Hi, I'm David Bercot, and tonight we're going to be talking about what the early Christians believed about entertainment and what they did for entertainment. But to do this, we first have to talk about what the Romans did for entertainment. Now, when I use the word Romans tonight, I'm not talking just about the people who lived in the city of Rome. In fact, I'm not even talking just about the people who lived in Italy or who had been from Italy.
I'm talking about all of the people throughout the Roman Empire, which covered the whole Mediterranean world. And so this would include ethnic Romans, Greeks, Syrians, Egyptians, North Africans, and many others. Certainly, there was some variation of entertainment between these various people groups and geographical areas. However, basically, they all did the same things. Certain things might be more popular in one area than another. And to one degree or another, all of those ethnic groups adopted Roman culture.
In fact, most of these people thought of themselves as Romans, first of all, not as Egyptians or North Africans or that sort of thing. Now, there were four main types of entertainment that were popular throughout the Roman Empire. One was sports, athletic events. Second were spectacles in the arena and amphitheater. Third type were the theaters, and fourth would be banqueting. The plan I'm going to follow tonight is to take these four areas of entertainment one by one.
First, I'm going to describe to you what the Romans did, what these types of entertainment entailed back there in the early centuries. And then I'm going to show you from their own writings how the early Christians viewed these things. So with that plan, let's start first of all with sports. Actually, athletic games originated as part of various Greek religious festivals or funerary commemorations associated with the worship of the dead. In fact, the most famous of these athletic contests are the Olympic Games.
They were actually held at the Great Sanctuary of Zeus in Olympia, Greece, and they were part of pagan worship. They began with prayer and with a sacrifice to one or more gods. So what attitude do you think the early Christians had towards them? Well, as you can probably guess, the early Christians refused to have anything to do with the Olympic Games.
And when I first read the early Christian writings, which was 17 years ago, I couldn't help but notice the contrast between how the early Christians viewed the Olympics and how they're viewed by professed Bible-believing Christians today. The early Christians, as I said, refuse to have anything to do with them. In fact, if you were an Olympic athlete, you would be put out of the church. And if you were one before you became a Christian, they would not allow you to be baptized until you totally had left that off.
In contrast today, an Olympic athlete, if he's a professing Christian, is viewed with great admiration by most Bible-believing Christians. And throughout tonight, when I'm talking about Bible-believing Christians, I think you understand. I mean, evangelicals and others who profess to believe the Bible as the Word of God, whether or not their lives reflect that they do. I'm using the term as people call themselves.
I realize that probably the vast majority of people who call themselves Bible believing Christians deny Christ by the way they live. Anyway, as I was saying, today, if you're a professed Christian and you're an Olympic hero, you're also a spiritual hero in the eyes of most Bible-believing Christians.
I remember when I was a member of an evangelical Bible church back in the 80s, in one of our Sunday school rooms, there was a poster on the wall with the scripture that says, " Whatever you do, do all things for God's glory. " Those were the script. That was the scriptural passage, but now the poster showed on an Olympic athlete, a young woman doing gymnastics, dressed, I might say, rather immodestly. And the connotation was, " Oh, whatever you do, do it for God's glory.
" You can be an Olympic athlete and say, " You're doing that for God's glory. " Well, in what possible way can we imagine that that gives glory to God to be involved in something that originally Christians refused to have anything to do with? The Olympic Games originated as part of worship of Zeus. I realize today people in general don't worship Zeus anymore, and the Olympics aren't specifically religious festivals. And yet they are a continuation of what once were, and that was their origin.
I find it interesting how evangelical Christians will refuse to have anything to do with Halloween because of its pagan origin. But then other things that have an equally pagan origin, like the Olympics, oh, they embrace with great gusto. Let's look at some of the other sports. Now, in addition to these large religious athletic contests like the Olympics, there were local games and sporting events that were part of normal everyday Roman life.
And it seems like nearly all of the Roman sports either had pagan religious origins or else they were violent, and quite often they were both. Let me share with you some of their favorite sports. Boxing was certainly a very popular sport. And, you know, boxing is brutal today. People get their face beat up and swollen. And oftentimes a boxer later in his life is mentally impaired from all of the pounding that he has received. But it was even more brutal in Roman times.
Instead of wearing padded gloves like they do today, the boxers had their hands wrapped with leather straps that were weighted with metal so that they would do even more damage than just a bare fist. Often a successful Roman boxer would end up permanently maiming his opponent or even killing him. It wasn't considered the least bit unusual for one of the boxers to be killed in the course of the boxing contest. And nobody saw it as, oh, that was a dreadful sports injury that that happened.
I mean, they would be sitting there cheering if it was their favorite boxer who was winning. Wrestling was also a popular sport, and it was violent, although it did not usually result in somebody being killed. Then you had foot races and contests like that that were also part of the bigger athletic contests. But by far the most popular sporting event was chariot racing. Successful charioteers became quite wealthy and they were adored by the public just like sports heroes are today.
There was usually very heavy betting on the races and people had their, of course, their favorite driver, their favorite horses even. People would study the genealogy of the horses and they could relate to you who the sire was and go up the lineage, the pedigree of this horse and that horse, that sort of things. You can find graffiti all throughout the Roman Empire, either praising a chariot driver or even praising a particular horse. The chariot races were held in an elliptical stadium known as a circus.
Now, our English word circus has been directly derived from this, but a circus today is very different from what a circus was then. The circus referred to the arena, the elliptical stadium where the event was held, not the event itself. When you think of the word circus in its original meaning, you can think of the word circle because it was related to it. And the drivers made circuits or laps around the arena.
Well, in the summer of 2001, I visited the ruins of the Circus Maximus in Rome, which is the oldest of all Roman circuses. It was actually built over 300 years before Christ, and it lasted until well into the sixth century. Now it did burn down a couple of times. The bottom rows of the circus or the stadium were made out of stone or masonry, at least at one time.
Originally the entire structure was wood, and the wooden ones burned down from time to time, either struck by lightning or an oil lamp spilled or something like that. Today, all that's there is just a large field, and from the layout of the field, it has grassy ridges on both sides. You can kind of follow the outline of what the original stadium was, but today not even one stone exists from that. The Circus Maximus was actually the largest structure in Rome. It was even bigger than the Colosseum.
And as I said, it was rebuilt a number of times, and various Roman empires, excuse me, emperors, enlarged it. At its greatest size, it was six football fields long. That's 600 yards long. And it was 200 yards wide or two football fields wide. So to give you an idea of just how immense this structure was, to help you to visualize it, the Superdome in New Orleans, which until very recently was the largest indoor stadium in America, well, it will seat about 75,000 people to watch a football game.
Guess how many people the circus Maximus held? Well, it was over 300,000. So the Romans were quite ingenious engineers, the best the world had ever known up until that time, that they could build a structure that immense. Now, most historians estimate that the population of Rome in the first, second century, was around a million people. So this means that the Circus Maximus could hold practically a third of the whole city just in one place.
Now underneath the seating were shops, and then there were stalls selling food, and we had all other sorts of things, prostitutes hanging around, that kind of thing. Now these sporting events, like the chariot races, were nearly always public events. They weren't just private entertainment, but they were usually sponsored either by the emperor himself or by a wealthy senator or somebody like that.
The Roman government considered it part of the responsibility of government, or at least they considered it wise government, to provide entertainment for the population. Perhaps that would keep the population happy and not thinking about revolt, something like that. Now, the chariot races were quite a spectacle. I remember as a boy growing up, I saw the movie Ben Hur, which features in it a chariot race. And I would say it does not exaggerate at all what a Roman chariot race was really like.
The grounds of the Circus Maximus, where the races were held, was strewn with glittering sand so that it would be just a bright, showy thing. The manes on each of the horses were threaded with pearls. The chariots were usually decorated very ornately, and the charioteers would come driving out from the stables and, you know, the throngs of people would go wild, each one cheering his own particular team.
Now they didn't call them teams back then, I'm not talking about a team of horses, but there were what were called four factions of the chariots. And these were teams, but they didn't race as teams, they would race as individuals, but you had the blues, the greens, the reds, and the whites. And so each chariot driver would represent one of those factions. And the people in the city would be loyal fans of the Reds, for example, or the Greens.
And so that day, whoever happened to be the driver for the Greens, that's who they would cheer for. That was their favorite faction. And the chariots, it varied. Sometimes they were pulled by two horses, sometimes by three, and even sometimes by four horses. And just like in the movie Ben Hur, if you happen to have seen that, the presiding magistrate who would be clothed in purple, he would give the signal.
And when he did that, then the drivers would start their team of horses and they would go at reckless, dangerous speeds around this huge stadium. And in the middle of the arena at the bottom was a concrete structure, concrete and masonry, which usually had some various pagan obelisk and representations, and they would go around that seven times. Whoever was ahead at the end of the Seventh Lap won.
One of the Roman Emperors had built a string of seven dolphins made out of metal, and they would move to signal the end of each complete lap so that everyone could see how many laps they had completed and what lap the drivers were on. Well, chariot racing was an inherently very dangerous sport. Chariots are not particularly stable vehicles. They only have two wheels on them. And to have four chariots out there all racing at breakneck speeds.
As I said, it was just you were asking to have an accident and it was quite common that one of the chariots would turn over and maybe the driver would get out alive. But oftentimes he would be dragged to death or trampled by the horses of other chariots that were in the race. And this was just considered normal. Oh, somebody got killed. Oh, big deal. You know In fact, if it was of the opponent, if he was the red driver, you'd be there cheering if you were one of the fans of the greens or the blues or the whites.
The Romans enjoyed. They loved this kind of violence. The circus was also a place where love affairs could be arranged. I want to read to you what Ovid, a Roman writer, what he says about how to court women while you were at the circus. He said this in his work called The Art of Love. Nor should you neglect the horse races. And when they say horse races in their writings, they're talking about the chariots, not horse racing as we know it today. Many are the opportunities that await you in this spacious circus.
No call here for the secret language of fingers, nor need you depend upon a furtive nod. Nobody will prevent you sitting next to a girl. Sit as closely as you like. That's easy enough. The seating compels it. Now find an excuse to start a pleasant conversation and begin by saying things that you can say quite audibly. Be sure to ask her whose horses are entering the ring and whatever her fancy may be hasten to approve her choice. If as may well happen a speck of dust falls on your lady's lap, brush it gently away.
But should none fall? Still persist in brushing. If her cloak hangs low and trails on the ground, gather it up and lift it carefully from the dirt. As a reward, she won't hesitate to allow you a glimpse of her leg. At the same time, look to the robe behind and see that a stranger's knees are not pressed into her tender back. Light natures are won by little attentions. The clever arrangement of a cushion has often done a lover service.
Such are the advantages that the circus offers you when you are set upon a new affair. So that's how the Romans viewed the circus and these other sports. But what about the Christians? Well, the Christians took quite a different view than the world did about sports. And I want to read to you now from their own writings. So you can hear it firsthand. It won't be a matter of what David Bercot says that they said this or that, but you can hear it firsthand.
First of all, I want to read to you from one of the apologetic works of Tertullian. This is addressed to the pagans. He says, " We renounce all your spectacles. Among us, nothing is ever said, seen, or heard that has anything in common with the madness of the circus, the immodesty of the theater, the atrocities of the arena, or the useless exercise of the wrestling ground. Why do you take offense at us because we differ from you in regard to your pleasures?
So this isn't just a matter of Tertullian saying this, his personal view, but he notices or takes note that the Romans take offense at the Christians because they differ in their regard to pleasure, what they do for entertainment. Again, he writes, and that was from volume 3, page 46. Page 49, he says, " We do not go to your spectacles. As for the things that are sold there, if I need them, I will obtain them more readily at their proper places. " This is in volume 3, page 86.
Since all passionate excitement is forbidden to us, we are barred from every kind of spectacle, and especially from the circus. The spectators fly into rages, passions, arguments, and all kinds of things that they who are consecrated to peace should never indulge in. Next, there are curses and reproaches with no rational cause of hatred. There are cries of applause with nothing genuinely to merit them. Doesn't that sound just exactly like our sporting events today?
Again, he writes, " Does it remain for us to appeal to the pagans themselves? " Let them tell us whether it's right for Christians to frequent the shows. Why the rejection of these amusements is the chief sign to them that a man has adopted the Christian faith. So you see, it was so well known to the Romans that Christians would not go to the circus and to their other pleasures.
That if suddenly a man quit showing up at the arena or the circus or the stage, wherever the entertainment might be, well right away they'd start to suspect, hmm, I wonder if Gaea says maybe become a Christian. We don't see him anymore at the shows. Would anyone say that about Christians today? Again, Tertullian writes, " Seated where there is nothing of God, will one be thinking of His Maker? Will there be peace in His soul when there is eager strife there for a charioteer?
When the athletes are hard at struggle, will he be ready to proclaim that there must be no striking back? " Let me move to another writer now, Novatian. This brings us with Novatian well into the third century. But again, we see the same teaching. How idle are the contests themselves?
Strifes in colors, contentions in races, acclamations in mere questions of honor, rejoicing because a horse has been faster, grieving because it was more sluggish, reckoning up the years of animals, knowing the consuls, learning their ages, tracing their breeds, recording their very grand sires and great grand sires. Find that in volume 5, page 577. Isn't it interesting how things hardly change?
If you imagine that the Christians in the early centuries faced a different world than we do, different sorts of things, which is what I had imagined before I read the early Christian writings. It's such a surprise to find that, wow, the Romans weren't that different from the world today. Christians had to make the same decisions we do.
When I read that passage from Novatian for the first time, I remember thinking, well, that's just like today where I remember as a boy, I could tell you the different statistics of various baseball players, what their batting average was, how many home runs they had hit that year, and that sort of thing. And so could most of the other boys. Back then it wasn't baseball players, it was horses. How many races they had won, or maybe a charioteer, how many races he had won.
Lactantius noted, and this is written in the early 4th century, around 304, " Those who come for the sake of beholding the spectacle actually display more of a spectacle themselves. " I'm referring to when they begin to shout and to leap from their seats. Now, if somehow you imagine that the early Christians after the New Testament period were fanatics, that the New Testament Christians weren't like that. Think about what Peter said in 1 Peter 4:4.
He said, " In regard to these, talking about the world, they think it's strange that you do not run with them in the same flood of dissipation, speaking evil of you. " So you see it was the same thing back in the first century, that Christians wouldn't go to the same entertainment events that the world did. And as a result, the world hated them. They spoke evil of them. Tacitus, who was a Roman historian who lived in the first century, he referred to Christians as being enemies of the human race.
He noted how Nero had them burned and put to death, blaming the burning of Rome on them. But Tacitus, even though he deplores Nero, he has little sympathy for the Christians. They're enemies of the human race. They got what they deserved. Now let's talk about the second form of entertainment of the Romans. And these were the exhibitions, spectacles that went on in the arenas or amphitheaters. Actually, the Romans themselves would have considered these just another form of sport.
And the principal three kinds of spectacles that went on in the arena that we're going to look at today were the gladiator contests, which were called the Munera by the Romans, which literally means an offering. And then there were the wild beast hunts called the Venationes by the Romans. And then you had the execution of criminals done in a form of a show, such as Christians being burned alive or thrown to wild beasts to be torn up.
Even non-Christians today would have trouble viewing calling any of those things by the name of sports, but the Romans did. Now, the most famous arena of all is the Colosseum, but it was by no means the first arena ever constructed. And every large city had their own arenas. In fact, Rome had several arenas. The Colosseum was the largest, but it was not the only one. So I'm going to talk a little bit about what went on in the Colosseum.
And even though we'll talk about it specifically, because I've been to it, the other ones I haven't been to, what went on there would be very typical of what went on at other places. Now, the arena that we know as the Colosseum actually was not called the Colosseum in the days of the Romans. It wasn't until the Middle Ages that it was called the Colosseum, and most historians think the name doesn't come from its large size, which would certainly be appropriate.
But rather, there had been a huge statue of Nero that Nero had built for himself right outside the Colosseum. And it was this Colossus, this huge statue of Nero, that then the arena next to it was called the Colosseum. Construction of the Colosseum was begun by the Emperor Vespasian. This was after Nero had committed suicide, and then there were three brief emperors, all who met their deaths. And the population hated Nero.
And one of the things he had done was confiscated this land, which had been right there in the heart of Rome, along the sacred way where all of the processions of any kind always took place. Right outside where he had built, Nero had built his palace. And then you had the Roman Forum just a short distance from it. And the circus Maximus was not very far either. All of them are in walking distance of one another. So what Vespasian wanted to do was to give this land back to the people of Rome.
And so he drained the artificial lake that Nero had constructed there because it was in a valley. Rome is built on seven hills, as you've probably heard, and where the Colosseum lies is between the valley of some of these hills. So he drained the lake and began construction on the amphitheater that we know as the Colosseum. He died long before it was completed, and his son Titus, the same Roman who had conquered Jerusalem in AD 70, he had from there, Vespasian was his father.
And when his father died, he became emperor. And he continued work on the Colosseum and even inaugurated it, although it wasn't finished, at least in the state that we know it today, under him. But he dedicated the Colosseum in the year AD 79. And to do that, he had 100 days of spectacles of gladiator fights and the hunts of animals and execution of criminals and those sorts of things. He also had the bottom area of the Colosseum flooded, which was very easy since it was in this valley.
Nero had been able to build an artificial lake there. And he had a huge mock naval battle involving 3,000 men fighting each other down there while the people watched. And what Titus did and his father Vespasian was not anything new. From way back long before the time of Christ, Roman leaders had used the arena, the gladiator fights, which perhaps rivaled the chariot races in popularity as a means to promote themselves.
Julius Caesar had done this where he would invite people, you know, the whole city, whoever, to come and watch his spectacle, and he would pay for everything. And in fact, the Senate, which was growing jealous of Julius Caesar, had passed a law allowing him only to have 200 gladiators at a time. One of the other Roman emperors, Trajan, to celebrate his triumph over the Dacians, had held a series of games involving 10,000 gladiators and 11,000 wild beasts, all of which were put to death.
The Colosseum itself was quite a marvelous structure even for the Romans who were the greatest engineers the world had known up until that time. It's not nearly as big. The Colosseum isn't as big as the Circus Maximus, and yet it has lasted because its outer walls were all built out of masonry and concrete, whereas the circus had been primarily constructed of wood and had burned down, been destroyed long before. The Colosseum is actually four stories high, over 150 feet high. And it had 80 different entrances.
Some of the entrances were reserved just for the emperor himself and his immediate party. Then you had other entrances reserved for, say, the Vestal Virgins or the Pontifex Maximus, important religious figures in Rome. And then there were places for the senators, et cetera. But now most of these 80 entrances had numbers on them, and people had tickets with a number on it, somewhat like we would use today. But it was the Romans who started this practice.
And then you'd go through your entrance, and then the seats by your entrance would also have numbers, just like in a stadium today, so people could go in and be seated, and people weren't fighting for a particular seat because they already had a ticket to that seat. And like I said, the Roman emperors and the senators and other wealthy people, they use the games as a way to appease the population, to promote their own popularity, to make the population happy, and also because this was considered part of life.
You know Enjoy yourself. There was not a whole lot more in life to a Roman. They had no profound religious beliefs beyond this life itself. Now, the Colosseum was also covered, not with a roof, but there were a series of huge canopies that rested on wooden beams. You had wooden beams that stretched all across the top of the Colosseum. And then there were canopies that would be unfurled, stretched across there, and these would protect the spectators from the hot Italian sun or protect them from rain when it rained.
And there would be a whole team of former sailors who were employed to man the ropes in unfurling the canopy since they had so much experience in that in sailing ships. Now when I mentioned the 80 different entrances to the Colosseum, one of the entrances I didn't tell you about because this is the entrance that the gladiators came through and they would come in a large procession.
Often they would ride chariots in and then they would get off the chariots once they had gone around the arena and then form this large column of fighters and then they would march around the perimeter of the arena and as they would come to the magistrate's seat, they would say, " We who are about to die salute you. " And the crowd would just be impatient waiting for the show to begin, and then at the given signal, the gladiators would begin fighting each other.
And there might be, say, 20 pair of them out there at one time fighting, depending on how large the particular arena was, maybe even a hundred pair of them in an arena as large as the Colosseum. Now, there were four different kinds of gladiators, and by that I mean four different ways that they were armed. The two that we know best that you often will see in picture books or I know growing up in the 50s there were lots of movies about ancient Rome and about the Christians, et cetera.
The first kind of gladiator warrior was called the Samnite. And the name comes from a people that the Romans way back early in their history had fought and defeated. And they would arm this gladiator the way that a Samnite warrior had been armed. He would have a fairly magnificent helmet on. In fact, I've seen one of these helmets in the British Museum in London and it's pretty imposing.
It's made out of iron, I believe, and it has a cage, a grating that covers the entire face of the gladiator, more protective than a lot of the helmets that soldiers, Roman soldiers wore and that others wore throughout history. On top of this helmet was a large crest, and often feathers, plumes, colored plumes would come out of the crest on top of the helmet. And so I say it was all done to make a very imposing spectacle for the people.
Now, this Samnite gladiator would carry a short sword, the kind that would be very commonly used by the Roman soldiers, and also a shield. Now he was unprotected in his chest, but he wore protective covering on his right arm, since that would be the arm that he would hold his sword in. In his left arm, he had the shield to protect it. And then his left leg would be heavily armored, but not his right, because thrusting with his sword, he would put forth his left leg first.
It would be the one that would be most vulnerable. So that was one kind of gladiator, and often two Samnite gladiators would fight each other. Now, another kind, there were, like I say, four kinds, but two would be very similar to the Samnite, but just a little different the kind of weapon they use or the protective covering. But the fourth kind was quite different because he had virtually no armor on at all. In fact, he would be totally unprotected.
His legs, his chest, only his loins would have any kind of covering and protection. And he had no shield, no sword, but instead he had a trident, a three-pronged spear that he would use against his opponent. And typically his opponent would not be another gladiator armed like himself, but rather it'd be a Samnite or one of the other two kinds with swords and some protection. Now, instead of a shield, what he had was a net, like a fisherman's net.
And he was known by the Romans as a retiarius, which means a net wielder. And what he would try to do was to entangle his opponent in his net. And if he succeeded and his opponent was entangled while he was trying to get out, then he would run him through with his spear. And because he had no protection, it was both a disadvantage and an advantage, it meant that he was far quicker and more mobile than his opponent who had this heavy shield and armor on.
And often the Samnite was a larger, heavier person than the net wielder. Now the net had a rope attached to it so that if he threw his net and missed, he could quickly bring it back and still have it. Well, who had the advantage between the Samnite and the net wielder gladiator? Well, they were about equal to depend on the skill of the particular person.
Of course, the fact that all this was done for the amusement of people is something ghastly and horrible that they would enjoy setting up these contests and would be all excited and happy. Look forward to a day in the arena and come home all joyful and glad after seeing hundreds of men may be put to death as well as animals. It would often be on a Saturday, which was often a holiday. Sunday at that time period of early Rome was not a holiday. It wasn't until Constantine who made the Day of the Sun a legal holiday.
But beyond just Saturday as a holiday, you had dozens of legal holidays throughout the Roman year. Usually these were religious or they might be commemorating an emperor or some kind of event that was important to the nation of Rome. So take one of these typical holidays. The emperor or somebody would arrange to have a day of games or gladiator duels spectacles there at the arena. Well, the people would come in in the morning and the day would start off in the morning with first some light battles.
You would have maybe things that were done to be funny or more of a farce. Perhaps some dwarves would be out there with wooden swords fighting. You had ladies. Up until the year 200, you had female gladiators, but these were not there to fight till the death. They had wooden swords and it was again just more for fun that they would be out. Well, then after the crowd was warmed up a bit, then you'd have the glorious procession of the gladiators come in, as I had described before, and then the fights would start.
And if a particular gladiator was, say, being very cautious, he was trying to stay away from the net wielder's net, something like that. And avoiding contact, well then you had the managers of the gladiators who were freemen with whips, and they would come in and give the gladiator a strong lash on the back. And they had bare backs and chests, both kinds of gladiators, to force the gladiator to move up and engage in combat.
In other words, they didn't want you to just be cautious and fight out their two men for a couple of hours and somebody avoiding being injured. They wanted you to get right into it. And if it went on too long, the crowd would get very impatient and start yelling. And like I say, the managers, if they hadn't done it on their own, would then come out and lash them good and force them to fight to the death and get it over with. Often there would be music playing in the background. They're at the Colosseum.
At one time, they had a pipe organ that would, you know, play this dramatic music in the background. And you'd have about in the Colosseum anyway, about 50,000 spectators. Other Colosseums would not hold that many, but there would have been tens of thousands typically in the arena of a large city. And the crowd would just, you know, grow wilder and wilder. And then when a gladiator was killed, fell down dead, there'd be a big roar of excitement from the crowd.
Now, if a gladiator fell down wounded, but was not dead, or let's say he was entangled in his opponent's net and was laying there helpless, he would throw down his shield and hold a hand up asking for mercy. And generally, the magistrate, the emperor, whoever was in charge of the games, would make the decision. Either, as you probably all know, thumbs up meant he could live, he had fought well. Thumbs down meant, nope, he gets executed right there on the spot. And the crowd would take place in this.
They'd all be gesturing, you know, thumbs up or thumbs down, trying to influence the emperor to make his decision. In some games, it was the soldiers who decided the gladiator could spare his opponent or could slay him once he had got him down. Now, the gladiators who were slain, they were dragged out a special gate that was just for their bodies and they were dragged out and dumped in an unmarked grave. The victorious gladiators left by another entrance and they would fight again another day.
Now, who were these men, the gladiators? Well, for the most part, they were not people who chose such a horrible profession. Instead, they were criminals or prisoners of war. In fact, the whole gladiator games originated as human sacrifices. In fact, they originated with the Etruscans, an ancient people who had lived there in what is now Italy, who had dominated the Romans for a long time.
And when they were victorious in battle, the Etruscans would sacrifice many of their prisoners of war, maybe all of them, to appease the gods. They, like the Romans after them, were quite cruel people, even though they were advanced in a number of areas of knowledge. They were beastly in their humanity. As I mentioned, the Etruscans were originally the dominant group in the Italian Peninsula, and the Romans who were a newer people were under the thumb, to a large degree, of the Etruscans.
And it was often their soldiers, the Roman soldiers, who were sacrificed by the Etruscans in a large public ceremony. Well, sometimes the Etruscans would tell the captured soldiers who were to be sacrificed to fight each other until the death. And I guess they employed forms of torture or whatever to be able to force them to do this. And so the Romans learned this practice from the Etruscans, and they decided to do the same thing, but not particularly as human sacrifices. That was how it originated.
The Romans changed this particular religious nature and instead just said for fun and entertainment, we will have the captured prisoners of war or some of them fight each other to the death. And then they expanded this to include criminals who were maybe sentenced to death. Well, we'll make them fight each other. And this wasn't any haphazard thing. They soon began establishing schools to train gladiators.
And the gladiators received quite a bit of training and good nutrition and medical attention to prepare them for their work as gladiators. And like I say, if they were victorious in a number of different contests, they were usually given their freedom, and they would be showered with money and praise. They became very popular figures. Women would just adore them. And there's graffiti even now that you can find in Pompeii and in Rome, of things that women have written admiring some gladiator hero.
In fact, there were instances of women leaving their husbands and running off with a victorious gladiator. And different wealthy men who would want to pit their gladiators against those of somebody else, they would hire servants to go throughout the empire, which was the whole Mediterranean world, and procure particular people who would make good gladiators. Now again, normally these would be prisoners condemned to death in the mines or in the slave galleys or something like that.
And the prisoner, it was probably a better form of life and then death than to die in the mines or in the galley, or they were going to be burned alive or executed anyway. So the Romans actually saw themselves as sporting. Hey, we're very merciful. Instead of just killing these people, we give them a fighting chance. In fact, very few of the Romans saw anything wrong with these gladiator contests or with taking Christians and burning them alive or having them torn apart by wild animals in front of a crowd.
I mean, this wasn't something done in a dark alleyway or something, but this was supposed to be good family entertainment. A whole family would come there to watch this horrible spectacle. But they justified it. They said that Christians were a third race. You had the Romans, who of course were the first, and then you had the barbarians, the second race of man, and then you have the Christians who are just beneath any class around.
And whatever happened to them, they deserved because they were enemies of the human race. Well, in addition to gladiator fights and putting Christians or maybe others to death, you had shows involving wild beasts. Now in some of these, they would take a Christian, as I said, or a criminal, or could be a prisoner of war, whoever. But like I say, normally it would not just be an ordinary slave or certainly not a citizen that you would take and throw out there.
And sometimes this person would be unarmed, and then there would be bears or leopards or something in there that he would have to try to fight. And of course, he would be torn to death. But from a lot of the pictures that we have from Rome and Pompeii, we see that often the men were given a spear. Sometimes they were armed with a shield and a sword even. And it was they who normally were killing the lions or the leopards or whatever, but it was a good, exciting contest to the bloodthirsty Romans.
I mean, they reveled in this kind of sport, and they didn't particularly care whether it was the man who was killed or the leopard or whatever wild beast it happened to be. Sometimes they would fight, say, a lion against a bear or something like that, whatever their twisted minds could think of. But then other times they would have armed warriors hunting wild animals, where it would always be the wild animal being killed.
And it would often be an exotic animal that the average person would not have seen, like an ostrich or some kind of antelope or something from Africa. And as I mentioned earlier, often it would be thousands and thousands of these animals that would be needlessly killed.
And many historians think that it was actually these Roman games that didn't just happen in Rome, this was all throughout the Empire, that led to the extinction of a lot of these animals that used to live in Europe and in the Middle East and Northern Africa. Like the lion. You know, in the Bible you read about lions. Well, it's been a long time since there have been lions in the area of the Middle East, and probably that's because they all ended up being killed for the Romans entertainment.
And the same with ostriches and creatures like that, that, as I said, whole animal species became extinct in various areas, probably because of the Roman so-called games. Well, what did the Christians have to say about all of this? Did they just go along with the world? Let me read to you from some of the early Christian writers. This first one is from Athenagoras writing about the year 175, and this was in an apologetic work to the Romans.
And he's responding to the charge that was recklessly made that Christians were actually cannibals. He says this, " When they know that we cannot endure even to see a man put to death, though justly that is under law, who of them can accuse us of murder or cannibalism? Who does not reckon among the things of greatest interest the contests of gladiators and wild beasts, especially those which are given by you.
But we have renounced such spectacles, deeming that to see a man put to death is much the same as killing him. Find that in volume 2, page 147. Theophilus, another apologist writing about the year 180, says, " We are forbidden so much as to witness shows of gladiators, lest we become partakers and abetters of murderers. " It's volume 2, page 115. Tertullian writes, " We will now see how the Scriptures condemn the amphitheater.
Gladiators who are not charged with crime are offered in sale for the games, so that they may become the victims of the public pleasure. " So from that passage, I take it that sometimes slaves were bought. It wasn't just criminals or prisoners of war who were put to death, even though that was the normal practice. Even in the case of those who are judicially condemned to the amphitheater, what a monstrous thing it is.
For in undergoing their punishment, they advance from some less serious crime to the crime of homicide. It means maybe this is a robber that's put in there and he's forced to kill someone, now he's a murderer. I'm addressing these remarks to the pagan. As to Christians, I will not insult them by adding another word as to the aversion with which they should regard this sort of exhibition. Again, Tertullian, that's in volume 3, page 87, and page 67 of that volume.
He says, excuse me, the prohibition of murder shows me that a trainer of gladiators is also to be excluded from the church. Mark Minucius Felix, writing about the year 200, volume 4, page 196, said, " Who does not shudder at the teaching of murder in the gladiatorial games? Thus you demand murder in reality, although you weep at it in fiction. " Meaning in their plays, they would cry about someone being put to death, and yet they would actually go and see the real thing.
Cyprian wrote, volume 5, page 277, " The gladiator games are prepared so that blood may gladden the lust of cruel eyes. Training is undergone to acquire the power to murder. The achievement of murder is its glory. " Lactantius, writing about the year 304, volume 7, page 187, says, " Yet they call these sports in which human blood is shed.
I now ask whether they can be just and pious men, who when they see men placed under the stroke of death and pleading for mercy, not only allow them to be put to death, but also demand it. They give cruel and inhuman votes for their death, for they are not satisfied with mere wounds or the shedding of blood. They are even angry with the combatants unless one of the two is quickly slain. As though they thirsted for human blood, they hate delays. Filled with this practice, they have lost their humanity.
If then it is in no way permitted to commit homicide, it is not allowed for us to be present at all, lest any bloodshed should reach our conscience. So there's no question that the Christians were uniform in their utter condemnation of the arena and what went on there. And they didn't even want to be present, even though they would never be a gladiator themselves or be a trainer of gladiators. They didn't even want to be present at such a thing to not be polluted by it.
And yet they were about the only ones who condemned the spectacles in the arena. But they didn't go along with the world just because the world said it was okay. And actually, it was because of the influence of Christianity that the Gladiator Games were eventually abolished while we don't have them today. Now today we don't have, as I said, gladiator games and exactly the same issues that Christians of that day had to deal with.
In fact, in most places in the United States and in the Western world outside of Latin America, that even fighting of animals, dogfights, cock fights are against the law, which is wonderful. And yet there is that thirst for violence. The most popular sport in America is football, which is in itself a fascinating game, but it's very violent. And you could have virtually the same game with flag football. I remember growing up and watching flag football games.
My dad was in the Air Force and they had different flag football teams. We'd go out there on Saturday and watch them play. It was very interesting. But see, the public, they don't want that. They want the hitting and the people being hurt and just the violence that goes with football. Hockey is the same way. They could eliminate most of the violence of hockey games, but people revel in that. The third major form of entertainment for the Romans was the theater.
The most startling thing about their theater is that it was hardly different from theaters of today, except that they always used live actors on stage where we have both live theaters and motion picture theaters. But the subjects were the same. Crime, revenge, intrigue, sexual immorality. The Roman audiences loved scenes of bloodshed and murder just like audiences do today. And just like today, even the Roman audiences wanted as much realism as possible.
So you had acts of adultery graphically acted out before the audiences, sometimes with considerable nudity. Is that any different than what is apparently shown in movies today? I gave up on movie theaters back in the 1980s, and I'm sure it hasn't gotten any better from what was being shown then. But once again, when Christianity was new, Christians didn't just follow the world. Instead, they took a stand against it. Let me read to you what some of the writers say concerning the theater of their day.
And what you do find in reading the early Christian writings is that there is an utter uniformity among Christians, that the stage, the theater, was no place for Christians to be either as an actor or as a spectator. Tatian wrote about the year 160, " They utter lewd speeches in pretentious tones and they act out indecent movements. Your daughters and your sons watch them giving lessons in adultery on the stage.
" Theophilus writing about 180 said, " Neither may we watch the other spectacles talking about the theaters after he had talked about the gladiator games, lest our eyes and ears be defiled by participating in the utterances that are sung there. For if one should speak of cannibalism, in these spectacles, the children of Thyestes and Tereus are eaten. And as for adultery, both in the case of men and of gods, whom they celebrate in elegant language for honors and prizes, this is made the subject of their dramas.
Clement of Alexandria, writing about the year 195, says, " Christ the instructor will not then bring us to public spectacles. Not inappropriately, one might call the racecourse in the theater the seat of plagues, " quoting from the Scriptures, " Let spectacles, therefore in plagues that are full of indecent language and abundant gossip, be forbidden. For what base action is there that is not exhibited in the theaters?
" Actually, the Roman authorities were themselves concerned about weakening public morals because of what was being shown in the theaters. But how the theaters got around this is that they were originally part of the temples. And so it passed as a form of worship. This was in the temple, and a lot of things were allowed there that would not be allowed out in the open.
So just like the athletic games and the gladiator games, the theater itself also began originally as a religious thing, even though most of that had been lost by the time of these early Christian writers. Tertullian, being an educated man, pointed this out. Writing in Volume 3, page 84, he says, " We will now direct our discourse from there, " that was the sports, to the theater, beginning with the place of exhibition. At first, the theater was actually a temple of Venus.
And to speak briefly, it was because of this that stage performances were allowed to escape censure. That is how they got a foothold in the world. For oftentimes the censors in the interest of morality put down the rising theaters. And again, he wrote, " Are we not in like manner commanded to put away from us all in modesty? " On this ground, again, we are excluded from the theater, which is immodesty's own peculiar abode. The very harlots, too, victims of the public lust, are brought upon the stage.
Let the Senate, let all ranks blush for very shame. Is it right to look on what is disgraceful to do? How is it that the things that defile a man in going out of his mouth are not regarded as doing so when they go into his eyes and ears? Again, he wrote volume 3 page 88, " The father who carefully protects and guards his virgin daughter's ears from every polluting word takes her to the theater himself, exposing her to all its vile words and attitudes. " He's talking there about pagans.
Markus Felix, writing about the year 200, said this: " After talking about the gladiator games, in the drama, the madness is not less. Rather, the debauchery is more prolonged. For now, a mime either expounds or acts out adulteries. " Now, when you hear the early Christian writers talking about mimes, you need to be aware that a pantomime, or the actors, the mimes, that was originally different than what we call pantomime today. Today, a mime is an actor who doesn't use any words, does it all by acting out.
Back there the mimes actually saying that their role was somewhat like that in opera today, but it certainly wasn't any kind of dignified godly opera. It was parts that were sung that were very lewd. Cyprian, writing about the year 250, said, " Turn your attention to the abominations of another kind of spectacle that is not less to be deplored than the gladiator contests. In the theaters also, you will behold what may well cause you grief and shame.
The old horrors of parental murders and incest are unfolded in action calculated to resemble reality. Things that have now ceased to be actual deeds of vice become examples. Adultery is learned while it is seen. The matron who has perhaps gone to the spectacle as a modest woman returns from it immodest. What a degradation of morals it is. It's in Volume 5, page 277. Last of all, I want to read to you from Lactantius, writing about the year 304.
He says, " I am inclined to think that the corrupting influence of the stage is more contaminating than the gladiator combats. That is because the subject of comedies is the dishonoring of virgins or the loves of harlots. And the more eloquent they are who have written the narratives of these disgraceful actions, the more they persuade others by the elegance of their words. In like manner, the tragedies placed before the eyes of the audience the incest and parental murders of wicked kings.
They also portray dire crimes. And what effect do the immodest gestures of the actors produce except to teach and incite lust? Why should I even mention the mimes who instruct others in corrupting influences? They teach adulteries while they act them out. By pretended actions, they train their audience to do those actions that are real. What can young men or virgins do when they see that these things are practiced without shame and are willingly watched by all. It's in Volume 7, page 187.
So again, the Romans saw the Christians as enemies of the human race because they wouldn't go along with the gladiator games, they weren't interested in the sports events, and they wouldn't go to the theater. But weren't the early Christians right? Doesn't the stage corrupt people? Haven't movies done the same thing today? Where today, now that Christians, most professed Christians, readily go to theaters without even thinking twice about it.
And as a result, they've become so comfortable with the language and the morals of the world with things like divorce that are shown as normal in every day in the theater. So again, are we going to just follow the world? Are we going to be like the Christians and walk on a different path that's different from the world? The final form of Roman entertainment we're going to talk about tonight is banqueting, and we're going to just talk about it briefly. Banqueting was another popular Roman pastime.
It was an evening meal attended by a number of persons just like a banquet is today. First they ate and then they drank wine and talked up until the late hours. In fact, banqueting was such a popular diversion among the Romans that clubs and societies were formed mainly for the purpose of getting together regularly and having banquets together.
And quite often banquets provided an excuse for gluttony and drunkenness, and it was these last two things that caused the early Christians to generally object to the Roman banquets. Still, I want to clear up a popular misconception that I myself once had. I know I grew up being told that the Romans would gorge themselves at their banquets until they couldn't eat anymore. Then they would go to a place called a vomitorium where they would tickle their throats with a feather, causing them to throw up.
Well, then having emptied their stomach of most of its contents, they'd go back to the table and gorge themselves even more. Now, I'm not going to say that such a thing like that never happened at a Roman banquet, but if so, it was not a normal Roman practice. Not a single one of the early Christian writers make any mention of it, and certainly they would have said something about it if it had been a practice they knew about. And none of the Roman writers that I have read mention any such thing.
And I should also explain that not all banquets were wicked by any means. Often, for example, men got together to discuss topics of science or government or philosophy. They didn't overeat. They didn't overdrink at a lot of their banquets. However, I think it is fair to say that gluttony and drunkenness were certainly common features of many Roman banquets. The New Testament makes reference to this sort of thing.
For example, Romans 13 verses 12 and 13, Paul writes, " Let us cast off the works of darkness and let us put on the armor of light. Let us walk properly, as in the day, not in revelry and drunkenness, not in lewdness and lust, not in strife and envy. And a lot of this revelry and drunkenness revolved around the banquets.
And again, Paul wrote to the Philippians, " For many walk, of whom I have told you often and now tell you even weeping, that they are the enemies of the cross of Christ, whose end is destruction, whose God is their belly, and whose glory is in their shame, who set their minds on earthly things. " It's Philippians 3:18 and 19.
So I mean, this was prevalent in the New Testament times, and as Paul indicates there, even some Christians fell into these pagan habits of gorging themselves, gluttony, drunkenness, that sort of thing. Peter talks about this, 1 Peter 4, verses 3 and 4, where he says, " We have spent enough of our past lifetime in doing the will of the Gentiles when we walked in lewdness, lust, drunkenness, revelries, drinking parties, and abominable idolatries. " I think the King James there even says banqueting.
And in the verse that we read at the beginning of tonight's message, Peter said, " In regard to these, they think it's strange that you do not run with them in the same flood of dissipation, speaking evil of you. " So this was another form of entertainment of the Romans that again the Christians didn't frequent because of the gluttony and the drunkenness and often immorality that went on there. And again, the Romans spoke evil of them because they couldn't understand this.
Why don't they want to do the things that normal human beings do? Now, the early Christians took those passages of Scripture that I just read very seriously and very literally. And they refused to attend any banquets that would end up being drinking parties or indulgences in gluttony. But this doesn't mean that they never attended a banquet, that there was something evil about just an ordinary banquet in itself.
But before closing, I've probably left you with the question, well, what did the early Christians do for enjoyment? Well, the early Christians were not opposed to wholesome enjoyment in moderation. For example, Clement of Alexandria wrote concerning athletics. He said, " For men to prefer gymnastic exercises to the baths is perhaps not bad. For such exercises are in some respects conducive to the health of young men. Nor are women to be deprived of bodily exercise. Reading aloud is often an exercise to many.
However, do not let the athletic contest that I have allowed be undertaken for the sake of vainglory. Rather, they should be undertaken only for manly sweat. We must always aim at moderation. Again, Clement wrote about the game of ball. He said, " Playing at ball not only depends on someone throwing the ball skillfully, but it also requires one to catch it dexterously, so that the game may be gone through according to the rules for ball. " So they had a game of ball back then.
It wasn't like baseball or football, just mainly throwing and catching a ball kind of like playing with a Frisbee today. No competition involved or anything. It was something that was fine for Christians to engage in. Even Tertullian, who's usually seen as one of the most conservative, said this. He said, " Now let me address the kind of performances peculiar to the circus exhibitions. " He says, " In former days, equestrianism was practiced in a simple way on horseback.
Certainly its ordinary use had nothing sinful in it, but when it was dragged into the games, it passed from the service of God into the employment of demons. " It's in Volume 3:83. So even Tertullian, who was of course opposed to the circus, as were nearly all Christians, said there's nothing wrong with horseback riding or watching exhibitions of horses going through paces and things like that.
It was when they were brought into the games and then they were steeped with idolatry and gambling and a strong fierce spirit of competition and then violence and all of those sort of things. And as to banqueting, as I said, Christians had no opposition to getting together for a meal. Only they cautioned that eating should be done in moderation, and our food should be simple. Clement of Alexandria wrote, " There is discrimination to be employed in reference to food.
It is to be simple, truly plain, suiting precisely simple and artless children as ministering to life, not to luxury. " It's in volume 2, page 237. Again, on page 252, he says, " It is the part of a temperate man also in eating and drinking to take a small portion, taking it deliberately, not eagerly. A temperate man too must rise before the general company and retire quietly from the banquet. " So it's fine to go to a banquet if there's nothing evil going on there, but don't stay late.
Leave early, get a good night's rest. Interestingly, one of the notable features of early Christian worship, including New Testament worship, was the weekly love feast that Paul talks about in his first letter to the Corinthians. This was a common meal in some ways like a Roman banquet, yet people ate in moderation.
And instead of it being limited to members of one's own social class, like Roman banqueting was, Christians, rich and poor alike, slave and free alike, they all ate together as equals at their love feast, and the rich shared their food with their poor brothers and sisters. Well, like the early Christians, Christians today can find godly, wholesome enjoyment. In fact, we probably have more options than they did. We, of course, can share meals together like they did and simple sport activities among ourselves.
But have you also ever thought of discovering the pleasures of getting acquainted with God's creation? His creation both here on the earth and in the heavens. One of the early Christians wrote this that I'd like to leave you as a parting thought. The Christian has more noble exhibitions if he desires them. He has that beauty of the universe to look upon and admire, to say nothing of those pleasures he cannot yet contemplate.
He may gaze upon the sun's rising and on its setting, and on the troops of shining stars and those that glitter from on high with extreme mobility. I see let these and other divine works be the exhibitions for faithful Christians. What theater built by human hands could ever be compared to works such as these?