In pop culture, Rome is often recognized more quickly by its gesture than its name: the ruler sits above the arena, a red robe flowing from his shoulder, a laurel appears above his head, and the defeated disappears beneath the sand or into the jaws of a beast. A few such signs are enough to make the alien planet resemble an imperial amphitheater. The eleventh episode of the anime “Dragon Ball Z” uses this shortcut particularly prominently when Vegeta and Nappa arrive on Arlia, ruled by the Moai King. An arena operates in the tyrant’s palace, warriors battle before his throne, and the losers fall into a pit where the enormous monster Yeddy awaits.
Roman styling appears simultaneously in the costume, space, and ceremony. The Moai wears a draped red robe resembling a toga or imperial cloak, his two bright antennae arranged like the branches of a laurel wreath, while a golden chalice, a monumental throne, and wide steps separate the ruler from the fighting subjects below. Historical reconstruction gives way to visual foreshortening: the laurel represents victory, the robe power, the arena the right to control the fate of others. The image is completed by the king himself, bored with the level of combat and seeking new opponents, like a Roman pageant organizer anticipating an increasingly lavish program.
The most Roman element of this episode, however, conceals a slight inconsistency that reveals how later cultures remembered the arena. The Moai king connects the gladiatorial combat with the throwing of the defeated warrior to a beast, whereas in the Roman program these were usually separate types of spectacle. The morning belonged to the venationes, displays and animal hunts; Midday brought public executions, including the damnation ad bestias, or condemnation of a criminal or prisoner to death by a wild animal; only later did the munera begin, duels between trained gladiators, grouped according to specific types of weaponry. In his seventh moral letter, Seneca clearly distinguishes the morning animal spectacles from the midday killing of condemned men, and surviving sources and arena depictions confirm the relatively consistent order of these three parts of the program. A gladiator’s simple defeat, therefore, did not automatically mean being thrown to the lions; this image was created by merging the gladiatorial duel with the Roman execution ritual.
At Arlia, all these elements are compressed into a single scene. The king takes the place of the Roman editor, organizer and benefactor of the spectacle; the warriors provide him with the munera, and Yedda, waiting outside the arena, introduces the damnation ad bestias motif. “Dragon Ball Z” thus utilizes Rome more broadly than just through the Moai’s robe: it adopts the entire recognizable setting, in which the throne is elevated above the sand, combat is part of courtly ceremonial, and the beast, locked beneath the floor, remains the monarch’s last argument. In the Roman amphitheater, the individual parts of the program unfolded over many hours; in Arlia, they are contained in a few minutes and a single open trapdoor.
