pitting 10,000 beasts against the same number of gladiators. Often, though, the games were overshadowed fierce feuding, drinking, courting, and rioting in the stands. Fans in Jus- tinian's Constantinople burned down their wooden coliseum four times between 491 and 532 A.D.
Medieval spectators were far less unruly, perhaps because of the smaller scale of events and the narrower social gap between players and viewers. Tournaments of knights, beginning as wild and rough 'mimic wars" in the 12th...