While restating the correct interpretation of the prologue to the Hecyra of Terence in CQ 32 , 134 F. H. Sandbach has this to say: ‘Possibly the widespread view which the translators and I reject has been encouraged by disbelief that the theatre could be used for gladiatorial combat. It is true that there is no reliable evidence for such use at Rome, for Donatus' statement “hoc abhorret a nostra consuetudine uerumtamen apud antiquos gladiatores in theatro spectabantur” may be no (...) more than inference from Terence's text.’ There is, in fact, a certain amount of evidence for gladiatorial combats in the theatres at Rome, that is at venues where ludi scaenici were performed, which it is difficult to regard as unreliable and which is consistent with what we know of the relationship between the theatre and gladiatorial games. (shrink)

This case involves invasive research on captive wild populations of birds to study aggressive animal behavior. The case and associated commentaries raise and examine fundamental issues: whether and under what conditions, such research is ethically justified when the research has no expected, direct application to the human species; the moral status of animals and how one balances concern for the animal’s interests against the value of gains in scientific knowledge. They also emphasize the issue of the importance of a thorough (...) literature search to ensure appropriate research design and experimental design to minimize animal suffering. It raises the issue of circumstances in which such research should be modified or terminated. (shrink)

The hallmark of modern liberalism is its embrace of the Millian harm principle and its antipathy to legal moralism. In this article I consider whether aesthetic regulations can be justified under the harm principle as that principle has been elaborated by Joel Feinberg. I conclude that aesthetic and other regulations that most liberals regard as unproblematic are actually instances of legal moralism.

This case involves invasive research on captive wild populations of birds to study aggressive animal behavior. The case and associated commentaries raise and examine fundamental issues: whether and under what conditions, such research is ethically justified when the research has no expected, direct application to the human species; the moral status of animals and how one balances concern for the animal’s interests against the value of gains in scientific knowledge. They also emphasize the issue of the importance of a thorough (...) literature search to ensure appropriate research design and experimental design to minimize animal suffering. It raises the issue of circumstances in which such research should be modified or terminated. (shrink)

This case involves invasive research on captive wild populations of birds to study aggressive animal behavior. The case and associated commentaries raise and examine fundamental issues: whether and under what conditions, such research is ethically justified when the research has no expected, direct application to the human species; the moral status of animals and how one balances concern for the animal’s interests against the value of gains in scientific knowledge. They also emphasize the issue of the importance of a thorough (...) literature search to ensure appropriate research design and experimental design to minimize animal suffering. It raises the issue of circumstances in which such research should be modified or terminated. (shrink)

This case involves invasive research on captive wild populations of birds to study aggressive animal behavior. The case and associated commentaries raise and examine fundamental issues: whether and under what conditions, such research is ethically justified when the research has no expected, direct application to the human species; the moral status of animals and how one balances concern for the animal’s interests against the value of gains in scientific knowledge. They also emphasize the issue of the importance of a thorough (...) literature search to ensure appropriate research design and experimental design to minimize animal suffering. It raises the issue of circumstances in which such research should be modified or terminated. (shrink)

This article introduces Stoicism for a general readership by arguing that ancient Stoic thought, especially the philosophy of Epictetus, had found renewed cultural visibility at the turn of the twenty-first century through Tom Wolfe’s A Man in Full and Ridley Scott’s Gladiator. The article explains Epictetus’ life as a former slave, his teaching career at Nicopolis, and his influence on Marcus Aurelius. It presents Stoicism as a practical philosophy of living in accordance with nature, cultivating rational judgment, and distinguishing (...) what is up to us from what lies beyond our control. On this view, happiness depends not on wealth, status, bodily condition, reputation, or external success, but on virtue, moral integrity, disciplined judgment, and peace of mind. The article connects this Stoic outlook to Admiral James Stockdale’s use of Epictetus during captivity in Vietnam, then examines Stoic themes in Wolfe’s novel, especially Conrad Hensley’s discovery of Epictetus and Charlie Croker’s need to learn that wealth and status are not the measure of a human being. It also interprets Gladiator as dramatizing Stoic virtues through Maximus, whose courage, honor, endurance, and resistance to tyranny make him the cinematic heir of Marcus Aurelius. The article concludes by asking whether contemporary America, despite its fascination with power, possessions, fame, and money, may be ready for Stoicism’s renewed emphasis on virtue and justice. A concluding sidebar situates the article within Stephens’s own scholarly work on Epictetus and Stoic ethics. (shrink)

Everyfan -- Definitions : praise, beauty, athletics -- Discontinuities : demigods, gladiators, knights, ruffians, sportsmen, Olympians, customers -- Fascinations : bodies, suffering, grace, tools, forms, plays, timing -- Gratitude : watching, waste.

There is a long history and growing evidence base that the use of drugs, such as anabolic-androgenic steroids, to enhance human performance is common amongst armed forces, including in Australia. We should not be surprised that this might have occurred for it has long been predicted by observers. It is a commonplace of many recent discussion of the future of warfare and future military technology to proclaim the imminent arrival of Super Soldiers, whose capacities are modified via drugs, digital technology (...) and genetic engineering, in ways that increase their performance exponentially. This is what some observers have referred to as the “Gladiator Model” wherein the aim is to create soldiers able to perform feats of which ordinary citizens are not capable. One key aspect of this “gladiator project” is the use of illicit drugs to enhance performance. Could we use drugs, such as steroids or amphetamines, to enhance performance? Should we use such drugs? In this paper we explore the ethics of creating Super Soldiers, and raise issues of consent, coercion and the extent to which such use is permitted or condemned by just war theory. We conclude that much will depend on the extent to which such use is harmful to the soldiers themselves and this is still an open question. (shrink)

During the past decades, the culture industries have multiplied media spectacles in novel spaces and sites, and spectacle itself is becoming one of the organizing principles of the economy, polity, society, and everyday life. An Internet-based economy has been developing hi-tech spectacle as a means of promotion, reproduction, and the circulation and selling of commodities, using multimedia and increasingly sophisticated technology to dazzle consumers. M edia culture proliferates ever more technologically sophisticated spectacles to seize audiences and augment their power and (...) profit. The forms of entertainment permeate news and information, and a tablodized infotainment culture is more and more popular. New multimedia that synthesize forms of radio, film, TV news and entertainment, and the mushrooming domain of cyberspace, become spectacles of technoculture, generating expanding sites of information and entertainment, while intensifying the spectacle-form of media culture. Political and social life is also shaped more and more by media spectacle. Social and political conflicts are increasingly played out on the screens of media culture, which display spectacles like sensational murder cases, terrorist bombings, celebrity and political sex scandals, and the explosive violence of everyday life. M edia culture not only takes up expanding moments of contemporary experience, but also provides ever more material for fantasy, dreaming, modeling thought and behavior, and constructing identities. Of course, there have been spectacles since premodern times. Classical Greece had its Olympics, thespian and poetry festivals, its public rhetorical battles, and bloody and violent wars. Ancient Rome had its public offerings of bread and circuses, its orgies, its titanic political battles, and the spectacle of Empire with parades and monuments for triumphant Caesars and their armies, extravaganzas put on display in the 2000 film Gladiator.. (shrink)

Lucian’s Anacharsis, a satiric and Socratic dialogue about the value of sport, was written in the second century CE when dangerous gladiator fights and chariot races were common, yet its concern is with Greek athletics, especially the use of gymnastic training as civic education. How can a city like sixth-century BCE Athens claim to be improving itself by having its youth beat one another to a pulp? This paper surveys the relationship among death, pain and virtue in ancient Greek (...) and Roman sport by comparing ostensibly historical cases of athlete deaths with philosophical observations from Plato, Aristotle and Lucian’s Anacharsis. What emerges is an ancient philosophy of dangerous sport that considers pain and the risk of death necessary for sport to serve as moral education and thereby to benefit the community. Death is never the object of sport, however, and the nature of necessary risk is understood to vary with the cultural and historical context. The social benefit of dangerous sports depends on the risk being appropriate to challenge the athletes’ skills, and on the audience identifying with the athlete in a way that inspires the pursuit of excellence in activities beyond sport. (shrink)

Perhaps the most influential passage on the rule of law in international law comes from chapter 13 of Thomas Hobbes's Leviathan. In the course of describing the miserable condition of mankind in the state of nature, Hobbes remarks to readers who might be skeptical that such a state ever existed that they need only look to international relations—the relations between independent states—to observe one: But though there had never been any time, wherein particular men were in a condition of warre (...) one against another; yet in all times, Kings, and Persons of Soveraigne authority, because of their Independency, are in continuall jealousies, and in the state and posture of Gladiators; having their weapons pointing, and their eyes fixed on one another; that is, their Forts, Garrisons, and Guns upon the Frontiers of their Kingdomes; and continuall Spyes upon their neighbours; which is a posture of War. (shrink)

Spartacus became one of the key figures of Soviet dramaturgy in the 1920s. He was presented as the only ancient predecessor of the Bolsheviks and his theatrical image significantly shaped the later icon of the gladiator as a brave leader of the oppressed masses and a hero acting in the name of the proletariat. This article explores the image of Spartacus in early Soviet theater and mass performance and outlines the correlation between the template of Spartacus’ portrayal, Raffaello Giovagnoli’s (...) novel Spartaco (1874), and the first dramatic adaptations by Vladimir Mazurkevich (1920) and Vladimir Volkenstein (1921). The article examines the use of the ancient hero in Bolshevik propaganda and traces the ways in which Spartacus’ image morphs and maps onto wider shifts of Soviet political and cultural policy in the early decades of the USSR. (shrink)

At the age of twenty-five, Gn. Pompeius acquired the spectacular cognomen of Magnus. According to Plutarch, the name came either from the acclamation of his army in Africa, or at the instigation of Sulla. According to Livy, the practice began from the toadying of Pompeius' circle. The cognomen invited play. At the Ludi Apollinares of July 59, Cicero tells us, the actor Diphilus won ‘a dozen encores’ when he pronounced, from a lost tragedy, the line ‘nostra miseria tu es magnus’. (...) Four or five years later Catullus scored a fine hit, filching Pompeius' cognomen and giving it to his zealously competitive father-in-law: ‘Caesaris uisens monimenta magni’. In Lucan's Bellum Civile such plays on the cognomen are elevated into something of considerable power, testifying to a consistent controlling design, of the sort which many still deny the poem.When Pompeius first appears he is compared with Caesar, to his detriment: ‘nec coiere pares’. So much for Pompeius' vaunted intolerance of an equal, of which we have just been reminded: ‘nec quemquam iam ferre potest Caesarue priorem | Pompeiusue parem’. Many of the images in this introductory section have a programmatic power, and will recur. With ‘nec coiere pares’ Lucan presents the two as an ill-matched pair of gladiators. The metaphor is ubiquitous. Note, in particular, 5.1–3, and 6.3, ‘parque suum uidere dei’. We are further told that Pompeius seeks ‘fama’, is a ‘popularis’, indulges the people, basks in the applause he receives from the mob in his theatre: ‘famaeque petitor | multa dare in uolgus, totus popularibus auris | impelli plausuque sui gaudere theatri’. We will return later to this complex of ideas. (shrink)

India was under British colonial rule for a good number of years with her plural ethno-religious background and identity, which was to become the basis of an unending conflict. Several pre-colonial and post-colonial conditioning antecedents have been marshalled to buttress the premise leading to the conclusion that the British colonial era laid the time bomb along ethno-religious contours which exploded in 1947 thereby giving rise to the balkanisation of India into two separate states, that is India and Pakistan. Two major (...) religious groups that is Hindus and Muslims became the gladiators in India’s partition. The Kashmir region of India, a town of religious confluence, has a history of conflicts that is perceived by different people as politico-religious and socio-economic. This article focuses on religion as a core tenet of every cultural worldview and its significance to both Hindus and Muslims, and how it has become the progressively vital central marker of identity and a smouldering keg of gun powder for conflict in Kashmir. Furthermore, this article contends that religion plays a key role in the conflict between Hindus and Muslims in Kashmir because of its significance and influence on both religions. India that is known as a mother to various religions cannot relegate the primary role of religion in their political and socio-economic affairs. Therefore, it is right to acknowledge politico-religious and socio-economic factors in the Hindu–Muslim conflict in the state of Kashmir. And, it will not be wrong to affirm that religion plays a key role in the conflict between Hindus and Muslims in Kashmir. Contribution: The article is a contribution in religious issues in India. It reveals how political power and sociopolitical antecedents are mostly recognised by religious scholars and historians as the reason for the fracas between Hindus and Muslims. It explains the influence and implication of religion in the Hindu-Muslim relations in Kashmir region. (shrink)

The focus of this article is J. Leslie Mitchell’s Spartacus (1933), his fictional representation of the slave rebellion in ancient Rome led by the eponymous gladiator. The article begins by examining Mitchell’s contribution to debates over the role of the revolutionary writer in Left Review in the mid-1930s and his place in the British Left in this era, before going on to survey the ways in which the figure of Spartacus and the German Spartacists are represented across Mitchell’s oeuvre. (...) It then explores key source material utilized in the writing of the novel, as well as outlining comparisons between Mitchell’s representation of Spartacus and those of his fellow novelists Howard Fast and Arthur Koestler. Including close readings of Spartacus and informed by archival research and previously unpublished manuscript items, the article argues that at the same time as denouncing the cruelties of Roman rule, Spartacus also signals Mitchell’s passionate opposition to what he considered the violent histories of oppression suffered by the commons of the earth of all times, culminating in the capitalist crisis of Mitchell’s own period in the 1930s. Mitchell creates this effect of historical simultaneity by writing a work of myth-history – as opposed to historical realism or political propaganda – that employs the utopian legend of the Golden Age to inspire radical dissent against modern deprivation. (shrink)

The Culture and Philosophy of Ridley Scott, edited by Adam Barkman, Ashley Barkman, and Nancy Kang, brings together eighteen critical essays that illuminate a nearly comprehensive selection of the director’s feature films from cutting-edge multidisciplinary and comparative perspectives. Each chapter’s approach correlates with philosophical, literary, or cultural studies perspectives. Using both combined and single-film discussions, the contributors examine a wide variety of topics including gender roles and feminist theory, philosophical abstractions like ethics, honor, and personal responsibility, and historical memory and (...) the challenges of accurately rendering historical events on screen. Chapters examine such signature works as Alien (1979), Blade Runner (1982), Thelma and Louise (1991), Gladiator (2000), Hannibal (2001), Black Hawk Down (2001), and American Gangster (2007). (shrink)

It would be difficult to find a major figure in the history of European political thought who would not have attempted to say something about how authority emerges, or is justified and critiqued, in the world beyond the single polity. Quite frequently, that effort would have involved some idea about a legal order, or at least a set of rules or regularities applicable in that world. Thomas Hobbes was neither the first nor the last major thinker who believed that the (...) 'international' realm was characterised by the independence of states existing 'in the state and posture of gladiators', thus apparently denying that legal rules or practices or legal thinking could have much relevance therein. Yet others believed, as Immanuel Kant did, that without a constitutional vocabulary not much that was meaningful could be said about the human pursuit of freedom, and that silence about the latter would not only constitute a moral failure but an intellectual and perhaps political mistake. For a long time, the idiom of natural law claimed to offer a universally valid frame for thinking about the nature of the political, as well as providing authority for lawyers' speculations about the rules and principles governing the conduct of individuals and corporate bodies wherever they might move. The name of the relevant discipline at German universities from the late seventeenth century onwards-ius naturae et gentium, the law of nature and of nations-revealed the full scope of its ambition. That discipline may have died away (although that is a debatable proposition) but any political thinking worth its salt will today (perhaps especially in the twenty-first century) aim to say something about how authority emerges, is maintained or critiqued not only within but also outside the single state. The world of 'nations' or even 'humanity' is established as an important theme of political and legal speculation. (shrink)

— Étant donné que le stoïcisme prône un total détachement à l’égard des êtres qui leur sont chers, l’auteur s’est interrogé sur les fondements de la philanthropie dans le nouveau stoïcisme. La philanthropie stoïcienne trouve en premier lieu sa source dans l’amour de la nature qui s’illustre par un souci de soi exclusif et une socialité naturelle. Le deuxième fondement découle d’un point de vue théologique. Les hommes sont parents entre eux grâce à la relation qu’ils ont avec Dieu par (...) le logos divin. Le troisième fondement est d’origine politique. L’individu est respecté en tant que partie du tout universel. Il ne s’agit jamais d’un amour de l’autre pour sa bonté personnelle. Cette ambivalence de la philanthropie stoïcienne s’illustre par rapport à l’esclavage et à la gladiature. Les stoïciens ne s’opposent pas à l’esclavage en tant que tel, mais aux entraves de la liberté intérieure. De même, ils ne souhaitent pas l’abolition de la gladiature. L’essentiel est de se vaincre soi-même et de se soumettre à la Fortune selon le sort qu’elle nous a assigné.— The author investigates the foundations of philanthropy in late Stoicism, granted the Stoic sanction of total detachment from the objects of love. Stoic philanthropy is primarily grounded in a love of nature which expresses itself in an exclusive concern for oneself and a natural sociality. It finds its second source in a theological perspective. Human beings are related because of the relationship that they have with God by the divine logos. Its third source is political in origin. The individual is respected as a part of the universal whole. Love of another for his own goodness never comes into play. As a result, Stoic philosophy appears ambivalent in the case of slaves and gladiators. Stoics are not opposed to slavery as such, but to interference with interior freedom. Likewise, late Stoicism doesn’t advocate the abolition of the gladiatorial system. Victory over oneself and submission to Fortune and one’s lot are what counts. (shrink)

After reading chapter two of Russell’s In Praise of Idleness, which discusses the history of the concept of knowledge, and the article by Ranjay Gulati whocommented the wars of tribes (“Tent poles, tribalism, and boundary spanning: The rigor-relevant debate in management research”), this inspired me an image of gladiator battles between different groups in the scientific world. Inspired by Feyerabend’s concept of fairy tales, I illustrate the struggle between quantitative and qualitative researchers that I witnessed in my research career...

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The Eye of the Beholder: Deformity and Disability in the Graeco-Roman WorldThomas A. J. McGinnRobert Garland. The Eye of the Beholder: Deformity and Disability in the Graeco-Roman World. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1995. xviii + 222 pp. 64 pls. Cloth, $39.95.Recent years have witnessed increased attention among ancient historians in the subject of marginal types. What is new is not so much the unearthing of evidence, most of (...) which has long been available though not always easily accessible in the works of antiquarians, but the sophistication of method and the vigor of approach spurred by developments in the social history of more recent periods.An incomplete notice might include the studies devoted to gladiators (Wiedemann) and actors (Leppin, Ducos), Roman slaves (Bradley), so-called humiliores (Rilinger), leistai, mercenaries, and traders in fourth-century Greece (McKechnie), blacks in the Roman world (Thompson), and dwarfs in Egypt and Greece (Dasen).What is common to most or all of these efforts is a tight focus limited to one society, a narrowly-framed period of time, and/or a well-defined group. This narrow approach is not at all surprising, given the fact that the sources are scattered and composite, and demand a wide range of expertise in their treatment. A general study of the situation of the deformed and disabled in antiquity is then an all the more welcome addition to this trend in scholarship, though the true test of its usefulness will be its ability to confront successfully this central challenge posed by the sources.The book under review deserves praise for attempting to fill this need. There are undeniable advantages to the panoptic approach. The book calls attention to the value of evidence that is easily ignored: two prominent examples are the visual arts and physiognomy. Among its other virtues is a valuable demonstration of how ridicule is employed as a “marginalizing” device. The introduction is in some ways exemplary for its lucid emphasis on the difficulties of the enterprise. Unfortunately, such caution is fully justified by the result. This review argues two points: that a synthesis of this subject is as yet premature and that future studies should avoid wedding themselves as directly to modern concerns as this one does.A list of the chapter-headings shows that the book is organized thematically: “Survival of the Weakest,” “Half-Lives,” “The Roman Emperor in His Monstrous World,” “The Deformed and Divine,” “Deriding the Disabled,” “The Physiognomic Consciousness,” “Images of the Deformed,” “Medical Diagnosis and Treatment,” “Towards a Teratology,” and “Racial Deformity.” The chapters are bracketed by an Introduction and Conclusion, and followed by a Glossary, Notes, Bibliography, Index Locorum, and General Index. Plates with sixty-four illustrations complement the presentation of visual evidence in the text.The author sets himself a double aim (xii–xiii). One goal is to study the social [End Page 667] and economic conditions governing the existence of the deformed and disabled, and further to attempt to establish to what extent the ancients developed a teratology—the study of the causes of congenital deformity. The other purpose lies in the author’s desire to contribute a personal perspective, one avowedly shaped by the passage in 1990 of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA).The forthright assertion of modern—and deeply personal—concerns is a hallmark of this work. As the title suggests, this is a subjective evaluation of the ancient evidence. It will come as no surprise that, when measured by the author’s standard, that of the ADA, the Greeks and particularly the Romans fall short of the mark. Unfortunately, the successful pursuit of this second goal spoils the fruits of the first. In brief, the author displays a pronounced inclination to moralize, which reduces the power of his work.In a similar way, the breadth of approach ultimately defeats its own purpose. The challenge of the sources—confronted with honesty by Garland in his introductory chapter—is exacerbated to an unacceptable degree by his refusal to define carefully what he means by “deformed” and “disabled” (see 5–7). There are also various infelicities of treatment, especially though not exclusively on the Roman side, which might have been avoided... (shrink)

Stoic themes in Ridley Scott's Gladiator.