Roman Civilization
CMS 206 /History 206
The Gladiator
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History and Interpretation of Gladiatorial Games
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The Romans believed that they inherited the practice
of gladiatorial games from the Etruscans who used them as part of a funeral
ritual (servants would duel to the death for the right to provide companionship
to their owners in eternity). We don't have any evidence, however, that
the Etruscans, in fact, did any such thing. Conversely, we do have evidence
of gladiators in Campanian society, perhaps of Samnite origin. The early
Christians interpreted the gladiatorial games as a type of human sacrifice.
While it is true that gladiatorial games involved the attempted killing
of one person by another, and that the Romans associated them with funeral
rituals, in fact, the analogy by the Christians seems to have been more
a brilliant rhetorical move in the service of a larger anti-pagan polemic
than a fair description of how Romans themselves understood the games.
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The first gladiatorial games were offered in Rome in
264 BCE by sons of Junius Brutus Pera in their father's honor after he
had died. Gladiatorial combat became a very popular form of public spectacle
very quickly in Rome. Those who offered games began to compete in terms
of the numbers of matches offered. Whereas the sons of Brutus Pera offered
three matches, a century later, Titus Flamininus offered 74 pairs in games
in honor of his father that lasted over three days. Julius Caesar promised
320 matches in funeral games for his daughter, Julia, but the Senate passed
legislation limiting the amount of money that could be spent on gladiatorial
games to stop him. Thus, during the Republic, gladiatorial combat was associated
in Rome with a) a death and b) elite competition. Such displays provided
members of the elite with a vehicle by which to advertise the newest generation
in a family which sought to rule Romans.
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The funeral association is as important for our analysis
as the association with competition within the elite. Not merely were the
games linked to a specific person's death, but they were also very much
about death (during the Republic they were only held around the time of
the winter equinox; Augustus later permitted gladiatorial games at the
spring equinox as well). Gladiators entered the arena with the intent to
kill each other. Roman spectators thus observed men facing death, and attempting
to overcome it. In a metaphorical sense as well, gladiators were socially
dead - they were infamis under Roman law (typically slaves, prisoners
of war and convicted criminals who had a much more restricted set of rights
under Roman law than ordinary citizens). If they fought well enough, however,
they might, with the crowd's support, win both their lives (crowds could
and did urge the editores, the sponsors of the games, to spare a
defeated gladiator before the kill) and their social identities (crowds
urged emperors to free gladiators who were popular). Thus, gladiators,
from a Roman's point of view (if not a Christian's) offered at least the
opportunity to observe death defeated and transcended.
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What gladiators did (indeed what they were trained to
do) was kill and die well. These were tasks of extraordinary urgency for
Romans. On the one hand, Romans (as most premodern societies and impoverished
modern societies) faced daunting mortality rates. They did not have the
opportunity to "grow into their deaths" as a matter of course (as moderns
in materially successful societies do). A Roman at the age of 20 knew he
would probably die before he was 30, and he wanted to meet death with honor
and dignity. He could observe gladiators do it in the arena. Conversely,
as members of a relentlessly militaristic culture, Romans valued the art
of killing in a way we simply don't understand. Roman soldiers, moreover,
enjoyed a much greater autonomy in their line of battle than Greeks did.
In fact, the success of the Roman battle line often depended on the courage
of individual soldiers in hand to hand combat. Thus the ability of an ordinary
citizen to kill single handedly was a skill that the entire empire depended
on to survive.
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Gladiatorial games proved immediately and immensely
popular within the Roman empire. There are reports, for example, of people
in towns where prominent citizens died virtually extorting promises of
gladiatorial games from the survivors. Eventually, the emperors had to
regulate how much could be spent on gladiatorial performances to prevent
members of the elite from bankrupting themselves. As Rome expanded, so
did the performance of the games. We have evidence of gladiatorial performances
in virtually every part of the Roman empire. The games themselves became
a vehicle for the Romanization of the empire. On the one hand, Roman soldiers
liked to observe gladidatorial matches. Thus, lanistae (owner/managers
of gladiatorial troops) would follow the troops to new quarters and offer
matches for entertainment. This could be a highly profitable enterprise
and it was not unusual for members of the elite to invest in gladiatorial
troupes. Cicero's friend, Atticus, for example, made back his investment
in a troupe after two performances. The games themselves provided ways
for Rome to demonstrate the power of their empire. The sheer cost of the
producing games was stunning. Contests involving animals from distant provinces
demonstrated in a material way how far Rome's dominance reached. Inhabitants
of towns in lands conquered by the Romans built amphitheaters and sponsored
competitions as a way of demonstrating their Romanness. Historians traditionally
had a great deal of difficulty accepting that the Greeks, for example,
enthusiastically embraced the games (cf. Japanese enthusiasm for baseball),
but, in fact, the Greeks loved gladiators. The Greeks were not alone. Mosaics
and wall paintings from North Africa and other parts of the empire routinely
use depictions of gladiatorial combat for their themes.
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There are a number of reasons why gladiatorial combat
proved so enthralling for Romans. The arena was a liminal site where fundamental
human conflicts were symbolically fought. The gladiator as outlaw confronted
the forces of civilization and law. Contestants who specialized in the
fighting of animals fought in the guise of bears, leopards and lions -
wild and, to folks living then, daunting forces of nature. Finally, at
issue in every gladiatorial contest, was the most basic question of life
and death.
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Format of gladiatorial games
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The Romans, throughout the history of the Republic,
drew a sharp distinction between gladiatorial contests and other forms
of spectacular entertainment. Games that the state sponsored were called
ludi,
were held quite frequently, never involved armed single combat, were associated
with the worship of a god and were paid for (at least in part) by the public
treasury. Gladiatorial shows, which the Romans called munera, in
contrast, were sponsored by private individuals, were held very infrequently,
were associated with funeral rituals, and were paid for privately. The
change in Roman government initiated by Augustus blurred some of these
distinctions (e.g. funding). Augustus, in fact, was quick to take control
of the infrastructure of the gladiatorial entertainment business (the Roman
state, for example, owned the schools where gladiators trained).
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In addition to the armed individual gladiatorial contests,
other spectacles became associated with gladiatorial games. Venationes
were usually held in the morning of game days (but could be offered on
their own). Bestiarii, or combatants trained to fight animals, were
pitted against wild animals from all over the empire (bullfights and rodeos
are the modern heirs and/or equivalents). The slaughter of wildlife in
these contests was astonishing. Hundreds of deaths in a day were routine.
At the games held by Trajan when he became Emperor, 9,000 were killed.
Today we are appalled by scale of wanton destruction. But to folks living
2,000 years ago, wild animals were as much enemies as marauding Germanic
tribes. While there are occasional reports of audience sympathy for the
plight of animals (elephants in particular seemed to have been troubling),
Romans overwhelming sided with the human combatants. The venationes
symbolized the ability of human society to protect itself from hostile
forces of nature and remained popular throughout the history of the empire.
The Christians, for example, never attempted to outlaw venationes
while they worked strenuously to end gladiatorial combat.
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After the venationes, a typical spectacle would
include a lunch interlude during which humiliores (Romans of non-elite
status - execution by sword was a privilege reserved for the elite) who
had been convicted of capital crimes were executed. Typically, the convicted
were killed by burning at the stake or crucifixtion (forms of capital punishment
that the Romans appeared to have adopted from the Carthaginians) or ad
bestias (in which the convict would be left alone in the arena with
one or more wild - and hungry - animals). Romans had a somewhat contradictory
attitude towards these executions. On the one hand, like the venationes,
the executions were welcome examples of the power of society, law and order,
to restrain and suppress forces that threatened it. Public executions were
popular. On the other hand, writers of elite status, seem to suggest that
gentlemen and women didn't indulge themselves too much in this spectacle.
The decent thing to do was go get lunch. Some writers, for example, criticized
the Emperor Claudius because he routinely stayed in the stadium and observed
the executions. To ordinary Romans, however, Claudius' presence indicated
that the Emperor took his responsibility for preserving law and order seriously.
The people executed were, by definition, wicked and dangerous. Their deaths
were something to rejoice in. During the Principate they become something
to revel in. Under Nero, the practice arose of writing plays adapted from
myths in which people died and assigning the role of a character who would
die to a condemned man. The audience would watch the play, and the actual
killing of the condemned man in character's role (an ancient variant on
a snuff film).
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It was at these lunch time spectacles that Romans
executed Christians when local or national officials were in a persecuting
mode. Public response to these executions could vary dramatically. On the
one hand, Christians who refused to sacrifice to the Roman gods, flagrantly
rejected the norms of the society in which they lived. There are plenty
of examples of communities demanding that their leaders send Christians
to the arena for public execution (cf. accounts of Jews demanding that
Pilate order the execution of Jesus). On the other hand, the "crime" of
Christianity was quite different than the crimes of others executed in
the arena (murder, temple theft, etc.). Christian sources, at least, report
that the dignity of Christians in facing a spectacle intended to degrade
and humiliate them, often inspired respect among the crowds in the stadium.
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After lunch, the gladiatorial contest were held. Originally,
gladiators were identified with ethnic names (e.g., Thracian or Samnite)
which indicated the kind of weaponry they used, not the actual ethnic identity.
In fact, the evidence suggests gladiators fought hard to resist the pseudo-ethnic
labeling (there's a famous example of a gladiator of Samnite origin who
fought as a "Thracian") and took care on their tombstones to indicate their
true ethnic identities.
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Samnites (later called secutores) carried
oblong shields and short swords and wore plumed helmets with visors. Thracians
carried small round shields and curved daggers. Gladiators called retiarii
("net men") carried nets to trip and hold their opponents and tridents
which they used to finish off a captured victim. A Retariius typically
fought a "Gallic" gladiator (also called a murmillo) who
wore a rectangular shield and a visored helmet decorated with a fish (murmillo)
or a Samnite. The vary names and distinctive weaponry of the gladiators
displayed a history of the peoples Rome had defeated as her empire expanded.
Interestingly enough, as the empire expanded and gladiatorial combat grew
popular in the provinces, Romans began to drop the ethnic identification
of gladiators for terms that described their costume or style of fighting
(e.g. Samnites became secutores).
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Gladiatorial Demography
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Romans "recruited" gladiators from a number of population
sources over the course of their history. Captured soldiers were a popular
source, particularly in the years of Rome's imperial expansions. Even when
the geographical limits of the empire had been established, soldiers of
rebellious provinces remained a fruitful source of gladiators. Titus and
Vespasian were able to eliminate extraordinary numbers of rebellious Jews
by organizing gladiatorial games after they "pacified" Judea. Roman courts
could sentence individuals convicted of serious criminal offenses to gladiatorial
schools. Similarly owners of recalcitrant and/or fugitive slaves could
sell these slaves ad ludos (or condemn them to death in public executions).
Under the empire, however, laws were passed requiring owners to establish
some basis (e.g., criminal behavior) for such treatment of a slave.
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Despite the fact (perhaps because of the fact) that
gladiatorial combat was so marked by "outlaw" and servile combatants, free
citizens could and did become gladiators. To do so, they had to take an
oath in which they agreed that they would submit to a) being branded; b)
being chained; c) being killed by an iron weapon; d) to pay for the food
and drink they received with their blood; and d) to suffer things even
if they did not wish to. To agree, voluntarily, to such conditions was
a renunciation of all the social benefits of citizenship in the Roman world
(libertas, the sanctity of the citizen's body, etc.). Thus, the
free citizens who chose to enter the arena were viewed with grave suspicion
by members of the Roman elite. However, there is evidence that a substantial
proportion of the gladiatorial forces (perhaps as many as half) were originally
of citizen status (who voluntarily entered the gladiatorial schools) by
the end of the Republic.
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The choice for some citizens can be explained by economic
factors. Gladiators got three square meals a day, decent medical care,
and if they were good, survived to freedom. They also had the opportunity
to win purses that editores would frequently offer as bonus in competitions.
If they survived they would win their freedom. And although they could
never be citizens, their children could. For citizens of higher social
status who had fallen on hard times (scholars always posit the example
of a Roman who lost his fortune in the a lawsuit) or economically marginal
citizens without a trade, career options were limited to the army (with
a strict disciplinary system), teaching (for the literate who were willing
to fight for fees) and the gladiatorial schools.
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Another category of gladiator that should interest us
is women. Women fought as gladiators. The author of an inscription from
Pompeii boasts that he was the first editor in his town to bring
women into the arena. The practice appears to have been widespread and
did not end until specifically outlawed by the Emperor Septimius Severus
in the early 3rd century, C.E. The female gladiator is perhaps the most
marginal symbol available and there was no doubt some purient interest
aroused by these spectacles. The presence of women in the arena, however,
suggests that Romans looked upon the particular virtus [skill in
killing and dying well] gladiators symbolized as something that existed
almost before gender.
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There were also citizens, particularly during the Principate,
who fought as gladiators as a political statement. Under the Republic,
the marginal social status of the gladiator reinforced Roman belief in
the superior status of citizens. As Rome suffered civil war and then virtual
monarchy, members of the elite would sometimes choose to fight in the arena
as a way of demonstrating that the Augustan ideology of the "Republic Restored"
was so much bunk. All citizens, they suggested, now were no better than
slaves. Conversely, some Emperors, themselves became obsessed with arena.
Caligula forced free born citizens to fight as gladiators. The Emperor
Commodus is said to have fought as a gladiator in 1000 contests. These
"bad" Emperors, who were themselves liminal figures,
marking the line between divine and mortal, used the arena to demonstrate
their authority and diminish that of the elite. Emperors who appeared as
gladiators did what no citizen should dare to do. Emperors who compelled
citizens to appear as gladiators demonstated that mere citizen status meant
nothing when compared with imperial status.
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Romans accepted and supported the Principate, however,
because emperors implicitly promised to maintain the integrity of Rome's
complex hierarchy of social status. "Good" emperors were sensitive to the
complexity of their power relations with Romans across the penumbra of
statuses within Roman society. A "good" emperor appeared at the games,
and attended to the populace's expression of their will. A "good" Emperor
supported the spectacles as a way of demonstrating the ability of Rome
to protect its citizenry from internal threats to its law and order, and
the historic ability of Rome to spread this protection across the Mediterranean
basin and beyond. A "good" Emperor, thus enjoyed the games, but not too
much.
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How were they trained?
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While the prospect of taking the gladiator's oath no
doubt horrifies us, relative to the life Romans at the economic margin
enjoyed, conditions in gladiatorial schools were not that bad. It is true
that the conditions in the school where Spartacus trained were bad enough
to spark the worst slave revolt in Roman history. However, this school
was an anomaly. Owners and trainers conceived of gladiators as an investment.
Skimping on the schools simply didn't make sense. Gladiators received a
reasonable diet (a high protein/fat diet in training) and good (for the
day) medical care. They formed enduring relationships with women that resulted
in children, and if they survived to freedom, legally recognized marriages
and families. Within the community of gladiators they, like all Romans,
formed collegia and shared a cult worship of the god Hercules. In
fact, in a bizarre way, the gladiatorial schools seem to have provided
their inhabitants with a vital, united and committed community (admittedly
predicated on the possibility that one might have to kill another). Gladiators
were trained not merely how to fight well, but how to make an efficient
killing blow and, if defeated, how to offer one's body for the most effective
coup
de grace. In cases where gladiators or bestarii were mortally
wounded in the arena, the accepted practice seems to have been to remove
them from public view before executing the killing blow. Typically gladiators
fought a handful of matches a year, and would, if they survived, win there
freedom after a number (which varied widely depending on time and place)
their freedom. Even gladiators who lost a match could survive if the audience
pleaded their case to the editor.
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Despite their servile and "outlaw" legal and social
status, gladiators often enjoyed great social prestige. Young Roman boys
liked to hang out at gladiator schools and even take lessons there [parents
hated this]. Roman matrons particularly enjoyed having affairs with gladiators
[or at least Roman men often worried that they did]. The 'pop' celebrity
of gladiators, like the 'pop' celebrity of athletes today, indicates the
extraordinary importance of the battles they fought in the arena to the
construction and maintaince of Romanitas.
Suggested Secondary Readings:
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Christian
response to gladiatorial games
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Historical
Information on Roman gladiators and chariot racing
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Spectatorship
at the games
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Curse
tablets at the games
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