Gladiators Read online

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  confirm this. It is, however, true that much of the terminology

  of gladiatorial combat was simply transliterated into Greek, the

  common language of the region. Only gladiator (which became

  monomachos or ‘lone fighter’) and munera ( philotimia – ‘the love

  of honour’) were actually translated.

  These all serve to confirm the universality of gladiatorial games

  (in the broadest sense) throughout the Roman Empire.

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  CHApTeR 6

  LIFE AS A GLADIATOR

  I have seen men weighed down by bodily exercise, and carrying

  about the burden of their fl esh. Rewards and wreath crowns are

  set before them, while those who judge them cheer them on – not

  to deeds of virtue, but to rivalry in violence and discord.

  Th e one who excels in giving blows is crowned.

  Tatian, Address to the Greeks 23

  Recruitment

  NEARLY ALL GLADIATORS WERE SLAVES OWNED by a lanista who

  was, eff ectively, their manager. In the case of Imperial gladiators,

  they were of course owned by the emperor, who had his own

  lanista in the Ludus Magnus and the other ludi to manage them.

  Th e lanistae then made money by hiring out their fi ghters for

  games and this was duly taxed by the government (and the cost

  of that tax passed on to customers). It has been estimated that

  the tax brought in between 60 and 120 million sesterces per

  annum to the Imperial treasury. Moreover, if a top gladiator was

  killed in the arena, the editor of the games would be required

  to compensate the lanista (who had obviously made a sizeable

  investment in his fi ghter, not only in their purchase cost, but in

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  their training and upkeep) for as much as 50 times the fee for

  which the gladiator had been hired. Gladiators represented big

  money, whether it be for those holding the games, the lanistae or

  the government raking in the tax.

  Those gladiators who were indeed slaves were selected

  according to their looks, physique and general good health. They

  had often been captured during warfare, sold to a lanista by a

  former master or condemned in court to a gladiatorial training

  school ( condemnatio ad ludum gladiatorium). Either way, they

  joined a ludus or training school, usually named after the lanista,

  such as the ludus Aemilius mentioned by Horace or the ludus

  Neronianus at Capua. Lanistae were not highly thought of,

  Seneca comparing them to pimps, although Cicero saw nothing

  wrong with his friend Atticus buying a ludus, complete with

  gladiators, noting that he could earn back his investment after

  just two shows. Gladiators within such a training school would

  then be described as belonging to a familia, such as the familia

  gladiatoria or familia venatoria.

  There is some evidence that at least some gladiators adopted

  stage names, the obvious examples being the two female

  gladiators, Achillia (a female version of Achilles, the great Greek

  warrior) and Amazon (the Amazons fought on the side of the

  Trojans against the Greeks in the Trojan War). Their Trojan-

  War-themed soubriquets are too obvious to have been their

  real names and the coincidence of them being paired together

  frankly implausible. This may have been quite a popular theme.

  Astyanax, depicted on the Madrid mosaic, was named after the

  son of Hector (the Trojan hero). Other mythological names

  occur: Meleager on the Borghese mosaic recalls the hero of the

  same name, famed for hunting the Calydonian Boar. Talamonius

  on the same mosaic is a Romanisation of Telamon, who was also

  on the boar hunt, whilst Bellerefons is clearly Bellerophon, who

  captured Pegasus, the winged horse. Other names, like Hilarus

  (‘jolly’) on a Pompeian graffito, are regular Greek slave names. The

  graffiti from Pompeii record the exploits of the match between

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  Marcus Attilius and Lucius Raecius Felix, whose names suggest

  they were Roman citizens (or, at the very least, freedmen). Stage

  names were not universal then, so may have been preferred by

  owners or perhaps even the gladiators themselves.

  There were some men who, having achieved their freedom

  for some reason, opted to stay on as freedmen gladiators (there

  is obviously the suspicion here that they may have become

  institutionalised during their time in a familia gladiatoria).

  Occasionally, there were also Roman citizens who decided to

  fight in the arena for whatever reason (known as auctorati). There

  was in fact a legal process (known as auctoratio) whereby a free

  man who fancied a career in the arena would get permission from

  a tribune of the people and then contract himself to a lanista or

  even directly to the editor of the games (as a form of freelance

  gladiator). One man even treated his lanista like a pawnbroker,

  selling himself more than once, only to have his sister bale him

  out each time; she put a stop to this by cutting off his thumb

  (rendering him useless for the arena) and he duly sued her!

  Cicero scoffed at Marc Antony’s brother for choosing to fight as

  a gladiator occasionally. Vitellius, one of the unlucky three in the

  so-called Year of the Four Emperors (AD 69) explicitly forbade

  members of the equestrian order (the second rank of nobility)

  from doing this (suggesting that some had been doing it):

  Strict measures were taken to prevent Roman equestrians from

  degrading themselves in gladiatorial schools and the arena. Former

  emperors had driven equestrians to such actions by money or more

  often by force; and most municipal towns and colonies were in the

  habit of rivalling the emperors in bribing the worst of their young

  men to take up these disgraceful pursuits. (Tacitus, Histories 2.62)

  It had indeed amused Caligula to force equestrians and even

  senators to fight, but there was a world of difference between

  what an autocrat compelled men to do and what they chose to do

  voluntarily, and any Roman could see that. There were certainly

  few faster ways of earning the disapproval of all strata of society

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  than by volunteering to fight as a gladiator, so like the Emperor

  Commodus, they must have wanted to do it really badly. When

  Marcus Aurelius expressed doubts about a former gladiator

  wanting to hold public office, the man observed that he had seen

  many members of the senate fight in the arena in his time.

  At this point, it is important to distinguish true gladiators

  from the noxii or condemned men who were to be executed in

  the arena, sometimes by fighting each other, sometimes fighting

  wild animals, but generally providing entertainment during the

  lunchtime hiatus, between the animal hunts of the morning and

  the gladiatorial shows of the afternoon. These noxii might include

  prisoners of war amongst their numbers, as well as run-of-the-

  mill criminals, particularly after major campaigns. They were not,

  however, memb
ers of the gladiatorial schools, did not participate

  in the regular training that marked a gladiator, nor was there any

  subtlety in the contest. It was simply pitiless slaughter.

  Although most gladiators were indeed slaves, there were free

  men who felt drawn to participate for whatever reason, as has just

  been mentioned. However, it was not just men, but women too

  who were found in the arena. A relief sculpture and inscription

  from Halicarnassus (Turkey) records the missio or discharge of the

  two female gladiators mentioned above, Amazon and Achillia.

  They are both shown in the ‘at the ready’ stance, without helmets

  but with the rectangular shields and gladii of murmillones.

  The poet Juvenal brought up the subject of female gladiators in

  his sixth Satire focused on women:

  Who has not seen one of them smiting a stake, piercing it through

  and through with a foil, lunging at it with a shield, and going

  through all the proper motions? A matron truly qualified to blow a

  trumpet at the Floralia! Unless, indeed, she is nursing some further

  ambition in her bosom, and is practising for the real arena. What

  modesty can you expect in a woman who wears a helmet, abjures

  her own sex, and delights in feats of strength? Yet she would not

  choose to be a man, knowing the superior joys of womanhood.

  What a fine thing for a husband, at an auction of his wife’s effects,

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  Amazon and Achillia, female gladiators (photo by Carole Raddato)

  to see her belt and armguards and plumes put up for sale, with

  padding that covers half the left leg; or if she fi ght another sort of

  battle, how charmed you will be to see your young wife disposing

  of her greaves! Yet these are the women who fi nd the thinnest of

  thin robes too hot for them; whose delicate fl esh is chafed by the

  fi nest of silk tissue. See how she pants as she goes through her

  prescribed exercises; how she bends under the weight of her helmet;

  how big and coarse are the bandages which enclose her haunches;

  and then laugh when she lays down her arms and shows herself to

  be a woman! Tell us, you grand-daughters of Lepidus, of the blind

  Metellus, or of Fabius Gurges, what gladiator’s wife ever assumed

  accoutrements like these? When did the wife of Asylus ever gasp

  against a stake? (Juvenal, Satires 6.247–67)

  Of course, this was satire, so it is exaggerated and part of the

  amusement value inevitably comes from the fact that it evidently

  concerned a noble woman who was indulging her taste for

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  gladiatorial combat by participating in it herself. We know

  that there were female gladiators but this need not be seen as

  evidence that they were all of noble birth. However, Juvenal’s

  satire derived its bite from having a core of truth to it. Under

  Nero, Tacitus records the following for the year AD 64:

  The same year witnessed a number of gladiatorial shows, equal in

  magnificence to their predecessors, though more women of rank and

  senators disgraced themselves in the arena. (Tacitus, Annals 15.32)

  This became a cause of concern for the Roman authorities, but it

  was not until the reign of Septimius Severus that a stop was put

  to women participating in gladiatorial combat. The principal

  problem lay not in women fighting in the arena, but in the low

  social standing of gladiators in society reflecting unfavourably

  upon noble Roman women.

  In September 2000, on an otherwise quiet news day, the

  Museum of London chose to publicise the fact that remains

  found during excavations at Great Dover Street in Southwark,

  south of the Thames, may have been those of a female gladiator.

  It was, if so, the first such burial ever recorded. The body had

  been cremated over a pit, into which the remains of the pyre and

  the body had collapsed (a bustum – remember, gladiators were

  first known as bustuarii). Grave goods included incense burners,

  some lamps (one showing a gladiator) and the remains of food

  (including doves and chickens, figs, dates and almonds), possibly

  a meal for the afterlife. Roman cremation was often not very

  efficient, and analysis of fragments of the pelvis of the skeleton

  suggested that it had belonged to a woman in her twenties. Of

  course, it is impossible to be certain that this woman really was a

  so-called gladiatrix, but it remains a possibility.

  Before they entered service, all gladiators took an oath of

  loyalty ( sacramentum) to their lanista. We know its approximate

  wording from writings by both two of Nero’s courtiers, Petronius

  (his so-called Arbiter of Taste) and Seneca (his adviser), who

  both paraphrase it:

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  We took an oath to obey Eumolpus; to endure burning, bondage,

  flogging, death by the sword, or anything else that Eumolpus

  ordered. We pledged our bodies and souls to our master most

  solemnly, like regular gladiators. (Petronius, Satyricon 117)

  The words of this most honourable compact are the same as the

  words of that most disgraceful one, to wit: ‘Through burning,

  imprisonment, or death by the sword.’ From the men who hire

  out their strength for the arena, who eat and drink what they

  must pay for with their blood, security is taken that they will

  endure such trials even though they be unwilling; from you, that

  you will endure them willingly and with alacrity. (Seneca, Letters

  37.1–2)

  The precise wording is unknown, but these two texts indicate

  it must have been something along the lines of ‘I promise to

  endure burning, bondage, flogging and death by sword to obey

  my master’.

  Training

  The relationship between military and gladiatorial training

  has already been alluded to. The late Roman writer Vegetius

  preserves an account of the training of new legionary recruits

  which he specifically compares to the gladiatorial system:

  The ancients, as is recorded in the books, trained recruits in this

  way. They wove rounded shields of wicker like basketry, in such a

  way that the frame should be double the weight of a battle shield.

  And likewise they gave the recruits wooden foils, also double

  weight, in place of swords. And next they were trained at the stake,

  not only in the morning, but also in the afternoon. For the use

  of stakes is particularly advantageous not only for soldiers but

  also for gladiators. And neither arena nor field ever proved a man

  invincible in arms, unless he was carefully taught training at the

  stake. However, single stakes were fastened in the ground by each

  recruit, in such a way that they did not wobble and protruded for

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  Training at the stake (photo by J. C. N. Coulston)

  six feet. The recruit practised against this stake with the wicker

  shield and singlestick as though with a sword and shield against an

  enemy; so, he might aim for the head or face, then he is threatened

  from the sides, then he strained to cut down at the hams and shins;

&nb
sp; he retreated, attacked, leaped in, as if the enemy were present; he

  assaulted the stake forcefully, fighting skilfully. In doing this, care

  was taken that the recruit rose up in this way in order to wound,

  but did not lay himself open to a blow anywhere. (Vegetius, De Re

  Militari 1.11)

  A surviving relief from Milan shows a gladiator with just such

  a stake ( palus), in this case cheekily topped by his gladiatorial

  helmet so that his face could be seen. The use of double-weight

  dummy weapons was considered extremely important by the

  Romans, the intended effect being that once used to the heavy

  practice weapons, the real thing would seem extremely light

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  when they came to use it. The fact that both the army and the

  gladiatorial schools used this method of training for hand-to-

  hand combat clearly indicates that they felt it worked.

  Gladiators were taught by an instructor ( doctor – our word

  doctor comes from the Latin doctor medicinae, instructor in

  medicine) in much the same way as the campidoctor instructed

  soldiers – the campus was the practice ground where Roman

  soldiers trained, the very first being the Campus Martius in

  Rome. Usually experienced gladiators, these doctores seem to have

  specialised in one of the armaturae. There is a doctor retiariorum

  known from Cordoba (Spain), a doctor murmillonum from

  Concordia and Rome (both in Italy), a doctor hoplomachorum

  and a doctor thraecum from Rome, as well as a more general

  doctor gladiatorium from Cologne in Germany.

  One of the principles drummed into soldiers was the need

  for constant training and this would have been essential for

  gladiators too. There will have been variations adapted to the

  different armaturae (so it might be supposed that the retiarius,

  for instance, under the direction of a doctor retiariorum, practised

  stabbing at the stake with his trident, as well as throwing his net

  at it). The next stage on from the stakes for the more experienced

  was mock combat with live opponents and Onasander described

  how this was done for soldiers:

  Next after dividing the army into two parts he should lead them

  against each other in a sham battle, armed with staves or the shafts

  of javelins. (Onasander, Strategicon 10.1.4)

  Although we lack any surviving tactical manuals for gladiatorial