Gladiators Read online

  Naval warfare at the time tended to consist of ships ramming

  each other and then the crews effectively fighting a land battle

  at sea. The whole thing would have been scaled down (a real

  sea-going galley might have several hundred rowers on it) but

  would nevertheless have provided an exciting spectacle. Caesar

  later filled in the lake and also planned to build a temple to

  Mars on it, although this was never actually constructed. He had

  definitely started something, however.

  Gladiatorial combat and its derivatives – animal hunting and

  naval battles – had become a political tool, an increasingly lavish

  entertainment (despite occasional checks and balances) and

  even an architectural driving force. Nevertheless, the taste for

  gladiatorial combat continued unabated. Indeed, on the day that

  Julius Caesar was assassinated in 44 BC, it was apparently no

  accident that gladiators were performing nearby in the Theatre

  of Pompey.

  The death of Caesar marked the beginning of the end for the

  Republic and the arrival of a new phase for Rome. In violent

  times, the demand for gladiators showed no signs of decreasing

  just yet.

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  CHApTeR 4

  AT THE PEAK

  At any rate, gladiators never charged with a crime are

  off ered in sale for the games so that they may become

  the victim of public pleasure.

  Tertullian, Spectacles 19

  The Julio-Claudians

  THE END OF THE REPUBLIC AND beginning of the Empire in

  the last few decades of the 1st century BC saw many changes,

  not least in the fi eld of gladiatorial games. Th e association with

  celebrating the death of signifi cant individuals with the deaths

  of others evaporated and the by-product – the intense interest of

  the crowd – became the dominant element. Th is was the origin

  of the term munus (literally, a gift) for gladiatorial games: it was a

  gift or bribe to the electorate. Th e beginnings of this process can

  perhaps be seen with the construction of the stone amphitheatre

  at Pompeii in 70 BC: a permanent venue for funerary games is a

  slightly odd concept. Under Augustus (27 BC to AD 14), it was

  quickly realised that the popular desire for entertainment could

  be used to the advantage of the new regime. Th is was nicely

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  summed up towards the end of the 1st century AD by the poet

  Juvenal with his phrase panem et circenses (‘bread and circuses’):

  provide the mob with free food and free shows and they could be

  controlled. However, it has also been suggested that Augustus saw

  a new direction in which games could be taken, by associating

  them with religious festivals, such as his Quinquatrus in 12 BC

  in honour of Minerva.

  To underline the continued importance of the games, one

  of the first things that happened after the defeat of Antony

  and Cleopatra was the construction of Rome’s first stone

  amphitheatre in 29 BC. Located on the Campus Martius, it was

  erected by the nobleman Statilius Taurus, who had commanded

  Octavian’s land forces during the Battle of Actium.

  Once he had established himself as the de facto emperor of

  what had formerly been the Roman Republic, Octavian (now

  known as Augustus) made sure that all of the prime political

  tools available to great men were under his control. He had

  inherited the Ludus Iuliani at Capua from his adoptive father

  and this was to provide the core of the new Imperial gladiatorial

  training school. Gladiators trained there were known as Iuliani

  until the time of Nero, when (because the school was renamed

  to honour him) they became Neroniani.

  In 2 BC, following the example of his adoptive father,

  Caesar, Augustus arranged for a naumachia, which he himself

  described in the document known as the Res Gestae (roughly

  ‘Achievements’) of which more than one copy survives as an

  inscription. Since the original lake had been filled in, a new one

  had to be provided:

  I gave the people a spectacle of a naval battle, in the place across

  the Tiber where the grove of the Caesars is now, with the ground

  excavated in length 1,800 feet [532 m], in width 1,200 [355 m],

  in which thirty ships with rams, biremes or triremes, but many

  smaller, fought among themselves; in these ships about 3,000 men

  fought in addition to the rowers. (Augustus, Res Gestae 23)

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  The location he chose for his naumachia was thus on the other

  side of the Tiber, in the area now known as Trastevere. Other

  sources tell us that it was a re-staging of the Battle of Salamis

  (480 BC), between the Athenians and Persians. We know that

  an aqueduct was built specially to supply the water necessary

  (the Aqua Alsietina) and that there was an island in the middle

  linked to the shore with a bridge. It only seems to have been used

  once and was partly filled in even during Augustus’ lifetime.

  Augustus also flooded the Circus Flaminius in order to stage

  a crocodile hunt. He nevertheless made sure that the more

  traditional aspects of the games were attended to. In keeping

  with tradition, his were bigger and better, and he was not averse

  to boasting about it:

  Three times I gave shows of gladiators under my name and five times

  under the name of my sons and grandsons; in these shows about

  10,000 men fought. Twice I furnished under my name spectacles

  of athletes gathered from everywhere, and three times under my

  grandson’s name. I celebrated games under my name four times,

  and furthermore in the place of other magistrates twenty-three

  times. As master of the college I celebrated the Secular Games

  for the college of the Fifteen, with my colleague Marcus Agrippa,

  when Gaius Furnius and Gaius Silanus were consuls [17 BC].

  Consul for the thirteenth time [2 BC], I celebrated the first games

  of Mars, which after that time thereafter in following years, by a

  senate decree and a law, the consuls were to celebrate. Twenty-six

  times, under my name or that of my sons and grandsons, I gave the

  people hunts of African beasts in the circus, in the open, or in the

  amphitheatre; in them about 3,500 beasts were killed. (Augustus,

  Res Gestae 22)

  This was death as entertainment on a massive scale, even if

  allowance is made for some political licence in those numbers

  (in those eight gladiatorial shows with 10,000 combatants, were

  they all gladiators, or was he including noxii put to death in the

  lunchtime hiatus?).

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  Gladiatorial contests were by no means just confined to the

  huge public spectacles of the arena. They could also be staged as

  private entertainments by the wealthy and powerful. Writing in

  the 1st century AD, Nicolaus of Damascus’ account (preserved

  in Athenaeus’ writings) is worth citing in more detail:

  The Romans staged spectacles of fighting gladiators not merely

  at their festivals and in their theatres, borrowing the custom


  from the Etruscans, but also at their banquets. At any rate, it

  often happened that some would invite their friends to dinner,

  not merely for other entertainment, but that they might witness

  two or three pairs of contestants in gladiatorial combat; on these

  occasions, when sated with dining and drink, they called in

  the gladiators. No sooner did one have his throat cut than the

  masters applauded with delight at this feat. And there have even

  been instances when a man has provided in his will that his most

  beautiful wives, acquired by purchase, should engage in duels;

  still another has directed that young boys, his favourites, should

  do the same. But the provision was in fact disregarded, for the

  people would not tolerate this outrage, but declared the will void.

  (Athenaeus, 4.153f–154a)

  Tiberius (AD 14–37), who withdrew from Rome to Capri, was

  not particularly interested in gladiatorial contests or the games

  in their broadest sense, but that does not mean they ceased

  altogether under his rule. He held games to mark the death of

  Augustus in AD 14 (subsequently added to the calendar as the

  Augustalia festival) and more games followed the next year:

  A show of gladiators, given in the name of his brother Germanicus,

  was presided over by Drusus, who took an extravagant pleasure

  in the shedding of blood however vile — a trait so alarming to

  the populace that it was said to have been censured by his father.

  Tiberius’ own absence from the exhibition was variously explained.

  Some ascribed it to his impatience of a crowd; others, to his native

  morosity and his dread of comparisons; for Augustus had been a

  good-humoured spectator. (Tacitus, Annals 1.76)

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  Nevertheless, Tiberius’ lack of enthusiasm, as noted here by

  Tacitus, prompted one of the leading gladiators of the time,

  Triumphus, to respond to the hiatus with the rueful comment

  ‘what a glorious time is passed’. In fact, gladiators were to play an

  unwelcome part in events in Gaul, for in AD 21, a revolt broke

  out there led by two Romanised locals, Florus and Sacrovir.

  Florus, who was based in Augustodunum (Autun in France),

  raised an impressive army:

  His followers amounted to forty thousand; one-fifth armed on

  the legionary model; the rest with boar-spears, hangers, and

  other implements of the hunting-field. To these he added a

  contingent of slaves, destined for the gladiatorial ring and encased

  in the continuous shell of iron usual in the country: the so-called

  cruppelarii – who, if too weighty to inflict wounds, are impregnably

  fortified against receiving them. (Tacitus, Annals 3.43)

  Two legions and their accompanying auxiliaries marched against

  them from the Rhineland and they met just to the north of

  Augustodunum. The soldiers were at first frustrated by the

  heavily armoured crupellarii but soon found ways of dealing

  with them:

  The cavalry enveloped the flanks, and the infantry attacked the

  van. On the wings there was no delay; in front, the iron-clad men

  offered a brief impediment, as their plating was proof against

  javelin and sword. But the legionaries caught up their axes and

  picks and hacked at armour and flesh as if demolishing a wall:

  others overturned the inert masses with poles or forks, and left

  them lying like the dead without an effort to rise again. (Tacitus,

  Annals 3.46)

  Back in Rome, the games were still a vital part of the political career

  of those seeking office, since the audience – or, at least the male

  citizens amongst them – were potential voters. Entrepreneurs

  stepped in to fund games themselves and tried to turn a profit

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  out of it, cutting corners where they deemed it desirable. As so

  often happens with penny-pinching and profiteering, this was

  to lead to disaster. In AD 27, an amphitheatre collapsed; Tacitus

  records the events:

  A certain Atilius, of the freedman class, who had begun an

  amphitheatre at Fidena, in order to give a gladiatorial show, failed

  both to lay the foundation in solid ground and to secure the

  fastenings of the wooden structure above; the reason being that

  he had embarked on the enterprise, not from a superabundance of

  wealth nor to court the favours of his townsmen, but with an eye

  to sordid gain. The amateurs of such amusements, debarred from

  their pleasures under the reign of Tiberius, poured to the place,

  men and women, old and young, the stream swollen because the

  town lay near. This increased the gravity of the catastrophe, as the

  unwieldy fabric was packed when it collapsed, breaking inward

  or sagging outward, and precipitating and burying a vast crowd

  of human beings, intent on the spectacle or standing around.

  Those, indeed, whom the first moment of havoc had dashed to

  death, escaped torture, so far as was possible in such a fate: more

  to be pitied were those whose mutilated bodies life had not yet

  abandoned, who by day recognized their wives or their children by

  sight, and at night by their shrieks and moans. The news brought

  the absent to the scene — one lamenting a brother, one a kinsman,

  another his parents. Even those whose friends or relatives had left

  home for a different reason still felt the alarm, and, as it was not yet

  known whom the catastrophe had destroyed, the uncertainty gave

  wider range for fear.

  When the fallen materials came to be removed, the watchers

  rushed to their dead, embracing them, kissing them, not rarely

  quarrelling over them, in cases where the features had been

  obliterated but a parity of form or age had led to mistaken

  identification. Fifty thousand persons were maimed or crushed to

  death in the disaster; and for the future it was provided by a decree

  of the senate that no one with a fortune less than four hundred

  thousand sesterces should present a gladiatorial display, and that

  no amphitheatre was to be built except on ground of tried solidity.

  (Tacitus, Annals 62–3)

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  The Emperor Gaius (AD 37–41) was much more enthusiastic

  about the games. Gaius was more commonly known by the

  nickname his father’s soldiers had given him when he was a

  small boy: Caligula or ‘Little Boots’, since they gave him a pair

  of small military boots. Wayward by even the most charitable

  interpretation, Caligula’s reign is inevitably seen through the lens

  of Tacitus’ and Suetonius’ accounts (often, for a modern reading

  or TV-viewing public, via Robert Graves’ I Claudius). It was

  not thought particularly eccentric that he himself trained as a

  Thracian gladiator, since many members of the nobility indulged

  in arms drill of some kind. In much the same way, it would not

  attract comment if a UK prime minister or US president might

  go jogging regularly, but it would be thought odd if they started

  competing in professional athletics.

  Having spent the vast fortune Tiberius had left, some

  2.7 billion
sesterces, Caligula was forced to come up with a

  solution. His ingenious idea for raising more money was to hold

  a rather unusual auction:

  He would sell the survivors in the gladiatorial combats at an

  excessive valuation to the consuls, praetors, and others, not only

  to willing purchasers, but also to others who were compelled very

  much against their will to give such exhibitions at the Circensian

  games, and in particular he sold them to men specially chosen by

  lot to have charge of such contests (for he ordered that two praetors

  should be chosen by lot to have charge of the gladiatorial games,

  just as had formerly been the custom); and he himself would sit on

  the auctioneer’s platform and keep raising the bids. Many also came

  from outside to put in rival bids, the more so as he allowed any

  who so wished to employ a greater number of gladiators than the

  law permitted and because he frequently visited them himself. So

  people bought them for large sums, some because they really wanted

  them, others with the idea of gratifying Gaius, and the majority,

  consisting of those who had a reputation for wealth, from a desire to

  take advantage of this excuse to spend some of their substance and

  thus by becoming poorer save their lives. (Cassius Dio 59.14.1–4)

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  Claudius (AD 41–54) chose to celebrate the anniversary of his

  accession by holding gladiatorial games (without an animal hunt)

  at a rather unusual location: the Praetorian Camp. Presumably

  this took place on the exercise ground immediately outside the

  fortress. Th ese games of course was in response to, and perhaps

  thanks for, the role the Guard played in his accession, when they

  supposedly found him hiding behind a curtain in the Imperial

  palace and decided they would make him emperor on a whim.

  Such is the narrative that has come down to us, but the cynical

  might suspect that a Praetorian-backed coup lay behind the

  original assassination of Caligula and elevation of Claudius to

  the purple. If so, this was indeed an appropriate way to mark

  the event.

  It was under Claudius that a particularly signifi cant sham

  naval battle ( naumachia ) took place in AD 52 on the Fucine

  Lake, some 85 km east of Rome. Some of these were held in

  bespoke lakes, also called naumachia , whilst other, smaller-scale

  events could be staged by fl ooding an arena (Roman warships