Fill in the Blanks 112-testOnline version 112-test by Farhad Key 1 trivialized inconceivable noble graphically despised represented institutionalized pitiful depict nobly empathy scholars rabid tendency sideline dignified bravery Many popular ideas about the Roman arena were formed in the nineteenth century from popular images and accounts . The influential artist Jean Léon Gérôme used genuine gladiatorial art and equipment from Pompeii as models for his paintings of ancient Rome and the arena , but he also invented freely in dramatizing his scenes . Movies from Quo Vadis to Gladiator have drawn on such works to a world of strangely armed gladiators , Christians awaiting attack by lions , and " thumbs down " death - gestures by emperors and crowds . Actual Roman images of the arena are quite different : crowds and emperors are rarely shown , we are not sure which direction the thumb actually pointed in the famous death gesture , and victims of attack by big cats were certainly neither nor . The Romans glorified the shown in the arena , but the events and degraded the participants . Mosaic pictures of executions and combats , violent to our eyes , were displayed in the public rooms and even dining rooms in the homes of wealthy Romans . How can the viewer today possibly understand such images ? Until fairly recently , modern authors writing about the arena minimized its significance and the violence as a to Roman history . The was also to view the events through our own eyes and to see them as or horrifying , although to most Romans with victims of the arena was . In the past few decades , however , have started to analyze the complex motivations for deadly public entertainments and for contradictory views of gladiators as , yet beloved hero - slaves .
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