Rome Sourced Evidence

Primary source evidence allows for historians to come to their own conclusion and read from sources that experienced the event. Primary sources could be audio recordings, letters, texts, statues, and relics which tell us more about the event or time in history.

In module four we went through the technique called SCIM-C which allows us to find primary sources and understand them. SCIM-C stands for summarizing, contextualizing, inferring, monitoring, and interpretation. Summarizing is when you find out the author, subject, audience, and purpose of the primary source is. contextualizing is finding more details about the source: time and the place. Also more specifics about the audience. Was it confidential or for the public? Inferring is concluding what you found and the why. What are the reasons that pushed them to write the letter. Monitoring is questioning the assumptions you made: Why did they come to live here? With all of these phases you will have an interpretation of the primary source.

Historians believed for the longest time that gladiatorial contests were filled with death and blood. But what we found out was that the contests were not as brutal as we thought. Historians looked into letters written by the romans reacting and commenting on these events. They would use these events for means to win elections and sway the masses and have popularity in the Roman city. According to Cicero these events were a means to win elections and popularity among the citizens “Mamercus was a very wealthy man, and his refusal of the aedileship was the cause of his defeat for the consulship. If, therefore, such entertainment is demanded by the people, men of right judgment must at least consent to furnish it, even if they do not like the idea. But in so doing they should keep within their means, as I myself did. They should likewise afford such entertainment, if gifts of money to the people are to be the means of securing on some occasion some more important or more useful object.” Here Cicero states that to afford such entertainment for the people are means of securing some more important useful object. These events that were “to-the-death” had multiple slaves and gladiators- these all costed money. Just to transfer a mountain lion to the arena took a lot of men and money. With that “to-the-death” contests were not as common as we thought. It was also infringed upon by some spectators. These were not as common as we thought. More common events that took place were horse races and boxing matches. These were ways that slaves could become roman citizens that showed their loyalty to Rome.