RESPONSE NUMBER TWENTY-SIX To Galatians Re-imagined: Reading with the Eyes of the Vanquished (Fortress 2010) by Brigitte Kahl

Having focused on a literary conceit - the shield of Aeneas as described by imperial apologist Virgil - Kahl devotes the balance of Chapter Three (pp. 148 - 164) to an illuminating discussion of the public games. The Roman Games, icons of the empire, were famously staged in the Colosseum. Less well known is that the games were staged in arenas throughout the empire, and were sponsored by Roman authority long before the founding of the imperium of the Caesars.

The point of Kahl's examination of the Aeneas shield conceit of Virgil and, now, of the games, is to bring home the idea that Roman rule employed various modes of symbolism to legitimize its majesty in both the individual and collective mind.

Kahl delineates many of the horrendous details of the blood sport in all its gore and excess. For this reader, Professor Kahl persuasively reminds that the games served as ideological renforcement via the medium of lavish, murderous entertainment.

I found it illuminating that the status conscious emperors prescribed a fixed sequence of events as well as a mandatory seating arrangements. In the morning imported, exotic wild beasts were killed, by the thousands; at noon there were executions (crucifixions, often combined with animal tearing at the naked bodies of the crucified); afternoons were devoted to gladiatorial contests.

The arenas' seating arrangements did not reflect the high-low, in-out perspective, which Kahl has relied upon earlier, to demonstrate her theory that the Roman Empire (and the Republic before it) was given to visual representations of the defeated "outsider" by a depiction of the defeated lower down, in various aspects of the Great Alter at Pergamon.

The high-is-good, low-is-bad imagery is not what is found at the Colosseum or at Roman arenas generally. As Kahl points out (p. 155), the highest seats in the arena were consigned to women and to the lowest class, which meant, slaves. The immediate bottom seating, closest to the action, was reserved for the emperor, and (presumably, where the emperor was not present) the most powerful local officials.

The seating arrangements, Kahl explains, reinforced the official relegation of all segments of society to the Roman "order" - a term which is used in both senses, to mean public order as well as an assigned place.

Kahl looks (p. 150 ff) to the Roman poet Martial - Marcus Valerius Mattialis (38/41-102/04 C.E.) - as the contemporary voice that interpreted the games in the symbolism which Kahl finds in the games: a portrayal of the cult of the emperor, which represented the emperor as "father of the country" (pater patriae) who possessed "sacred power" (potestas sacra).

The symbolism which requires repeated, large scale, bloody death, Kahl illuminates in stark, persuasive detail.

Persuasive too, is the assignment of the outcast role to the victims killed in the course of the games, whether animals, criminals or prisoners of war.

Less persuasive is the role Kahl assigns (p. 151) to the spectators of the games, in their assigned arena seats, who, Kahl argues, saw themselves as "involved, committed, and transformed by actively participating as players in Caesar's games. It was as agents and partakers in the supreme sacrifice that all were becoming one and self: the life of the Other."

Spectators partaking, spectators as all becoming one, spectators as sharing the life of the other is phrasing that read as the language of Christian ritual, imported into the context of Rome's public games.

In subsequent chapters, is Kahl going to re-import this communion terminology back and forth, between Pauline Eucharistic references and the imperial cult, in order to make the case that Paul's missives to his converts were part of a subversive critique of the cult of emperor worship?

We shall see.