Gladiators Read online

  of the gladiators.

  family

  Apart from their familia gladiatoria, some gladiators had time

  to have their own families. Once they had retired and gained

  their freedom, they were of course able to do this, although it is

  possible that some were able to develop long-term relationships

  whilst still in service. The presence of a baby in a basket in one

  of the rooms of the quadriporticus might be interpreted as an

  indication that families were present there too. However, the

  unusual circumstances surrounding the eruption of Vesuvius,

  with people fleeing all over the city, provides no guarantees that

  bodies were found where they normally lived.

  A number of inscriptions record family members of gladiators.

  Some are coy about the nature of the relationship:

  For the immortal shades, Marcus Ulpius Felix, retired murmillo,

  lived 45 years, member of the Tungrian nation, Ulpia Syntyche,

  freedwoman, and son Justus, set this up for her sweetest, well

  deserved. ( CIL VI, 10177)

  Others were more open:

  For the immortal shades, for Publicia Aromata, most loved wife,

  Albanus, a retired eques from the Ludus Magnus, she lived 22

  years 5 months and 8 days, 3 feet in width by 8 feet in length

  ( CIL VI, 10167)

  Both of these men were described as retired from service. Even

  in the case of memorials which do not explicitly mention that a

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  Gladiator graffiti from Pompeii (drawing by M.C. Bishop)

  gladiator was retired it is not possible to be sure that they were

  married whilst in service, or even that the term ‘wife’ or ‘husband’

  was used in anything other than an unofficial capacity:

  For the immortal shades, Glaucus, from Mutina, fought in seven

  combats, killed in the eighth, lived 23 years and 5 days, Aurelia

  and his friends (set this up) for a deserving husband. I advise you

  to follow your own star, not to trust Nemesis, and be deceived as I

  was. Hail and farewell. ( CIL V, 3466)

  One gladiator, commemorated on a stone from Milan and

  dead whilst still in service, had been with his wife, presumably

  as fellow slaves, since the age of 15 and left a five-month-old

  daughter:

  To the immortal shades, for Urbicus, a secutor, ranked primus palus,

  from Florentia, fought 13 times and lived 22 years, his daughter

  Olympias, whom he left aged 5 months, and Fortunensis, his

  daughter’s (slave?), and his wife [ uxsor] Lauricia (set this up) for her

  well-deserving husband, with whom she lived for 7 years. I warn

  you: kill whomever you defeat. His followers will take care of his

  shade. ( CIL V, 5933)

  There is, within this sad text, a hidden tale: the warning suggests

  that one of those opponents Urbicus defeated during his career

  fought him again and did not repay the debt. There are many

  more pathetic epitaphs like this, but wives and lovers must

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  Gladiator barracks at Pompeii (photo by M. C. Bishop)

  always have known the risks involved in being a gladiator and

  that the odds were not good.

  fans

  Gladiators were every bit as popular as modern sports stars.

  Specific named warriors were celebrated on a variety of media.

  A particular type of mould-blown glass cup found in the north-

  western provinces of the Empire appears to celebrate a troupe of

  gladiators. With a frieze running round the cup showing pairs

  of gladiators, each with their name above them – Spiculus and

  Columbus, Calamus and Hories, Petraites and Prudens, and

  Proculus and Cocumbus – this was obviously the ultimate piece of

  merchandising. In Britain, examples of this type of vessel are known

  from Colchester, Dorchester, Gloucester, Leicester, London and

  Wroxeter and have been dated to the middle of the 1st century AD.

  Graffiti from Pompeii praise particular gladiators by name, whilst

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  detailed sketches of favourite fights are known, incorporating brief

  summaries of the results. Names were accompanied by letters: V

  stood for victor (winner, often accompanied by a Roman numeral

  denoting the number of successful combats), M for missus (lost

  but spared), whilst P meant periit (died) and L libet (freed). Even

  large-scale mosaics (like that from the Villa Borghese in Rome)

  name individual gladiators, possibly the favourites of whoever

  commissioned the pavement in the first place. Other depictions

  of gladiators on lamps and on tableware such as samian may have

  been bought as souvenirs.

  Passions were often high at the games and in AD 62 a serious

  riot broke out at Pompeii between the inhabitants of the town

  and visitors from Nuceria. The Roman historian Tacitus describes

  what happened:

  About the same date, a trivial incident led to a serious affray

  between the inhabitants of the colonies of Nuceria and Pompeii, at

  a gladiatorial show presented by Livineius Regulus, whose removal

  from the senate has been noticed. During an exchange of raillery,

  typical of the petulance of country towns, they resorted to abuse,

  then to stones, and finally to steel; the superiority lying with the

  populace of Pompeii, where the show was being exhibited. As a

  result, many of the Nucerians were carried maimed and wounded

  to the capital, while a very large number mourned the deaths of

  children or of parents. The trial of the affair was delegated by

  the emperor to the senate; by the senate to the consuls. On the

  case being again laid before the members, the Pompeians as a

  community were debarred from holding any similar assembly for

  ten years, and the associations which they had formed illegally were

  dissolved. Livineius and the other fomenters of the outbreak were

  punished with exile. (Tacitus, Annals 14.17)

  Deprived of their games, the inhabitants of Pompeii were

  probably greatly relieved when the ban was lifted three years

  later, after the earthquake of AD 62.

  Other passions could be aroused too. There was definitely

  something about gladiators that meant their followers could

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  Gladiators on a moulded glass vessel (photo by Carole Raddato)

  Borghese gladiator mosaic

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  Gladiators on a lamp (photo by

  Gladiators on samian ware

  Carole Raddato)

  (photo by Carole Raddato)

  take their enthusiasm to extremes. In his sixth Satire, Juvenal

  tells the story of Eppia, a senator’s wife who ran off with a

  gladiator:

  And what were the youthful charms which captivated Eppia? What

  did she see in him to allow herself to be called ‘a she-Gladiator’?

  Her dear Sergius had already begun to shave; a wounded arm gave

  promise of a discharge, and there were sundry deformities in his

  face: a scar caused by the helmet, a huge wen upon his nose, a nasty

  humour always trickling from his eye. But then he was a gladiator!

  It is this that transforms these fellows into Hyacin
ths! it was this that

  she preferred to children and to country, to sister and to husband.

  What these women love is the sword: had this same Sergius received

  his discharge, he would have been no better than a Veiento. (Juvenal,

  Satires 6.103–13)

  Even the audience at a gladiatorial contest might take the

  opportunity to indulge in some opportunistic flirting, despite

  women being banished to the upper tiers of seating by Augustus.

  That could not stop the exchange of meaningful glances in

  smaller amphitheatres.

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  Fresco of the riot at Pompeii (photo by M. C. Bishop)

  Status

  For some, gladiators were the lowest of the low; for others,

  they were stars to be admired. Cicero showed his utter

  contempt for Catiline after his failed coup by disparagingly

  referring to him in his Against Catiline speech as a ‘gladiator’

  and throughout Roman writings this same lack of respect is

  to be found (as has already been mentioned, he used the same

  insult in his speeches against Marc Antony repeatedly). The

  fact that gladiators ate barley would not have helped – the

  Roman army only issued barley to animals or to men as a

  punishment.

  Paintings of gladiators were especially popular and had been

  since the Republican period. Some of these illustrations may

  even have been the inspiration for some surviving gladiatorial

  mosaics (the famous Alexander mosaic from Pompeii is thought

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  Pontarius (‘bridge fi ghter’)

  • Armour: shoulderguard

  • Special feature: on a wooden platform, armed

  with a trident and rocks

  • Period: Imperial

  • Common opponent: arbelas; essedarius;

  murmillo; secutor

  to have been a copy of a Hellenistic painting). Pliny the Elder

  tells of some pictures at an exhibition in Rome at the time of

  Nero:

  A freedman of the same prince, on the occasion of his exhibiting

  a show of gladiators at Antium, had the public porticos hung,

  as everybody knows, with paintings, in which were represented

  genuine portraits of the gladiators and all the other assistants.

  Indeed, at this place, there has been a very prevailing taste for

  paintings for many ages past. Gaius Terentius Lucanus was the

  fi rst who had combats of gladiators painted for public exhibition:

  in honour of his grandfather, who had adopted him, he provided

  thirty pairs of gladiators in the Forum, for three consecutive days,

  and exhibited a painting of their combats in the Grove of Diana.

  (Pliny, Natural History 35.33)

  It was, incidentally, a senator by the name of Terentius Lucanus

  (although not necessarily the same one) who brought the comic

  playwright Terence to Rome in the middle of the 2nd century BC.

  A description of such illustrations survives in a poem by Horace:

  How are you less to blame than I, when I admire the combats of

  Fulvius and Rutuba and Placideianus, with their bended knees,

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  painted in crayons or charcoal, as if the men were actually engaged,

  and push and parry, moving their weapons? (Horace, Satires

  2.7.96–100)

  Thus the Roman ambivalence towards gladiators is neatly bracketed

  by Cicero and Terentius. Indeed, the Romans had a complex set

  of snobberies that were both class and occupation based, but they

  left little doubt that gladiators lay right at the bottom of the social

  ladder. The problem lay in the concept of infamia, which was a

  vague but pernicious notion in Roman society. There were even

  formal manifestations of this prejudice. By way of example, the

  Lex Acilia Repetundarum of 123 BC ruled that gladiators were

  perpetually disqualified from the jury set up by that law (which

  was designed to counter corruption amongst senators). This was

  the main reason why it was seen as so disgraceful that free men

  (and most particularly women) should voluntarily perform as

  gladiators, whilst for an emperor to do so just beggared belief.

  The issue of status was the principal reason why emperors

  who actually fought (rather than just trained) as gladiators were

  disdained. This of course was most evident with the gladiator

  emperor himself, Commodus:

  As far as these activities are concerned, however, even if his conduct

  was hardly becoming for an emperor, he did win the approval of the

  mob for his courage and his marksmanship. But when he came into

  the amphitheatre naked, took up arms, and fought as a gladiator,

  the people saw a disgraceful spectacle, a nobly born emperor of

  the Romans, whose fathers and forebears had won many victories,

  not taking the field against barbarians or opponents worthy of

  the Romans, but disgracing his high position by degrading and

  disgusting exhibitions. (Herodian 2.15.7)

  In his rather extraordinary work of dream interpretation,

  Artemidorus took what type of gladiator a man dreamed of

  being and used it to predict what sort of wife he would marry.

  Beyond the intriguing revelation that men had such dreams in

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  As was hinted at in the epitaph of Glaucus, gladiators

  had a special relationship with

  Nemesis , the

  goddess of divine retribution. Shrines of Nemesis are

  known in a number of amphitheatres, often set into

  one side of the arena wall. However, it is clear from

  surviving inscriptions that not just gladiators revered

  her, as is attested by an altar found in the nemeseum

  of the amphitheatre outside the legionary fortress at

  Chester:

  For the goddess Nemesis, Sextius Marcianus, centurion,

  after a dream ( RIB 3149)

  Gladiators also felt a close affi nity with Hercules

  (which partly explains Commodus’ obsession with

  the hero). When they retired, they often dedicated

  their weapons to him and a shrine to Hercules was

  excavated in the amphitheatre in London.

  the Roman period, this curious notion seems to provide an even

  greater subtlety of diff erentiation between the types of gladiator,

  in Artemidorus’ mind at least, and at a level akin to tea-leaf

  reading. Infamia seems to have been nuanced.

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  CHApTeR 7

  THE END OF THE GLADIATORS

  Th e race of gladiators has not died: every artist is one.

  He amuses the public with his affl ictions.

  Gustave Flaubert

  THE MORALITY OF GLADIATORIAL COMBAT HAD long been

  discussed by Romans, and whilst most had no problem with

  the concept, it is clear that even the most learned men had time

  to consider that there were indeed moral questions to answer.

  Cicero, one of Rome’s greatest legal (and philosophical, or so

  he liked to think) minds in the Late Republican period, saw a

  particular nobility in what they did:

  What wounds will the gladiators bear, who are either barbarians, or

  the very dregs of mankind! How do they, who are trained to it, prefer

  being wounde
d to basely avoiding it! How often do they prove that

  they consider nothing but the giving satisfaction to their masters or

  to the people! For when covered with wounds, they send to their

  masters to learn their pleasure: if it is their will, they are ready to lie

  down and die. What gladiator, of even moderate reputation, ever

  gave a sigh? who ever turned pale? who ever disgraced himself either

  in the actual combat, or even when about to die? who that had

  been defeated ever drew in his neck to avoid the stroke of death? So

  great is the force of practice, deliberation, and custom! Shall this,

  then, be done by a Samnite rascal, worthy of his trade; and shall a

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  man born to glory have so soft a part in his soul as not to be able

  to fortify it by reason and reflection? The sight of the gladiators’

  combats is by some looked on as cruel and inhuman, and I do not

  know, as it is at present managed, but it may be so; but when the

  guilty fought, we might receive by our ears perhaps (but certainly by

  our eyes we could not) better training to harden us against pain and

  death. (Cicero, Tusculan Disputations 2.17)

  However, as we have seen, Cicero was not above using the term

  ‘gladiator’ as a mischievous insult when it suited his purposes.

  This was particularly so when he felt both the appearance and

  behaviour of the individual matched those of the stereotypical

  gladiator, as was the case with Marc Antony. This was all part

  of the ambiguous position gladiators held in Roman society: to

  some they were sporting heroes, to others they were the dregs of

  the social strata.

  Christianity

  Christianity was becoming influential within Roman society well

  before its official adoption under Constantine (AD 306–37). This

  was particularly true in the Roman army, as is demonstrated by

  the house church near the fortress at Lajjun in Israel and perhaps

  in the garrison town of Dura-Europos in Syria, both dating

  to the first half of the 3rd century AD. Dura even had a small

  amphitheatre of its own, next to the military compound in the

  north of the city. The Roman army was becoming Christianised

  whilst still maintaining an interest in the games.