By Theresa Rézeau 

A victorious gladiator stands over his defeated opponent.

The fallen man raises his fingers in an appeal for mercy. Above him, spectators lean forward, their arms outstretched, demanding a verdict.

The man holding the sword looks towards those who will decide whether his opponent lives or dies.

This is not simply a painting about gladiators.
It is a painting about the crowd.

In Pollice Verso (1872), the French painter Jean-Léon Gérôme (1824–1904) draws our attention first to the centre of the arena, where a victorious gladiator has brought his opponent to the ground. His sword remains in his hand. Beneath his foot lies a defeated man whose life now depends upon a decision he cannot make.

But the true power of the painting lies elsewhere.

To the right, the Vestal Virgins, dressed in white, extend their thumbs downward. Around them, spectators crowd the stone terraces. The emperor sits above the arena, positioned to deliver the final judgment. The victorious gladiator, despite holding the weapon, looks towards those in authority.

The man capable of delivering death is not necessarily the man who decides it.

Gérôme has painted a moment in which violence is suspended. The outcome remains uncertain, but the appetite of the spectators is unmistakable. They have come to witness a contest, and now they demand its conclusion.

There is something remarkable about the gesture that gives the painting its title. Historians remain uncertain whether a downward thumb actually signified death in ancient Rome. The Latin expression pollice verso refers to a turned thumb, but the precise gesture and its meaning remain disputed.

Gérôme’s interpretation nevertheless helped establish the downward thumb as one of the most recognisable symbols of condemnation. A nineteenth-century painting shaped how later generations imagined an ancient civilisation.

The painting did not merely preserve the memory of the arena. It helped create the image through which we remember it. And that is where its relevance to our own age begins.

The Colosseum still stands.

Nearly two thousand years after its construction, millions of visitors pass through its weathered arches each year. They admire the engineering, photograph the ruins, and imagine the spectacles that once unfolded within its walls. It has become a monument to history, a reminder of the rise and fall of an empire.

Or so we like to believe.

We approach the ruins with the confidence of people who consider themselves more civilised than those who once occupied their seats. We are horrified by the thought of crowds cheering while another human being faced death. We speak of Roman cruelty as something belonging to a distant and less enlightened world.

And then we return home, open our phones, and join another crowd.

The stone walls have crumbled, but the spectacle remains.

The Roman poet Juvenal famously criticised the public appetite for panem et circenses, bread and circuses. His words described a population increasingly content with material provision and entertainment in place of meaningful political engagement.

The games were more than diversions. They could serve as demonstrations of imperial authority, transforming violence into public ritual. Gladiators fought before vast crowds, and condemned prisoners faced wild animals. Within those walls, power was made visible. The defeated were displayed, the victorious celebrated, and the spectators invited to witness the consequences of decisions made above them.

The crowd did not simply observe power.
It helped give power its theatre.

Rome was neither the first nor the last civilisation to recognise the attraction of public punishment. Executions, stocks, hangings, and other rituals of humiliation have repeatedly drawn spectators across history. Justice and entertainment have often occupied the same public square, sometimes becoming so entangled that the suffering of the condemned appeared to be part of the reward for those who watched.

We have abolished many of those practices. Our laws and institutions have developed protections that people in the ancient world could scarcely have imagined.

But the appetite for spectacle has proved more difficult to abolish.

Today, a person can wake up to discover that a few seconds of their life have been separated from everything that came before them. A private argument recorded on a stranger’s phone circulates online. Within hours, millions have watched it. Their name is discovered. Their employer is contacted. Strangers examine old photographs, friendships, and personal details, searching for further evidence of the person they have already decided exists.

Some viewers demand consequences. Others make jokes. Many simply watch.

By the following week, another face has taken their place.

We may know very little about the individual at the centre of such a controversy. We may not know what happened before the recording began, what followed after it ended, or whether the judgment being delivered is proportionate to the conduct being judged. But we know how to participate.

We watch. We react. We share. We move on.

Imagine the noise rising from the Colosseum. Thousands of voices gathering into a single roar, each spectator adding to the demand for another man’s humiliation or death.

Now picture the comment section beneath a viral video.

One insult becomes ten. Ten become hundreds. Soon, thousands of strangers are laughing, condemning, mocking, and encouraging one another. What begins as an individual judgment becomes a collective performance of cruelty. Each new comment gives permission for the next, until the person at the centre is no longer treated as a human being.

The Roman spectator raised a hand.
The modern spectator presses a button.

Neither needs to hear the voice of the person beneath them.

The lions have disappeared.
The spectators have not.

Consider again the defeated gladiator in Gérôme’s painting. His fingers are raised towards the crowd, but his fate is no longer his to control. The victorious fighter stands above him, waiting. The Vestal Virgins extend their hands, their gestures forceful and unmistakable within the world Gérôme has constructed.

No one in those seats needs to approach the fallen man.

They can demand his death without delivering it. The physical distance allows them to participate in his fate without confronting the suffering their judgment may cause.

Our modern distance is less visible.

We may watch from a train, an office, or the comfort of our own homes. The person on the screen becomes a subject for discussion, an object of ridicule, or an example through which we demonstrate our convictions.

Then we put the phone away.

The crowd experiences the spectacle as a passing event. The person inside it must live with what remains.

But why are audiences so willing to gather?

Another person’s disgrace can provide the comforting illusion of our own moral superiority. We examine their failures more readily than our own. Public condemnation allows us to feel righteous without requiring much self-examination. The louder the crowd becomes, the easier it is to mistake agreement for understanding.

There is also the reassurance of belonging. To stand among those passing judgment feels safer than to become the person being judged.

An arena without spectators is simply an empty building. Its power comes from the people who choose to watch.

Spectacle also directs public attention. A single viral confrontation may command days of argument while a consequential policy decision receives scarcely a glance. The crowd debates the words spoken in a recording, yet pays little attention to decisions that may affect thousands of lives.

Often, it takes only one image to command that attention.

Gérôme’s Pollice Verso demonstrates how powerfully a single moment can shape what an audience sees and remembers.

It freezes the arena at its most consequential moment. The fallen man’s raised fingers, the victorious gladiator’s waiting posture, the extended hands of the spectators: everything directs us towards the judgment about to be made.

We cannot see what happens next.
That absence matters.

The painting leaves the viewer suspended in the same uncertainty as the defeated man. We are invited to look, to interpret, perhaps even to anticipate the verdict. In doing so, we find ourselves occupying the same position as the spectators Gérôme has painted.

Today, photographs and recordings can do the same work, reducing complicated human experiences to a single frame through which millions come to understand them.

An image can reveal a truth.

It can also become the only truth an audience is willing to consider.

There are, of course, moments when public judgment is necessary. Wrongdoing must be exposed. Those who abuse power must be held accountable. Silence can protect those responsible for harm while leaving victims without justice.

Public attention has helped uncover abuses that might otherwise have remained hidden.

But there is a difference between demanding accountability and taking pleasure in another person’s destruction.

One seeks justice.
The other seeks an audience.

The distinction matters because cruelty does not become virtue simply because the crowd believes itself to be on the right side.

Nor does every public accusation constitute proof. A society committed to justice must care about evidence, proportion, truth, and the possibility that its first judgment may be wrong.

None of this requires us to abandon moral responsibility. It requires us to exercise it more carefully.

Return once more to Pollice Verso.

The man on the ground is awaiting a verdict. The victorious gladiator looks towards the emperor. The Vestal Virgins have already indicated what they want. Around them, thousands of faces are directed towards the same patch of sand.

Gérôme gives us no access to the thoughts of those spectators. We cannot know whether some felt pity, whether others were indifferent, or whether anyone questioned what was about to happen.

We can only see that they are there.
And that may be the most revealing part of the painting.

The spectators are not all emperors, soldiers, or executioners. They are ordinary people who have come to watch. People who have taken their seats. People who will eventually return home.

The man beneath them cannot leave so easily.

Nearly two thousand years separate us from the Roman arena. We have changed our laws, expanded our understanding of human dignity, and developed institutions intended to restrain cruelty.

These achievements matter.

But moral progress cannot be measured only by the punishments a society has abolished. It must also be measured by what its people are willing to watch, encourage, and excuse.

We often think the Colosseum is a monument to Roman cruelty.

It is something even more unsettling.
It is a monument to human nature.

Every generation believes it has left the arena behind. Every generation builds another one.

The Colosseum never closed.

Author’s Note

This essay was inspired by my visit to the Colosseum in Rome. Standing among its ancient walls, I found myself thinking not only about those who fought and died in the arena, but about the thousands who gathered to watch.

Centuries have passed, yet I wonder how much of that crowd we still carry within ourselves.

Photograph: Theresa Rézeau at the Colosseum, Rome.
From the author’s personal collection.