Gladiatorial contests.

Attending the games was one of the practices that went with being a Roman. The Etruscans, who introduced this type of contest in the sixth century BCE, are credited with its development but it's the Romans who made it famous. A surviving feature of the Roman games was when a gladiator fell he was hauled out of the arena by a slave dressed as the Etruscan death-demon Charun. The slave would carry a hammer which …

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