1 January 404: A monk tackles the gladiators Telemachus intervenes in an attempt to halt Rome’s bloody public games By the beginning of the fifth century AD, the gladiatorial games that had once so entranced the Roman crowds were in steep decline. To the disappointment of the connoisseurs, brutal slaughter had gone out of fashion. Under the new state religion, Christianity, the games were seen as a reactionary relic.
Attendances were dwindling, the arenas were crumbling and the standard of the fighters was not what it had been. Then, for the fans, came the worst blow of all. On the first day of AD 404 (though in truth it’s hard to be sure of the exact date), a crowd gathered at one of Rome’s arenas, perhaps the Colosseum, for some good unclean fun.
Just as things were getting interesting, a scruffy figure leapt into the arena, rushed to the gladiators and tried to drag them apart. “In the name of Christ, forbear!” he shouted – or so some later accounts claimed. The protester, it transpired, was an ascetic monk named Telemachus from the eastern part of the empire, who was visiting Rome for some purpose of his own.
Appalled by the “abominable spectacle”, he was determined to stop it. The fans, though, were not happy. According to the church historian Theodoret of Cyrrhus, writing just a little after these events, the crowds reacted violently to Telemachus’s intervention, stoning him to death.
And that seemed to be the end of that. But it wasn’t. When the you.
