The U.S. and Soviet Union in the Vietnam War
The Vietnam war was fought as a proxy war between Russia and the United States, this has been well understood for many years.
History
Roman Culture vs. American Culture
The spectacle of animals, prisoners, and gladiators fighting and dying in the Collesseum spoke directly to the Roman viewer’s sense of the proper order of the world. Even an impoverished shopkeeper could watch a famous gladiator die and know that he, the observer, was still above that poor wretch. To be Roman was to know that there was always someone below you, and what happened in the arena was the quintessential reminder of the boundaries of us, the crowd, versus them, the damned.