The people of ancient Rome enjoyed a brutal form of entertainment. Thousands of spectators would watch men and women die terrible deaths, all-the-while cheering as you would for a sports team. Gladiators fought to the death; Christians were fed to lions; any number of painful ends lay ahead for those who entered the bloody stage of the Coloseum, and all for the simple entertainment of a nation growing more and more corrupt every day.

But the Romans do not stand alone in their enjoyment of gore. Countless cultures have performed bloody and ruthless acts of torture and execution while crowds of onlookers watched with satisfaction. Ancient Indian cultures performed human sacrifices to their gods in front of huge crowds, and in more recent history, Europeans watched while condemned prisoners were drawn, quartered, disemboweled and separated limb from limb — often while still alive.

In our modern “civilized” culture, it is easy to condemn these acts as inhuman and barbaric. We are able to raise our noses to them because we have eradicated such bloody spectacles from our culture. Or have we?

Up to this date, “Saw III” has grossed over 60 million dollars. Added to the previous movies in its series, the worldwide total climbs to over 300 million, according to www.the-numbers.com. People are paying six, seven or eight dollars a ticket just to watch a movie about the escapades of a serial killer. The movie graphically depicts men and women forced to endure various types of “games” to attempt to survive. Most of them meet grisly and tortuous deaths and all of this, to the very last detail, is shown on camera.

The “Saw” movies represent an ever-growing dynasty including such films as “Hostel” and “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre,” among many others. But it’s not only horror movies that are growing in gore. Quentin Tarantino’s “Kill Bill” action movies are full of relentless violence The color schemes of certain scenes are changed in an attempt to downplay some of this as life and limb are discarded and blood is spilled in gallons. And then of course there are video games, often exponentially more graphic in their depictions of death. Just to give you an idea, recently released “Half-Life 2” allows you to saw your enemies in half with thrown blades, of course including all the blood splatter you could want. If your stomach’s a bit queasy, you’re not alone. But these are just movies and games. It’s not like they’re real, right? This is the excuse we feed ourselves. We tell ourselves we’re not as bad as those nasty Romans or barbaric tribes, while we go about enjoying the same entertainment, perhaps to a greater level of detail than ever before. Senseless violence has become increasingly popular in our culture.

But there’s a difference between “Saw” and “The Passion of the Christ” and between “Kill Bill” and “Saving Private Ryan.” When violence is part of a noble or true story with a meaningful plot, it can be stomached. But when any form of entertainment builds a plot solely around the desire for violence, a line has been crossed.

This is a line which separates those who are moralistic and hold an appreciation for the sanctity of a human life from those who greet with pleasure the casually-depicted destruction of it. The latter might as well be in that ancient crowd, cheering as death and destruction play out before them.