On Violence

[Belacqua]

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Violence as a form of entertainment is as old as humanity itself

The first image you show, the 19th century painting by Gérôme, is certainly a picture of violence. The gladiator fights were famous and definitely violent.

The second, Minoan Bull-leaping, was not violent. It was dangerous, it didn't aim at injury. From Wikipedia:

Bull-leaping (Ancient Greek: ταυροκαθάψια, taurokathapsia[1]) is a term for various types of non-violent bull fighting. 

emphasis added. The Cretan fresco is shown just to the right of that sentence.

The third image, the 6th century BC marble relief, is sports. Is Olympic wrestling considered violent? If done right, both wrestlers went home uninjured.

The painting from the Chroniques de Froissart shows another kind of sport. It was also dangerous, and was partly a training for war, but the people in the picture are doing sports, not trying to kill each other. 

I suppose that if you want to call American Football and that type of thing violent, then sports are violent. (I would agree that boxing is violent.) 

So of the four, the best example of what you're trying to prove comes from a time which many think of as being a high point in civilization. The Roman Empire at its peak enjoyed watching violent death. Some people might say that this form of entertainment gives the lie to the idea that it was actually a civilized time. 

Still, the number of simulated violent deaths we see in movies and TV far surpass what any Roman citizen would have seen in a lifetime.