by M. C. Bishop
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
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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
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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
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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)
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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