Lord Sovereign
The resident Britbong
I myself believe that whilst the Romans were a brutal people (they had to be, as they hailed from a brutal time), a crowd at the Colosseum simply wouldn't enjoy Panem's Hunger Games. As far as blood sports go, it is rather unimaginative. Yes there's some interesting traps but at the end of the day you are mostly (aside from the careers) throwing barely trained kids at each other in a massive arena where they can avoid each other for days. There aren't any unique classes of fighter, Retiarii, Samnites or Secutores to play off against each other, and none of them are really known to the public (so you can't root for them in quite the same way). Gladiators were god damn superstars (which is something the books sort of got right, except Gladiators remained mega-stars in-between their many fights). I also severely doubt the Romans would be delighted, if they got a favourite fighter, that the poor saps aren't even allowed to raise their finger in "missio." People forget that Gladiators, exceedingly valuable assets to their schools with a lot of money spent on them, weren't usually killed. Put up a good fight, which you would as a trained professional, and the crowd will let you live if it comes to it.
The aforementioned poor saps are also mostly kids, aside from the Careers whom the Romans would have little trouble with stomaching (full blown adults who've trained most of their lives for this? Two thousand sestertii on Cato!). As far as I'm aware, there aren't really any records of children being thrown into the amphitheater (feel free to correct me). As a people who deemed the Carthaginians barbarians for supposed child sacrifice, I don't think a Roman audience would be overly enthused watching a ripped eighteen year old gut a pleading, barely trained, spotty twelve year old.
And the gutting of these twelve year olds goes on for days. Disregarding all the rest, I think a Roman audience would simply get bored and leave. Given that they are used to mock naval battles, things might be a bit underwhelming.
I bring this up because Suzanne Collins was clearly trying to emulate Ancient Rome (the bloody President is called "Coriolanus") but I'm not entirely sure if she understood the society that produced Gladiator games (the effete Capitol doesn't seem quite martial enough to be really into blood sports). However, that is merely my opinion. What is yours?
The aforementioned poor saps are also mostly kids, aside from the Careers whom the Romans would have little trouble with stomaching (full blown adults who've trained most of their lives for this? Two thousand sestertii on Cato!). As far as I'm aware, there aren't really any records of children being thrown into the amphitheater (feel free to correct me). As a people who deemed the Carthaginians barbarians for supposed child sacrifice, I don't think a Roman audience would be overly enthused watching a ripped eighteen year old gut a pleading, barely trained, spotty twelve year old.
And the gutting of these twelve year olds goes on for days. Disregarding all the rest, I think a Roman audience would simply get bored and leave. Given that they are used to mock naval battles, things might be a bit underwhelming.
I bring this up because Suzanne Collins was clearly trying to emulate Ancient Rome (the bloody President is called "Coriolanus") but I'm not entirely sure if she understood the society that produced Gladiator games (the effete Capitol doesn't seem quite martial enough to be really into blood sports). However, that is merely my opinion. What is yours?