Gladiators
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saddle at 100 denarii (400 sesterces), for the sake of comparison,
and it shows the huge prices these exotic animals could fetch.
A mosaic from Piazza Armerina in Sicily (Italy), dated to the
first half of the 4th century AD, illustrates such animals being
rounded up and collected prior to shipping out. At least part of
the reason for the high prices commanded by exotic wild animals
may have been a direct result of the cumulative Roman demand
for them impacting upon their populations, so that they became
rarer in regions where they had once been common and had to
be sourced from further afield.
Having followed the development of gladiatorial games from
their inception right through to a point from which they start
to decline, it is now appropriate to pause and examine the
equipment they used, the places in which they fought, and what
they could look forward to once they had been engaged to fight
for their lives.
CHApTeR 4: AT THe peAk | 65
CHapter 5
HARDWARE AND VENUES
Who does not reckon the contests of gladiators and wild
beasts among the things of greatest interest, especially
those which are given by you. But we, because we believe
that to watch a man be put to death is much the same
as killing him, avoid such spectacles.
Athenagoras, A Plea for the Christians 35
WHEN WE THINK OF WHAT GLADIATORS looked like, two images
inevitably dominate our mental picture. First there is the
Gladiator movie (which is wrong in virtually every detail) and
second there is the famous 1872 painting Pollice Verso by Jean-
Léon Gérôme (which is extremely accurate). Th e former seems
largely to have relied upon imagination, whereas the latter drew
on mosaics, frescoes, graffi ti and most especially actual fi nds of
equipment from the excavations at Pompeii to depict gladiators
in the arena.
Like Gérôme, our evidence for the dress and equipment of
gladiators relies partly on representational evidence but also on
archaeological fi nds. Sculpture could normally be much more
detailed than mosaics (which can sometimes look like very
low-resolution computer graphics), but mosaics and frescoes
preserve colour (and most ancient sculpture, although originally
coloured, has lost it over time). Th us a mosaic can use grey to
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Pollice Verso by Gérôme
hint at steel, or orangey yellow for some form of copper alloy,
providing us with more detail for our overall picture.
It is perhaps noteworthy that none of the known gladiator
armour includes the sort of ownership inscriptions found on
the equipment of Roman soldiers. The reason for this is simple:
soldiers owned their equipment, whereas the arms and armour
of gladiators belonged to their ludus.
dress, weapons and equipment
Dress
The gladiator usually wore little except an elaborate loin cloth,
the subligaculum. There are exceptions, such as the equites, who
seem to have worn a full tunica, but the loin cloth was the normal
garb for a whole range of types of gladiator. It was worn with a
broad belt and appears to have been folded in a particular way
in order to produce its distinctive, nappy-like appearance. One
CHapter 5: Hardware and venues | 67
of the more common types was wrapped around the waist from
behind, then the free end brought through the legs and folded
back down on itself before being belted. The belt ( balteus) itself
seems to have been metallic and modelled on the belts of the
Samnites (against whom the Romans had waged war during the
4th century BC).
Swords
Gladiators got their name from their principal weapon, the sword or
gladius. Although the short sword is often equated with the gladius
hispaniensis – literally the ‘Spanish sword’ – which was introduced
into the Roman army during the 2nd century BC, the Latin word
gladiator occurs long before this and betrays the fact that the word
gladius was just a generic term for a sword of any kind.
No certain gladiatorial swords as such survive, but there are
many military swords to provide a comparison. The sword
consisted of an iron blade with an integral tang to which a
handle was fitted. The handle comprised three principal
components: the hand guard, the hand grip and the pommel.
The hand guard protected the user’s hand on the grip,
preventing another blade from sliding up. The grip provided
purchase for the user, military examples often being hexagonal
in cross-section and made out of cow long bones. The pommel
acted as a counterweight to the blade but was also, like the
hand guard, protection for the bearer’s hand and could act as a
handy weapon in its own right. The handle assembly was held
onto the tang with a top nut, the tang being peened over it
once it was attached, thereby providing a secure assembly. The
pommel and top nut could then be used like the ‘skull-crusher’
on a Second World War commando dagger to deliver a very
nasty blow at close quarters. Amongst gladiatorial weapons,
the top nut also incorporated a ring to which the looped thong
could be attached.
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Dimachaerus (‘two swords’)
• Armour: none
• Special feature: shieldless, with two swords
• Period: Imperial
• Common opponent: dimachaerus
Scientifi c analysis of military swords shows how they were
an ingenious combination of iron and steel, providing both
the strength of steel at the edges of the blade, and softer, more
fl exible iron at the core of the blade. Th ere are stories of the
Spanish swords upon which Roman blades were modelled
being capable of being placed on the head of a man, bending
the tip and tang down to his shoulders, and then springing back
to shape afterwards. Nevertheless, Roman swords were never
designed for blade-on-blade fencing of the kind popular in
movies, but rather for hand-to-hand combat – whether soldiers
or gladiators – centring on combined use of the sword and
shield.
Th ere was some debate amongst the Romans over the best way
to use the short sword – was it a cut or thrust weapon? In fact, it
was ideally suited to either type of blow and sculpted reliefs show
gladiators using them in both ways, unsurprisingly.
One of the characteristics of a gladiator’s sword was that, unlike
a soldier’s sword, it was never used with a scabbard. Th e soldier
needed to have his sidearm with him at all times, but used the
scabbard to keep his hands free when he was not actually using
the weapon. Gladiators were only armed when actually in the
arena and so their swords had a looped thong attached to the
pommel which the gladiator then wore around his wrist. If he
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Tiber relief with sword (photo by J. C. N. Coulston)
dropped his sword for any reason, that loop meant
he would not
lose it completely and could easily recover the weapon. Th e loop
is clearly visible on some of the surviving sculptural reliefs.
A number of swords were found at Pompeii but none of them
came from the gladiatorial barracks nor had rings on top of their
pommels, whilst the presence of scabbards confi rms that they
were not gladiatorial weapons. Th ey probably belonged to the
marines sent to assist the inhabitants of the Bay of Naples, since
we know they were equipped just like soldiers.
Th e short sword actually went out of use with the army
during the 2nd century AD and was replaced with the longer
cavalry sword, the spatha . Th e short sword was reintroduced by
cutting down broken longer swords in army units, but there
is no evidence that the gladius ever fell from favour amongst
gladiators.
Th racians used their own type of sword, the sica or sickle, a
type of weapon derived from an agricultural implement and
found in the eastern Danube basin. Th is originally had a curved
blade with a single edge (on the inside of the curve), although
gladiatorial weapons seem to have had an angle, rather than a
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Hippolytos the Thracian (photo by Carole Raddato)
curve, in the blade. A wooden replica of a sica was found in a
ditch at the Roman fort of Oberaden in Germany, possibly a
rudis presented to a retired gladiator. Unlike the gladius, it was
primarily designed as a cutting weapon.
Daggers
Whatever their principal weapon might have been, every
gladiator had a dagger. This was used to finish off an opponent
once he had achieved his victory. It was also a vital back-up
sidearm should a swordsman lose his primary weapon. The
dagger is depicted in the reliefs from Lucus Feroniae where one
sword fighter is stabbing his felled opponent in the neck, using a
dagger in his left hand whilst still holding his sword in his right.
It might also have been used by a gladiator trapped in the net of
a retiarius to cut his way out, if he was lucky.
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Lucus Feroniae relief (photo by Sophie Hay)
An example of such a dagger was found at Pompeii in the
peristyle structure identified as the gladiatorial barracks. It
had a one-piece bone handle, the grip being slightly swollen
towards the middle so as to fit the hand, a hand guard shaped
like the cross-bar of a T, and a small, ovoid pommel. The
blade, although corroded, was around 30cm long and was
rhomboidal in cross-section. Unlike military daggers, which
generally had waisted blades, the Pompeii example had parallel
edges. However, a typical military dagger from London was
found with an atypical turned wooden handle fitted over its
tang and it is possible that this too may have been used by a
gladiator.
A four-spiked dagger ( quadrens) is depicted on the tombstone
of the retiarius Skirtos from Constanţa (Romania). The use of
this rather unusual weapon seems to be demonstrated by a femur
bone from a gladiator cemetery in Ephesus.
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Shafted weapons
Some gladiators relied upon shafted weapons (also known as
polearms). The hoplomachus, a gladiatorial interpretation of the
Greek hoplite, was armed with a circular shield and a thrusting
spear which gave him superior reach over a sword-armed
opponent. The retiarius also used a shafted weapon – the trident
(normally, but not exclusively, held in his right hand). The trident
( fuscina or tridens) originated as a fisherman’s weapon and it is
shown being used both single- and double-handed. Not only
do examples of the ferrous head survive (one from the harbour
at Ephesus was 38.5cm long), but a skull from the gladiator
cemetery there was found to have skull wounds exactly matching
such examples, with the tines spaced 5cm apart. Animal fighters
( bestiarii) and hunters ( venatores) generally relied upon shafted
weapons, although gladiators armed with swords and shields are
occasionally shown fighting wild animals. Hunting spears, unlike
the regular sort used by troops, often had sideways projections or
lugs immediately below the head to prevent determined animals
(especially wild boar) running up them to get at the weapon’s
owner.
Ancient spear shafts were not just cut from a length of timber
but had to be grown specially as poles by coppicing suitable
species of tree, such as ash or hazel. That way the shaft was much
stronger, since the older, harder wood was at the core, whilst the
younger, more supple material was nearer the surface. Indeed,
hafting a weapon was every bit as important as heading it. Such
considerations were extremely important for those who fought
with the thrusting spear or trident as their principal weapon.
Mounted gladiators ( equites) used spears as did some varieties
of foot gladiator such as the hoplomachus. Against sword-armed
opponents they provided an interesting match of reach over
efficacy: the spear-armed gladiator had to keep his opponent at
a distance, whilst the one armed with the sword had to get in
close so that the spear was no longer effective. Spears and javelins
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Bestiarius spears an Africanus (photo by Carole Raddato)
were normally held overarm in the classical world, although the
pilum, the heavy javelin of the army, was held underarm for
thrusting on occasion and the trident is shown being used in
this way. Similarly, the hunting spear is sometimes depicted as
being held two-handed against wild beasts.
Helmets
Gladiators originally just used their native equipment and their
helmets were open at the front and equipped with hinged cheek
pieces at the sides, as was the case with Roman soldiers’ helmets.
Helmets like these can be seen on reliefs up to and including the
time of Augustus (27 BC–AD 14). However, the 1st century
AD saw gladiatorial helmets evolve quite considerably so that, by
the time of the eruption of Vesuvius in AD 79, they were highly
specialised pieces of headgear.
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Gladiator helmets from Pompeii (photo by M. C. Bishop)
Examples from Pompeii included a broad brim, shaped and
angled to deflect blows from the head, and thus fulfilling the
purpose of both the neck guard and brow guard of a military
helmet. The helmets also now enclosed the face of the wearer,
only allowing him a limited view through hinged, meshed eye
guards. This feature had the advantage of making it that bit
harder to see one’s opponent, thus increasing the drama of an
encounter. Specific types of helmet were used by the various
types of gladiators (with the exception of retiarii and bestiarii,
who went bare-headed). The murmillo helmet had a broad brim
and fore-and-aft crest like a fish fin, although whether this was
the reason for their name or a reflection of it is unclear. The
secutor,
however, wore a helmet with no brim, small eyeholes and
a low fore-and-aft crest. There was little by way of decoration
in order to facilitate the deflection of the retiarius’ trident. A
bronze model of a secutor from Arles (France) has a hinged visor
that lifts up to reveal the face of the gladiator, but it is unclear
whether any real helmets mimicked this. Thraex helmets were
distinguished from those of murmillones by a characteristic griffin
head projecting from the front of the crest. All helmets had to be
padded in order to fit correctly and to absorb shock from a blow.
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Gladiators on a wall painting (photo by Carole Raddato)
Helmets with their lining glued in place were generally only
suitable for a few individuals, but by using arming caps of some
kind, a wide range of people could use the same helmet. Th e
complete, surviving examples from Pompeii weighed between
3.3 kg and 6.8 kg with an average weight of around 4 kg.
Th e introduction of visored gladiatorial helmets occurred at
about the same time as Roman cavalry started to use face-mask
Essedarius (‘charioteer’)
• Armour: none
• Special feature: using British light chariot
• Period: Imperial
• Common opponent: essedarius; retiarius
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helmets during their sports contests known as the hippike
gymnasia. Besides offering protection for the face, and adding a
certain intimidating impression to the opponent, both types of
helmet may have added an additional challenge for the wearer
by reducing their field of vision. Thus, by using visored helmets,
the heavier gladiators acquired a handicap that their lighter
opponents lacked.
Depictions (wall paintings, mosaics, lamps and metal figurines)
reveal that some gladiators wore elaborate crests or plumes on
their helmets some (but not all) of the time, in much the same
way that soldiers did. It all added to the sense of spectacle, as well
as serving to enhance the height (and therefore magnificence) of
a gladiator and help to intimidate their foe.
Breastplates
Although in the heyday of gladiatorial combat little in the way