“A staggering 200,000 people, it has been calculated, met a violent death in the Colosseum alone, and there were similar, smaller, arenas in every major city of the Empire.”

That’s pretty horrific!

Symmachus, an Urban Prefect of Rome in the Fourth Century, wrote to Emperor Valentinian II in 383 to let him know how popular the spectacle of seeing barbarians killed in the arena was. He said that the people loved to see their “brave soldiers take [the barbarians] prisoner” and let gladiators “finish them off” in the Colosseum.

Peter Heather said that “for him(Symmachus) these deaths symbolized that civilized Roman order would continue to prevail over the barbarian forces of chaos.” Though, in reality it was only 27 years after he wrote the letter that Rome would be sacked in 410AD by the barbarian Goths under Alaric.

Source - The Fall of the Roman Empire: A New History of Rome and the Barbarians by Peter Heather

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