Gladiators Read online

the gladiatorial games, because the nature of the games changed

  over time, gradually evolving from a funeral rite under the early

  Republic (509 to 264 BC), through a political tool for the

  manipulation of the masses under the mid- and later Republic

  (264 to 27 BC) and into pure entertainment in the Imperial

  (27 BC to AD 296) and Late Roman (AD 296 to 410) periods.

  Thus a historical framework lies at the core of what follows,

  with digressions to examine the equipment and venues of the

  gladiatorial games, as well as the everyday life of gladiators and

  what actually happened in the arena. There is much that such

  a narrative approach can bring to the fore, such as the fact that

  the Samnite and Gaul gladiator types were only in use during the

  Republican period, so they were active for less than half of the

  period during which we know that gladiatorial combat was

  popular. Similarly, the retiarius was not introduced until the

  early Imperial period. More crucially, it can mirror the changes

  in Roman society as they are reflected in the taste for watching

  men (and women) kill each other and wild animals in a variety

  of innovative ways.

  Between 2000 and 2001, an exhibition of gladiatorial material

  was held first in Hamburg in February to June 2000, in Speyer

  in July to October 2000 and then in the British Museum from

  October 2000 to January 2001, the accompanying catalogue

  for which was published as Gladiators and Caesars. In 2002,

  the exhibition Gladiatoren in Ephesos: Tod am Nachmittag

  (‘ Gladiators in Ephesus: Death in the Afternoon’) was mounted,

  bringing details of the Ephesus gladiator cemetery to the general

  public for the first time, at the same time placing the results in

  the wider context of gladiatorial combat. Such events inevitably

  have a far-reaching effect and inspire both more reading and

  more writing about gladiators. For all that is known, there is still

  much to find out, and this book will hopefully provide both a

  glimpse of the former and hint at the latter.

  CHApTeR 1: InTRODuCTIOn | 13

  CHapter 2

  ORIGINS

  Th e Gladiators [sic] Art was Infamous for its Barbarity and

  Cruelty, involving Men in Murder and Bloodshed.

  Th omas Bingham

  Funeral games

  IT MAY BE SURPRISING TO LEARN that the origins of gladiatorial

  combat can be seen as early as Homer’s Iliad with its account of

  the funeral games following the death of Patroclus. Immediately

  before Achilles lights his companion’s funeral pyre, he executes

  twelve Trojan captives. Next day, the Trojans embark on a series

  of games, including boxing, wrestling, archery and chariot

  racing. Th at passage thereby combines human sacrifi ce and

  sporting contest in the context of marking a death and, as such,

  is seen by many as providing a context for the Roman adoption

  of gladiatorial combat.

  Similarly, there are historical instances recorded of prisoners of

  war being executed en masse. Greek and Carthaginian prisoners

  were stoned to death by the Etruscans (a people who lived to the

  north of Rome) at Caere (Cerveteri, Italy) in the 6th century BC.

  Th en, in 358 BC, more than 300 Roman prisoners of war were

  14 | gLaDiatOrs

  executed in the forum at Tarchuna (Tarquinia in Italy), again by

  the Etruscans. These grisly events provide an association between

  victory and mass killings, but those survivors taken prisoner

  could find their agony prolonged when they were forced to fight

  each other.

  The Christian writer Tertullian provided his own interpretation

  of this, with the benefit of several hundred years of hindsight

  and through the lens of his particular theological perspective:

  The ancients thought that by this sort of spectacle they rendered a

  service to the dead, after they had tempered it with a more cultured

  form of cruelty. For of old, in the belief that the souls of the dead

  are propitiated with human blood, they used at funerals to sacrifice

  captives or slaves of poor quality whom they bought. Afterwards it

  seemed good to obscure their impiety by making it a pleasure. So

  after the persons procured had been trained in such arms as they

  then had and as best they might – their training was to learn to be

  killed! – they then did them to death on the appointed funeral day

  at the tombs. So they found comfort for death in murder. This is

  the origin of the munus. (Tertullian, On Spectacles 12)

  the first gladiators

  It is entirely appropriate to stress that most of our source material

  about the origins of gladiatorial combat is not contemporary

  with those distant origins. Writers such as Nicolaus of Damascus,

  Livy and Silius Italicus were working in the late 1st century BC

  or 1st century AD and thus were writing up to three centuries

  after the events they were describing. Livy’s history of Rome,

  known as Ab Urbe Condita ( From the City’s Foundation) began

  from the traditional (and probably spurious) date of 753 BC,

  but it is worth remembering that historical writing did not

  actually begin in the classical world until Herodotus, a Greek

  from Halicarnassus, produced his Historia in the 5th century

  BC. So a lot of Rome’s early ‘history’ was, technically, prehistory

  and, for the most part, legendary. Such legends will have been

  CHapter 2: Origins | 15

  passed on by word of mouth, songs learned by one generation

  and bequeathed to the next, but these are not the same as

  documented fact. All of this means that it is sometimes necessary

  to distinguish between what the Romans who were writing

  thought happened in the past and what actually occurred. A little

  caution is always healthy.

  The Greek writer Athenaeus (middle of the 2nd century

  AD) preserved a report by the above-mentioned Nicolaus of

  Damascus (second half of the 1st century BC) which included

  the observation that gladiatorial games were inherited by the

  Romans from the Etruscans (who, unlike most of Italy, did not

  speak a language derived from Indo-European). Even if Nicolaus

  was correct (and some scholars feel that there is good reason to

  doubt it), it is by no means certain that the path for the idea

  of gladiatorial combat from the Etruscans to the Romans was

  a direct one, despite the Romans believing that they had been

  ruled by the Etruscans. After all, it was part of their tradition

  that they cast out their Etruscan rulers, the Tarquins, and formed

  the Republic in 509 BC.

  Overlooking the literary sources for the time being, the

  identification of the Etruscans as the originators of gladiatorial

  games depends upon a number of observations that are not

  necessarily linked. First there are frescoes from Etruscan tombs

  which show combat between two warriors. Single combat

  between important warriors featured in the Iliad too, and there

  is no obvious reason why the pairs of figures in the wall paintings

  must be interpreted as men fighting to the death in funerary


  games. Second is the spectral figure of Charun or Dis Pater, an

  Etruscan deity who appeared in Roman contexts as an arena

  assistant in costume, whose job was to kill off any losers who

  might not be quite dead enough with a large mallet. Charun

  is shown, complete with blue-grey skin and large hammer, on

  a 4th-century BC fresco from a tomb at Vulci (Italy) depicting

  the killing of prisoners during the Trojan War. Third is the Latin

  term for the gladiatorial trainer, lanista, a word that Isidore of

  16 | gLaDiatOrs

  Seville (writing in the 6th/7th century AD) thought dated back

  to the Etruscans. The Romans loved the sort of word archaeology

  that is etymology, but we now know that they were hopeless

  at it and frequently got the origins of Latin words very wrong.

  Was the supposed Etruscan origin of lanista projected backwards

  because the Romans ‘knew’ how the games began? Did the whole

  idea of dressing up as Charun also ultimately derive from the

  traditional notion of an Etruscan origin for gladiatorial games?

  The Romans were more than a little fascinated by the Etruscans,

  as the Emperor Claudius’ studies showed (he was allegedly the

  last person able to read their language).

  The Etruscan origin hypothesis was not the only one available,

  however. Livy, writing more than two centuries later when

  describing the aftermath of the Roman war in Samnium in 308

  BC, noted that

  the Campanians, in consequence of their pride and in hatred of the

  Samnites, equipped after this fashion the gladiators who furnished

  them entertainment at their feasts, and bestowed on them the

  name of Samnites. (Livy 9.40.17–18)

  The Campanians lived to the south of Rome, in the area around

  the Bay of Naples. This is the region that saw some of the first

  stone amphitheatres, at Capua and Pompeii, although whether

  this is significant is unclear.

  The Latin term for men who fought around funerary pyres

  in this way (probably half-joking – Cicero used it in a speech

  to mock an opponent) was bustuarii or ‘cremation-pit boys’ (a

  bustum was a type of cremation pyre built over a pit where the

  remains rather neatly collapsed into the pit once well alight).

  Suetonius, famous for his racy biographies of the first few

  emperors, believed that the first gladiatorial games dated back

  to the time of Lucius Tarquinius Priscus (late 7th to early 6th

  centuries BC), one of the legendary Etruscan rulers of early Rome.

  Gaius Maenius, the censor in 338 BC (whose responsibilities

  CHapter 2: Origins | 17

  included public morality and maintaining the census), was said

  to have enlarged the seating capacity in the Forum for spectators

  of gladiatorial shows. In so doing, he gave his name to the seating

  later used in amphitheatres: maeniana. However, we are told by

  several sources (none of them contemporary, unfortunately),

  that the first Roman gladiatorial combat ever staged was held

  in 264 BC, when Decimus Junius Brutus arranged one to

  commemorate his recently deceased father. Livy, whose work

  survives only as a summary at this point, simply notes that

  Decimus Junius Brutus was the first to give a gladiatorial exhibition,

  in honour of his dead father (Livy 16 summary)

  but other authors give us more detail. Valerius Maximus, for

  instance, writing in the first half of the 1st century AD, observed

  that

  gladiatorial games were first presented in Rome in the Forum

  Boarium, during the consulships of Appius Claudius and Quintus

  Fulvius. They were provided by Marcus and Decimus, sons

  of Brutus Pera, honouring their father’s ashes with a funerary

  memorial. (Valerius Maximus 2.4.7)

  Whilst it was not strictly history, the Romans were already

  keeping lists of their consuls (the Fasti Consulares) at this period,

  sometimes annotating them with notable contemporary events,

  so it is not wholly implausible that Livy may have had access to

  these records. More detail is then provided by the 4th-century

  AD writer Ausonius, although its authenticity is uncertain:

  The first three fights were of Thracians in three pairs, offered by the

  sons of Junius at the tomb of their father (Ausonius, Riddle of the

  Number Three 36–7)

  Whether gladiatorial combat did indeed suddenly appear in

  the Roman world like this is questionable, but the fact that the

  18 | gLaDiatOrs

  tradition is preserved in the sources at least gives us an idea of

  how far back it was that it began to be common. One interesting

  suggestion that has been made is that 264 BC actually marked

  the first time that gladiatorial combat was provided as a public

  spectacle in Rome, having previously been confined to private

  audiences at feasts and funerals.

  By 216 BC, the venue had shifted:

  In honour of Marcus Aemilius Lepidus, who had been consul

  twice and augur, his three sons, Lucius, Marcus, and Quintus,

  gave funeral games for three days and showed twenty-two pairs of

  gladiators in the Forum [Romanum]. (Livy 23.30.15)

  The year is significant, for the games followed soon after the

  major Roman defeat at Cannae, when a reported 70,000 Romans

  were massacred by Hannibal’s forces. It has been suggested that

  the development of gladiatorial shows as public entertainment

  can be traced back to the effects of this traumatic defeat, with

  magistrates incorporating ever more prisoners of war into the

  games to produce a feel-good factor amongst the public.

  The link had now been made between funeral rite, public

  entertainment and politics, and this was to have profound

  consequences in the years to come. The phenomenon went

  from strength to strength and the number of pairs of gladiators

  increased every time, as each noble family tried to outdo their

  rivals. In 200 BC, 25 pairs of gladiators fought at the funeral

  of Marcus Valerius Laevinus, whilst in 183 BC, 60 pairs were

  matched to mark the death of Publius Licinius Crassus, together

  with a distribution of meat, funeral games and a banquet. The

  association of gifts of food with the games is interesting as it

  reoccurs in later periods. All of these were staged in the Forum

  Romanum, at the heart of Roman political life, and this was to

  remain the principal venue for such fights until the development

  of amphitheatres in Rome in the later 1st century BC. It has

  even been observed that the arena of the amphitheatre at

  Pompeii would fit neatly within the available open space of the

  CHapter 2: Origins | 19

  Forum Romanum, so it may be that the way in which it was set

  up for gladiatorial fights inspired amphitheatre development in

  some way.

  Gladiatorial combat was not confined to Rome. In 206 BC,

  Scipio Africanus commemorated his deceased uncle and father

  whilst based at New Carthage in Spain with his army. There was

  a rather unusual twist to it, if Livy is to be believed:

  The exhibition of gladiators was not made up from the class of

 
men which managers are in the habit of pitting against each other;

  that is, slaves sold on the platform and free men who are ready to

  sell their lives. In every case the service of the men who fought was

  voluntary and without compensation. For some were sent by their

  chieftains to display an example of the courage inbred in their

  tribe; some declared on their own motion that they would fight to

  please the1 general; in other cases rivalry and the desire to compete

  led them to challenge or, if challenged, not to refuse. Some who

  had been unable or unwilling to end their differences by a legal

  hearing, after agreeing that the disputed property should fall to the

  victor, settled the matter with the sword. Men also of no obscure

  family but conspicuous and distinguished, Corbis and Orsua,

  being cousins and competing for the post of chief of a city called

  Ibes, declared that they would contend with the sword. Corbis

  was the older in years. Orsua’s father had lately been chief, having

  succeeded to an elder brother’s rank upon his death. When Scipio

  desired to settle the question by a hearing and to calm their anger,

  they both said they had refused that request to their common

  relatives, and that they were to have as their judge no other god or

  man than Mars. The older man was confident in his strength, the

  younger in the bloom of his youth, each preferring death in the

  combat rather than to be subject to the rule of the other. Since

  they could not be made to give up such madness, they furnished

  the army a remarkable spectacle, demonstrating how great an evil

  among mortals is the ambition to rule. The older man by his skill

  with arms and by his cunning easily mastered the brute strength

  of the younger. In addition to this gladiatorial show there were

  funeral games so far as the resources of the province and camp

  equipment permitted. (Livy 28.21.1–10)

  20 | gLaDiatOrs

  Scipio Aemilianus, perhaps inspired by this, sought even

  more novelty by holding Greek-style games after defeating the

  Macedonian King Perseus in 168 BC, favouring athletic over

  gladiatorial contexts. He may have felt that he had to show the

  Greeks, whom he had just conquered, that the Romans were not

  just a bunch of bloodthirsty barbarians (although, technically,

  that is exactly what they were in Greek eyes).

  Back in Rome, as a result of an expensive animal hunt put on