Bread and circuses

And the PSL experience

Trying to read Gibbons’ The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire while watching the Pakistan Super League (PSL) at the same time is a terrible idea as you end up enjoying neither the book nor the game, but on the other hand it helps put into perspective how spectator sports have been an important part of human and political life since the beginning of time.

It was fascinating to see that thousands gathered in stadiums all over Pakistan — Dalbandin, Kashmore, Swabi, Mian Channu and other places — to watch these matches and support their teams together. Why would people in, say Muslim Bagh, root for “KP” as Peterson is known? Anthropologist friends at university used to tell us that as hunter-gatherers we humans apparently like hunting in packs, which made for an interesting conversation especially as most of my anthropologist friends at that time were nubile women.

Apparently our inner security works in circles, family, extended family and friends, clan, neighbourhood, region or tribe, area and country. Which could explain why individuals in large numbers suddenly developed affinity/loyalty with a team that had nothing in common with them other than a shared name of a city or province. In Arabic there is a saying which translated roughly means – “my brother and I will fight against my cousin, but my cousin and I will fight against a stranger”.

The Greeks were the pioneers of regular sporting meets with the Olympic Games held once every four years in Olympia in western part of the Peloponnese. But there it was individuals who were honoured, the herald announced the victors name, his father’s name and then his homeland. Although Astyoles of Croton when later he took part in the Olympics as a citizen of Syracus, people of Croton punished him by destroying his status and converting his house into a prison.

It was after the Peloponnesian wars, when Greece was ruled by the Sparta that regionalism was injected into the contest, when tribunes each representing his region of Greece had to fight gladiatorial contests until death.

The PSL by naming the teams after cities was following the Spartan model, in fact almost all sporting leagues feature teams named after cities eg Real Madrid, Liverpool, Bayern Munich, or even a location such as Chelsea or Queens Park Rangers, or alternatively as in English cricket league counties, as this is the only way to attract crowd loyalty, viewership and financial success. Throughout history some rulers have also used these games as a means to distract the public from real life issues, fortunately this was not the case in PSL where the politicians stayed away from matches.

The writer Suzzane Collins, in her trilogy and highly successful Hollywood movies The Hunger Games, called the fictitious country Panem (bread in Latin), where tribunes fought till death for the honour and glory of their respective districts. In many ways “just as gladiatorial games were ultimately the manifestation of the powerlessness of slaves in Roman society, so The Hunger Games provides a powerful warning about the consequences of autocracy wrapped in traditional clothing.”

In ancient Rome gladiatorial fights were so entrenched in everyday life that the playwright Juvenal coined the phrase — all that the plebs want is Panem et circenses – (bread and the circuses) describing the cynical formula of Roman emperors for keeping the masses content with bread — through grain doles (handouts) and entertainment — through gladiatorial fights.

There were two main arenas in Rome for such contests. The Circus which legend has it had a capacity of 250,000 spectators, this was for chariot races (remember Ben Hur) as well as gladiatorial contests, although the structure is no longer standing. In 1982 the rock band Genesis (Phil Collins was still with the band then) held a concert at the same venue attended by an estimated crowd of 400,000. The other venue which is still standing is the Coliseum of Rome, which could accommodate over 50,000 spectators.

The gladiatorial contests reached a climax when Commodus was emperor. Son of the Stoic philosopher Marcus Aurelius and protagonist in at least two major Hollywood movies (Gladiator and The End of the Roman Empire), Commodus had little interest in ruling but a strong interest in prolonging his rule; as result he opened the flood gates for grain subsidy and spectacular gladiatorial fights as well as fights of men against beasts. Damnatio et bestias, literally is the damned against beasts.

According to Gibbons, if there was any one point in history that defined the start of the decline of the Roman Empire it was the rule of Commodus. In his still popular book Meditations Marcus Aurelius states that Empires are governed on the basis of public good and justice and not for the profit, popularity or pleasure of its rulers, unfortunately his son was of a different volition as he failed to distinguish between what may be good for the Empire and what may be good for the Emperor.

Overshadowed by his father’s intellect Commodus was a paranoid ruler, having survived an earlier attempt on his life instigated by his sister Lucilla who was exiled and then killed, Commodus launched several spectacles to distract the public. These games lasted over a hundred days with the Emperor himself taking part in them, attracted gladiators and slave owners from all over the Empire. He fashioned himself as Hercules and wore a lion skin. Reputedly on one day alone he shot almost 100 lions more a tribute to his marksmanship and the poison in his arrows than bravery as it was all carried out from well protected walkways.

He continued bankrupting the Empire and purging the Senate by murdering its members. Eventually the Praetorian Guards’ prefect Quintus Laetus decided it was time to act to save the Empire. A plot was hatched and Commodus was murdered in his bath. Thus AD 193 was the year of the five emperors — in one year there were five claimants to the Roman throne.

The new Emperor Pertinax only lasted for sixty days before he too was killed at the behest of the Praetorian Guards. He was succeeded by Didius Julianus, but he in turn was overthrown by Septimius Severus who became the Emperor, born in Lapitus Magna a Roman city in what is now Libya. Septimius Severus fought a long and protracted civil war against other claimants before finally winning and providing some stability. But by then the die was cast and the Roman Empire was in terminal decline.

I enjoyed the PSL and personal team preferences aside, having attended over twenty matches in Dubai and Sharjah since I moved there in 2007, never has the atmosphere in the stadium been better or more crowded. In the end we must remember it is only a game and PSL is not a means to end to world poverty or to herald world peace. It was wise of Nawaz Sharif, his ministers, Imran Khan as well as most politicians not to have attended any of the matches to seek political mileage. In the end it is only a game and the next day we need to carry on with our lives, and hopefully a far cry from Commodus’s Rome.

In Juvenal’s words “…Already long ago, from when we sold our vote to no man, the People have abdicated their duties; for the People who once upon a time handed out military command, high civil office, legions — everything, now restrains itself and anxiously hopes for just two things: bread and circuses.”