The obvious question is "what's so contradictory about being an advanced culture and staging bloody spectacles"? Especially given the large ground that is covered by the term "advanced culture".
Well, it is one of the things that was drilled into us all life long that there is a progress in history from barbaric behavior to "nice" (or, properly, ethical, compassionate) behavior.
But beyond that there is indeed a process of increasing cooperation. There is usually peace inside nations and empires, i.e. they don't allow their constitutent tribes, if they still exist, to fight each other. While this increasing cooperation is largely about banding together to fight someone else, still it creates a certain progress in morals. Thucydides wrote ...
Another month, another rationality quotes thread. The rules are: