Were other European religions better than Christianity?

[kılıç_mehmet]

A. Gladiatorial spectacles were political and social in nature. The dollop of "religion" on them was a mere formality-a nod to the by-then not very sacred state cult.
B. You are stuck thinking only of Zeus/Jupiter and his ilk, which shows that you no nothing about the familial cult.
C. The Romans did not portray themselves to be descendants of the Greeks, save in poetic ways and tropes, nor were they. Re-read the Aeneid, and reconsider the meaning of the Trojan War in it. The Romans considered themselves very "other" than Greek. They absorbed the Greek state cult because it preserved a tradition of learning they found engaging, and it made for good showmanship.

You should put "pagan" in quotes there, as the contests were not ritualistic.

a.Still does not explain how they were abolished after christianity became the dominant religion in the empire.
b. Familial cult? You mean like ancestor worship?
c.True. I know most of that already. They also knew that the greeks didn't consider them amongst their own, and called them pussies because they spent the whole day doing nothing while thinking about the nature of the universe or something. Romans were, in most ways, quite practical.

And well, the spectacles were far from simple fights to the death. They often were staged to depict historical battles, or even myths of the roman religion.