The Arena Games in the Roman Empire: a Contribution to the Explanation of the History of Morals and Humanity

Roman arena games essentially consisted of gladiator fights on life or death, cruel executions of delinquents, and chases with wild animals. Millions of humans and millions of animals were killed in the arenas during the Imperial period. This article shows that the mentioned elements of the games are found in most pre-modern societies around the globe since the oldest times, both in ancient civilizations and tribal societies. The rise of animal protection, the abolishment of duel cultures and sadistic punishment systems belong to cultural transformations that arise as late as the era of enlightenment and modernization. It can be shown that psychic-cognitive structures account for the ubiquity of the cruel practices in pre-modern societies and for their abolishment during the processes of modernization. Cross-cultural psychology is able to link these historical cognitive structures and transformations to empirical results detected among different contemporary cultures around the globe in the past 70 years.