| 词源 |
Roman holiday. A holiday that is obtained at the expense of others, just as the Romans obtained their enjoyment at the ex- pense of the doomed gladiators who fought in the arena. Byron invented the expression in “Childe Harold” when writing of a captured Gaul forced to fight in the arena and “Butcher’d to make a Roman holiday.” A Roman holiday is thus also bread and circuses, a public spectacle marked by onlookers pleas- uring in the brutal, barbaric display of anything, from an air- plane crash to a violent hockey game. |