandeur of the stagings and cruelty.
Romans preferred to attend gladiatorial fights, those with ferocious beasts, reproductions of naval battles, chariot races, athletic contests, theatrical performances by mimes, and pantomimes.
Forty years after the invective of Juvenal, who lamented the republican sobriety and severity of a people who now aspired only to panem et circenses, bread and spectacles, Fronto, in almost the same words, described disconsolately the sad reality:
Indeed, the Roman ruling class considered it its primary task to distribute food once a month to the people and to distract them and regulate their leisure time with the free entertainment offered on religious holidays or secular occasions.

Feasts in the Roman calendar

Numerous were the occasions for Romans to attend spectacles during Roman festivals on the occasion of religious celebrations. From a rough calculation " neglecting certain duplications whereby two festivals coincided ...we arrive at this mathematical calculation: the obligatory feast days of imperial Rome occupied more than half the year...."
But in addition to those offered in Rome by the Caesars there were also those that were celebrated in the countryside in peasant hamlets, neighborhood festivals in honor of local shrines, those of the new cults, those of the guilds, those of the military, and finally those that surprisingly offered imperial munificence such as gladiatorial fights that in the second century CE could last for months at a time. Thus "it can be said that there was no Roman year that did not bear two feast days to a working day." and that the spectacles were thus almost daily. Suetonius records that since confusion and disorder reigned in the spectacles, the Roman emperor, Augustus, introduced order and discipline, as well as:
Augustus had also made it a habit, in the days leading up to the spectacles, in case some animal never before seen and worthy of being known had been brought to Rome, to present it to the people in an extraordinary way, in any place: for example, a rhinoceros at the Saepta Julia, a tiger in a theatrical scene, a snake of fifty cubits in front of the Tribal Assembly.
Again Augustus had the Senate decree that, for the duration of public spectacles, wherever they were offered, the first row of benches belonged to the senators, and he forbade Rome to allow ambassadors from allied or free nations to take their seats in the orchestra, because he had been embarrassed that there were free slaves in some delegations. He separated the soldiers from the people; he assigned to the married plebeians their own bleachers; to those who wore the pretesta a particular sector of the bleachers and the one beside their preceptors; he forbade those who were poorly dressed to stand in the middle bleachers. He did not allow women to sit during gladiator fights, which they once could observe alongside their men, except at the top and alone. Regarding fights between athletes, he strictly forbade women from entering the theater before the fifth hour.

The religious significance of the spectacles

Originally each festival had a religious cult linked to it. For example: the fishing contest that took place on June 8 in the presence of the praetor and ended with an eating of fried fish was originally, as Festus testifies, a substitute sacrifice in honor of the god Vulcan, who accepted the exchange of pisciculi ''pro animis humanis.
The religious sacrificial significance, which the Romans had now forgotten, was still present in the horse race held in the Forum on October 13. The winning horse was immolated, its blood spilled for lustrations, its head hotly contested between the inhabitants of the Via Sacra and those of the Suburra who competed for the honor of displaying the relic of the "October horse." This festival was a reminder of the horse race that the Latins of ancient Rome celebrated at the end of the annual war expedition that began in the spring and ended in the fall. In those bygone days the blood of the winning horse that was sacrificed served to purify the city.
The sacred character was also present in the Republican age when in 105 BC gladiatorial fights were instituted by the state, originally born as a cult rendered by private individuals at the tomb of their parents. The religious character was preserved in the term munus'' that designated these bloody fights that were meant to appease the gods. Even in the second century AD Festus calls them "oblations offered on official grounds," Tertullian, "obligatory honors to the Mani," and Ausonius, "blood shed on earth to appease the god armed with a sickle."
By the imperial era, Roman audiences had completely forgotten these religious references even though a certain ritual etiquette had been established since the time of Augustus: spectators, for example, had to wear the gala toga:
And, if they did not want to be turned away, they had to keep a polite attitude: they could, finally, neither eat nor drink during the performances. Even if one had to stand up during the inaugural procession with the statues of the imperial stars along with those of the deities, it was done as a sign of respect and gratitude to the imperial dynasty that offered them such grandiose spectacles.
The ancient religious imprint of the games for the Romans of the imperial age had now been reduced to formalities that bore no relation to the rituals of a religion now forgotten and had been replaced by the astrological symbolism depicted in the arena, which represented the earth, and in the moat surrounding the track, the sea; the obelisk symbolized the sun at the top of the sky; the seven laps of the chariot race track reproduced the orbit of the seven planets and the succession of the seven days of the week; the twelve doors of the chariot sheds facing the circus depicted the places of the zodiac.

The relationship between the prince and the crowd

When the emperor appeared in the circus, amphitheater, or theater, the crowd greeted him by standing up and waving white handkerchiefs, paying homage to him and manifesting their presence and their emotional, almost religious, co-participation in his witnessing the same spectacle taking place in common sight.
Of this crowd of spectators who had the good fortune "to see the prince in person in the midst of his people," the emperor also made it an instrument of political power by forging, through his direct relationship with the crowd in the spectacles, the public opinion that, in the absence of the ancient Comitia and the autonomy of the Senate, no longer had a way of expressing itself.
The spectacles thus strengthened the political power of the prince and at the same time safeguarded what remained of traditional religion. Spectacles, in a population where 150,000 people lived without working at the expense of the state and where those who had employment had half the day free of commitments, including, forcibly, political ones, served to occupy leisure time and to distract and channel passions, instincts, and violence.
Suetonius reports that Augustus, when he attended the games, usually sat in the dining room of one of his friends or freedmen, sometimes sitting in his tribune, together with his wife and children. He would absent himself from the performances sometimes for several hours, sometimes for days, apologizing and recommending to the people the magistrates who were to take his place in his absence. When he attended, he was very attentive and participative to avoid discontent, since the people in the past had complained about his adoptive father, Gaius Julius Caesar, who used to devote himself during the games to reading letters and petitions. Augustus took supreme pleasure in attending them, something he never made a secret of.
It happened, then, that he frequently offered, even at his own expense, gladiatorial spectacles and games organized by others, with crowns and rich prizes. He did not attend any contest of performances of Greek origin and setting without honoring each of the participants on his own merit. He had particular interest in boxing matches, especially the Latin ones, which he often compared with the Greek ones, and not only among professionals, but also among commoners fighting on street corners, without special boxing technique. To the athletes he preserved their privileges, indeed increased them, and forbade gladiators to fight without adequate reward; as for the histrions, he limited to the period of the games and the theater the coercive power of the magistrates, which previously a law had extended to everywhere and to any period. He always demanded strict discipline in competitions among athletes or in gladiatorial combat. He repressed, finally, some behavior judged morally disordered by the histrions, and when he learned that a certain Stephanius, author of fabulae togatae, was being served at the table by a woman with her hair cut in a boyish fashion, he banished him and had him beaten with rods in three theaters.

The spectacles

Agons

The main sports in ancient Rome were: pankration, wrestling, boxing, running, javelin throw, discus throw, and shot put, which were modeled after Ancient Greece. The conception of sports in Ancient Rome, however, did not reflect the Greek culture's predilection for nonprofessional athletic activities, for agons, bloodless contests concerning not only sports but also different fields of human activities, where the winner received a prize for demonstrating, according to the Greek mentality, his or her superior physical and moral gifts. Forty years before the conquest of Greece, even before its civilization influenced the Roman civilization, certamina graeca, such as those instituted by Marcus Fulvius Nobilior in 186 BC, were considered by Roman society to be immoral exhibitions devoid of the practical purposes that gave meaning to military gymnastic training for the exercise of war. The intellectual Tacitus wrote that he feared, as did the part of Roman society most attached to traditions, that Greek refinements might invalidate ancient values:
In the same vein should be considered the aversion of the senatorial class to those emperors infatuated with Greek civilization such as Caligula or Nero, who aroused scandal by taking pleasure in attending the games in person.