by M. C. Bishop
CHapter 5: Hardware and venues | 109
confirm this. It is, however, true that much of the terminology
of gladiatorial combat was simply transliterated into Greek, the
common language of the region. Only gladiator (which became
monomachos or ‘lone fighter’) and munera ( philotimia – ‘the love
of honour’) were actually translated.
These all serve to confirm the universality of gladiatorial games
(in the broadest sense) throughout the Roman Empire.
110 | GLadIatOrs
CHApTeR 6
LIFE AS A GLADIATOR
I have seen men weighed down by bodily exercise, and carrying
about the burden of their fl esh. Rewards and wreath crowns are
set before them, while those who judge them cheer them on – not
to deeds of virtue, but to rivalry in violence and discord.
Th e one who excels in giving blows is crowned.
Tatian, Address to the Greeks 23
Recruitment
NEARLY ALL GLADIATORS WERE SLAVES OWNED by a lanista who
was, eff ectively, their manager. In the case of Imperial gladiators,
they were of course owned by the emperor, who had his own
lanista in the Ludus Magnus and the other ludi to manage them.
Th e lanistae then made money by hiring out their fi ghters for
games and this was duly taxed by the government (and the cost
of that tax passed on to customers). It has been estimated that
the tax brought in between 60 and 120 million sesterces per
annum to the Imperial treasury. Moreover, if a top gladiator was
killed in the arena, the editor of the games would be required
to compensate the lanista (who had obviously made a sizeable
investment in his fi ghter, not only in their purchase cost, but in
CHApTeR 6: LIfe AS A GLADIATOR | 111
their training and upkeep) for as much as 50 times the fee for
which the gladiator had been hired. Gladiators represented big
money, whether it be for those holding the games, the lanistae or
the government raking in the tax.
Those gladiators who were indeed slaves were selected
according to their looks, physique and general good health. They
had often been captured during warfare, sold to a lanista by a
former master or condemned in court to a gladiatorial training
school ( condemnatio ad ludum gladiatorium). Either way, they
joined a ludus or training school, usually named after the lanista,
such as the ludus Aemilius mentioned by Horace or the ludus
Neronianus at Capua. Lanistae were not highly thought of,
Seneca comparing them to pimps, although Cicero saw nothing
wrong with his friend Atticus buying a ludus, complete with
gladiators, noting that he could earn back his investment after
just two shows. Gladiators within such a training school would
then be described as belonging to a familia, such as the familia
gladiatoria or familia venatoria.
There is some evidence that at least some gladiators adopted
stage names, the obvious examples being the two female
gladiators, Achillia (a female version of Achilles, the great Greek
warrior) and Amazon (the Amazons fought on the side of the
Trojans against the Greeks in the Trojan War). Their Trojan-
War-themed soubriquets are too obvious to have been their
real names and the coincidence of them being paired together
frankly implausible. This may have been quite a popular theme.
Astyanax, depicted on the Madrid mosaic, was named after the
son of Hector (the Trojan hero). Other mythological names
occur: Meleager on the Borghese mosaic recalls the hero of the
same name, famed for hunting the Calydonian Boar. Talamonius
on the same mosaic is a Romanisation of Telamon, who was also
on the boar hunt, whilst Bellerefons is clearly Bellerophon, who
captured Pegasus, the winged horse. Other names, like Hilarus
(‘jolly’) on a Pompeian graffito, are regular Greek slave names. The
graffiti from Pompeii record the exploits of the match between
112 | GLADIATORS
Marcus Attilius and Lucius Raecius Felix, whose names suggest
they were Roman citizens (or, at the very least, freedmen). Stage
names were not universal then, so may have been preferred by
owners or perhaps even the gladiators themselves.
There were some men who, having achieved their freedom
for some reason, opted to stay on as freedmen gladiators (there
is obviously the suspicion here that they may have become
institutionalised during their time in a familia gladiatoria).
Occasionally, there were also Roman citizens who decided to
fight in the arena for whatever reason (known as auctorati). There
was in fact a legal process (known as auctoratio) whereby a free
man who fancied a career in the arena would get permission from
a tribune of the people and then contract himself to a lanista or
even directly to the editor of the games (as a form of freelance
gladiator). One man even treated his lanista like a pawnbroker,
selling himself more than once, only to have his sister bale him
out each time; she put a stop to this by cutting off his thumb
(rendering him useless for the arena) and he duly sued her!
Cicero scoffed at Marc Antony’s brother for choosing to fight as
a gladiator occasionally. Vitellius, one of the unlucky three in the
so-called Year of the Four Emperors (AD 69) explicitly forbade
members of the equestrian order (the second rank of nobility)
from doing this (suggesting that some had been doing it):
Strict measures were taken to prevent Roman equestrians from
degrading themselves in gladiatorial schools and the arena. Former
emperors had driven equestrians to such actions by money or more
often by force; and most municipal towns and colonies were in the
habit of rivalling the emperors in bribing the worst of their young
men to take up these disgraceful pursuits. (Tacitus, Histories 2.62)
It had indeed amused Caligula to force equestrians and even
senators to fight, but there was a world of difference between
what an autocrat compelled men to do and what they chose to do
voluntarily, and any Roman could see that. There were certainly
few faster ways of earning the disapproval of all strata of society
CHApTeR 6: LIfe AS A GLADIATOR | 113
than by volunteering to fight as a gladiator, so like the Emperor
Commodus, they must have wanted to do it really badly. When
Marcus Aurelius expressed doubts about a former gladiator
wanting to hold public office, the man observed that he had seen
many members of the senate fight in the arena in his time.
At this point, it is important to distinguish true gladiators
from the noxii or condemned men who were to be executed in
the arena, sometimes by fighting each other, sometimes fighting
wild animals, but generally providing entertainment during the
lunchtime hiatus, between the animal hunts of the morning and
the gladiatorial shows of the afternoon. These noxii might include
prisoners of war amongst their numbers, as well as run-of-the-
mill criminals, particularly after major campaigns. They were not,
however, memb
ers of the gladiatorial schools, did not participate
in the regular training that marked a gladiator, nor was there any
subtlety in the contest. It was simply pitiless slaughter.
Although most gladiators were indeed slaves, there were free
men who felt drawn to participate for whatever reason, as has just
been mentioned. However, it was not just men, but women too
who were found in the arena. A relief sculpture and inscription
from Halicarnassus (Turkey) records the missio or discharge of the
two female gladiators mentioned above, Amazon and Achillia.
They are both shown in the ‘at the ready’ stance, without helmets
but with the rectangular shields and gladii of murmillones.
The poet Juvenal brought up the subject of female gladiators in
his sixth Satire focused on women:
Who has not seen one of them smiting a stake, piercing it through
and through with a foil, lunging at it with a shield, and going
through all the proper motions? A matron truly qualified to blow a
trumpet at the Floralia! Unless, indeed, she is nursing some further
ambition in her bosom, and is practising for the real arena. What
modesty can you expect in a woman who wears a helmet, abjures
her own sex, and delights in feats of strength? Yet she would not
choose to be a man, knowing the superior joys of womanhood.
What a fine thing for a husband, at an auction of his wife’s effects,
114 | GLADIATORS
Amazon and Achillia, female gladiators (photo by Carole Raddato)
to see her belt and armguards and plumes put up for sale, with
padding that covers half the left leg; or if she fi ght another sort of
battle, how charmed you will be to see your young wife disposing
of her greaves! Yet these are the women who fi nd the thinnest of
thin robes too hot for them; whose delicate fl esh is chafed by the
fi nest of silk tissue. See how she pants as she goes through her
prescribed exercises; how she bends under the weight of her helmet;
how big and coarse are the bandages which enclose her haunches;
and then laugh when she lays down her arms and shows herself to
be a woman! Tell us, you grand-daughters of Lepidus, of the blind
Metellus, or of Fabius Gurges, what gladiator’s wife ever assumed
accoutrements like these? When did the wife of Asylus ever gasp
against a stake? (Juvenal, Satires 6.247–67)
Of course, this was satire, so it is exaggerated and part of the
amusement value inevitably comes from the fact that it evidently
concerned a noble woman who was indulging her taste for
CHApTeR 6: LIfe AS A GLADIATOR | 115
gladiatorial combat by participating in it herself. We know
that there were female gladiators but this need not be seen as
evidence that they were all of noble birth. However, Juvenal’s
satire derived its bite from having a core of truth to it. Under
Nero, Tacitus records the following for the year AD 64:
The same year witnessed a number of gladiatorial shows, equal in
magnificence to their predecessors, though more women of rank and
senators disgraced themselves in the arena. (Tacitus, Annals 15.32)
This became a cause of concern for the Roman authorities, but it
was not until the reign of Septimius Severus that a stop was put
to women participating in gladiatorial combat. The principal
problem lay not in women fighting in the arena, but in the low
social standing of gladiators in society reflecting unfavourably
upon noble Roman women.
In September 2000, on an otherwise quiet news day, the
Museum of London chose to publicise the fact that remains
found during excavations at Great Dover Street in Southwark,
south of the Thames, may have been those of a female gladiator.
It was, if so, the first such burial ever recorded. The body had
been cremated over a pit, into which the remains of the pyre and
the body had collapsed (a bustum – remember, gladiators were
first known as bustuarii). Grave goods included incense burners,
some lamps (one showing a gladiator) and the remains of food
(including doves and chickens, figs, dates and almonds), possibly
a meal for the afterlife. Roman cremation was often not very
efficient, and analysis of fragments of the pelvis of the skeleton
suggested that it had belonged to a woman in her twenties. Of
course, it is impossible to be certain that this woman really was a
so-called gladiatrix, but it remains a possibility.
Before they entered service, all gladiators took an oath of
loyalty ( sacramentum) to their lanista. We know its approximate
wording from writings by both two of Nero’s courtiers, Petronius
(his so-called Arbiter of Taste) and Seneca (his adviser), who
both paraphrase it:
116 | GLADIATORS
We took an oath to obey Eumolpus; to endure burning, bondage,
flogging, death by the sword, or anything else that Eumolpus
ordered. We pledged our bodies and souls to our master most
solemnly, like regular gladiators. (Petronius, Satyricon 117)
The words of this most honourable compact are the same as the
words of that most disgraceful one, to wit: ‘Through burning,
imprisonment, or death by the sword.’ From the men who hire
out their strength for the arena, who eat and drink what they
must pay for with their blood, security is taken that they will
endure such trials even though they be unwilling; from you, that
you will endure them willingly and with alacrity. (Seneca, Letters
37.1–2)
The precise wording is unknown, but these two texts indicate
it must have been something along the lines of ‘I promise to
endure burning, bondage, flogging and death by sword to obey
my master’.
Training
The relationship between military and gladiatorial training
has already been alluded to. The late Roman writer Vegetius
preserves an account of the training of new legionary recruits
which he specifically compares to the gladiatorial system:
The ancients, as is recorded in the books, trained recruits in this
way. They wove rounded shields of wicker like basketry, in such a
way that the frame should be double the weight of a battle shield.
And likewise they gave the recruits wooden foils, also double
weight, in place of swords. And next they were trained at the stake,
not only in the morning, but also in the afternoon. For the use
of stakes is particularly advantageous not only for soldiers but
also for gladiators. And neither arena nor field ever proved a man
invincible in arms, unless he was carefully taught training at the
stake. However, single stakes were fastened in the ground by each
recruit, in such a way that they did not wobble and protruded for
CHApTeR 6: LIfe AS A GLADIATOR | 117
Training at the stake (photo by J. C. N. Coulston)
six feet. The recruit practised against this stake with the wicker
shield and singlestick as though with a sword and shield against an
enemy; so, he might aim for the head or face, then he is threatened
from the sides, then he strained to cut down at the hams and shins;
&nb
sp; he retreated, attacked, leaped in, as if the enemy were present; he
assaulted the stake forcefully, fighting skilfully. In doing this, care
was taken that the recruit rose up in this way in order to wound,
but did not lay himself open to a blow anywhere. (Vegetius, De Re
Militari 1.11)
A surviving relief from Milan shows a gladiator with just such
a stake ( palus), in this case cheekily topped by his gladiatorial
helmet so that his face could be seen. The use of double-weight
dummy weapons was considered extremely important by the
Romans, the intended effect being that once used to the heavy
practice weapons, the real thing would seem extremely light
118 | GLADIATORS
when they came to use it. The fact that both the army and the
gladiatorial schools used this method of training for hand-to-
hand combat clearly indicates that they felt it worked.
Gladiators were taught by an instructor ( doctor – our word
doctor comes from the Latin doctor medicinae, instructor in
medicine) in much the same way as the campidoctor instructed
soldiers – the campus was the practice ground where Roman
soldiers trained, the very first being the Campus Martius in
Rome. Usually experienced gladiators, these doctores seem to have
specialised in one of the armaturae. There is a doctor retiariorum
known from Cordoba (Spain), a doctor murmillonum from
Concordia and Rome (both in Italy), a doctor hoplomachorum
and a doctor thraecum from Rome, as well as a more general
doctor gladiatorium from Cologne in Germany.
One of the principles drummed into soldiers was the need
for constant training and this would have been essential for
gladiators too. There will have been variations adapted to the
different armaturae (so it might be supposed that the retiarius,
for instance, under the direction of a doctor retiariorum, practised
stabbing at the stake with his trident, as well as throwing his net
at it). The next stage on from the stakes for the more experienced
was mock combat with live opponents and Onasander described
how this was done for soldiers:
Next after dividing the army into two parts he should lead them
against each other in a sham battle, armed with staves or the shafts
of javelins. (Onasander, Strategicon 10.1.4)
Although we lack any surviving tactical manuals for gladiatorial