The Colosseum. And yes — the emperor from the movie Gladiator was a real man. His name was Commodus, and he genuinely did come down into this arena and fight, dressed as Hercules, in front of the whole city. The movie just made him far too brave.
Because Commodus rigged everything. When he fought gladiators, they surrendered — because you do not defeat the emperor and live. When he "hunted" wild animals, he did it from a raised walkway, safely out of reach, shooting down at penned beasts. He once killed a hundred lions in a single day without ever being in danger. He beheaded ostriches with special crescent-bladed arrows, and then — this really happened, recorded by a senator who was sitting right here — he walked over to the senators holding a severed ostrich head in one hand and his bloody sword in the other, and grinned at them. Not a word. Just a look that said, you're next.
The senator who wrote it down, Cassius Dio, admitted he and the others were so terrified of laughing — bec
ause laughing at the emperor meant death — that they yanked the laurel leaves off their ceremonial wreaths and chewed them, frantically, so the constant motion of their jaws would hide the fact that they were cracking up. The most powerful men in Rome, eating their own hats to keep from giggling at a man with an ostrich head.
And he made them pay for the show. Literally. Commodus billed the city
