What is the most outrageously messed up story about Ancient Roman entertainment you've read?

Question

Who was more effed up to you, Ancient Romans or the Mayans that cut peoples still beating hearts from their chests? or some other people from history or the present?

Answer 1

The HBO series of Rome was the most fouled up to me.  In order to gain viewers, they blackened the reputations of a lot of Roman matrons and suggested that s*x was a legitimate means to power.  There's no indication that the matrons they named were anything like that.

Answer 2

The past is a strange place, the ancient past doubly so!

The Roman gladiatorial games were supposed to be an 'entertaining' way of disposing of condemned criminals. Not all the victims were criminals as we would see it, eg. the persecution of Christians. They apparently sank to the depths of tearing men and women apart with starved wild beasts such as lions and wolves. Pretty nasty I'm sure you'll agree.

Also some of the Emperors themselves were supposed to have committed outrageous acts, such as Tiberius'  child abuse and Caligula's murder of his pregnant sister (allegedly carrying his chlid!). See Suetonius 'The Twelve Caesars' for more info, though be aware that he was the Sunday Sport/National Enquirer of his day!

For me though I have a feeling that the Mayans were worse in one way. Their victims were supposedly 'brainwashed' into thinking that sacrificing themselves was their religious duty. At least the Romans only killed livestock during their religious rituals.

For sheer numbers you don't need to look any further than the 20th century, Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot et al.

Answer 3

Answering your first question, I once read that Roman guards in charge of games in the Collisseum or other Roman ampitheatres used to find the fattest woman possible, strip her off and make her run around as a show, and Tigers were then let loose to chase them.

The second question, I would say that the n**i German empire or the Japanese empire during WWII was about the worse you could get, with the various genocides and human experimentations.