The Romans themselves noted that the games of the arena were often too bloody for foreigners who had not been raised to enjoy such things - and their contemporaries were not exactly ‘delicate’. So it’s certainly gruesome.
But another matter is that a scene like this, of an unarmed man being torn apart by animals, is more akin to a public execution than the gladiator games - those sentenced to die in this way, noxii, were men convicted of (what the Romans saw as) serious offenses.
Did this kind of thing exist in the past? How could the crowds enjoy such sadism?
The Romans themselves noted that the games of the arena were often too bloody for foreigners who had not been raised to enjoy such things - and their contemporaries were not exactly ‘delicate’. So it’s certainly gruesome.
But another matter is that a scene like this, of an unarmed man being torn apart by animals, is more akin to a public execution than the gladiator games - those sentenced to die in this way, noxii, were men convicted of (what the Romans saw as) serious offenses.