Gladiators

by M. C. Bishop

  The most commonly believed version of the pollice verso gesture

  sees the thumbs-up to mean ‘let him live’ and thumbs down

  ‘kill him’. However, it has been suggested that the thumbs-up

  gesture (with phallic undertones) meant ‘kill him’ and the

  thumbs down implied ‘spare him’ (thumbs up not acquiring a

  positive meaning until comparatively recently). The outcome

  of the less-favourable version of the gesture is shown on relief

  sculpture and in mosaics, but who had made that decision?

  There is some evidence to suggest that it was up to the victor

  and that all the audience (and even the editor) could do was

  appeal to that individual’s generosity. Of course, an appeal for

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  clemency from the emperor was probably not something one

  would overlook lightly.

  The lucky loser whom the crowd judged had fought well

  would enjoy missio and be allowed to live to fight another day.

  Those who were not so lucky faced execution by the victor.

  A relief from Lucus Feroniae (Italy) shows one Republican-

  period gladiator, sword blade resting on his right shoulder,

  finishing off another with his dagger. Another relief depicts

  a kneeling gladiator, his face concealed behind a shield

  apparently attached to his head, about to be executed by the

  man who had defeated him.

  Each contest was overseen by a summa rudis (‘top stick’) who

  acted like a referee in a modern boxing match. These individuals

  can be seen on depictions of gladiatorial combats wielding a long

  cane and, perhaps understandably, are most visible when one

  gladiator is down and appealing for mercy. He was supported by

  a deputy, the secunda rudis. It was up to the summa rudis at this

  point to ensure fair play and stop either of the contestants taking

  unfair advantage of the pause in proceedings. A tombstone from

  Amisus in Turkey records how a bent referee managed to turn

  a result and the victor, Diodorus, ended up dead as a result.

  The tombstone of summa rudis Publius Aelius from Pergamum

  records that he had honorary citizenship from a number of cities

  in the East – Abdera (Greece), Apros (Kermeyan in Turkey), Bizye

  (Vize in Turkey), Larisa (either in Greece or Turkey), Nicomedia

  (İzmit in Turkey), Perge (Turkey), Philippopolis (Plovdiv

  in Bulgaria), Thasos (Greece), Thessalonica (Thessaloniki in

  Greece) – suggesting that he was an itinerant umpire.

  If the umpire thought the gladiators were not trying hard

  enough, he might use his cane to encourage them to produce

  a better performance. He would doubtless have been sensitive

  to the mood of the crowd. Where there was a decisive winner,

  then they would be awarded a palm branch, a laurel crown and

  perhaps a purse of coins or other gifts as a sign of their victory

  from the editor of the games. Prize money was divided between

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  Pompeii graffiti including a gladiator appealing (drawing by M. C. Bishop)

  the gladiator and his lanista: Marcus Aurelius set the amount for

  the gladiator at 25% of the purse if free, 20% if a slave.

  When the time came to leave, the crowd did so by means of

  the exits known as vomitoria. Although the word vomitorium

  is often thought to be a room where debauched Roman diners

  could shed what they had been eating earlier to make room for

  more, this is in fact a myth. Vomitoria were exits from arenas

  which were carefully designed so that they did not constrict a

  crowd in a hurry to leave a building.

  Career

  The hardest part of a gladiator’s career was making the move from

  an untried tiro (new recruit) to a man who had survived (and

  possibly even won) his first fight. Experienced gladiators were

  known as veterans ( veterani) and the number of their victories was

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  Summa rudis on the Zliten mosaic (photo by Carole Raddato)

  recorded, since it is found associated with their names on both

  graffi ti and tombstones. Once a gladiator had started winning,

  beyond surviving, they could aspire to reaching the status of

  primus palus , ‘fi rst stake’, named after the stake against which they

  trained. Th e best gladiator in the school would be primus palus ,

  the next best secundus palus and so on. Th ere is evidence for at least

  four grades and inscriptions from the East suggest that there may

  have been up to eight levels. When viewed in the context of the

  legislation of AD 177 to limit the costs of games using the ranks

  of gladiators, this suggests that all gladiators within a school would

  thus have had a palus ranking, not just an elite few. Inherent in the

  system seems to have been the ability for any gladiator to work

  their way up through the hierarchy, although how many (or what

  proportion of) victories were necessary to achieve this is unclear.

  Whilst the ultimate goal of most gladiators was retirement,

  that does not mean that some of them at least did not enjoy what

  they did and look forward to a fi ght:

  Even among the gladiators of Caesar (the Emperor) there are some

  who complain grievously that they are not brought forward and

  matched, and they off er up prayers to God and address themselves

  to their superintendents intreating that they may fi ght. (Epictetus,

  Discourses 1.29.37)

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  Gladiator with palm branch (photo by Carole Raddato)

  Collegia

  Like many groups in Roman society, gladiators organised

  themselves into trade guilds, even though they were only

  slaves, for the most part. It is generally assumed that collegia

  acted as burial clubs, but they probably acted as social clubs

  too. Elsewhere in Roman society, collegia organised feasts as a

  component of religious festivals and gladiatorial guilds may have

  helped organised the cena libera before a fight. Collegia were

  organised into decuriae (‘tens’) and, if they were big enough,

  centuriae (‘hundreds’) and headed by initiales (‘leaders’ or

  ‘founders’). An example was the collegium of Silvanus recorded

  on an inscription from Rome dating to AD 177 when Marcus

  Aurelius and Commodus were co-emperors:

  For Emperor Caesar Lucius Aurelius Commodus and Marcus

  Plautius Quintillus consuls, the initiales of the collegium of Silvanus

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  Aurelianus, curatores Marcus Aurelius Hilarus, freedman of the

  emperor, and Coelius Magnus, cryptarius.

  decuria I

  Secundinus provocator beginner

  Borysthenes, thraex veteran

  Eleuther thraex beginner

  Clonius hoplomachus veteran

  Pirata masseur

  Callisthenes thraex veteran

  decuria III

  Zosimus essedarius veteran

  Barosus contraretiarius beginner

  Plution essedarius veteran

  Aemilianus contraretiarius newly

  Pertinax contraretiarius veteran

  arrived

  Carpophorus murmillo veteran

  Ulpius Euporas Proshodus contra-
/>
  Crispinus murmillo veteran

  retiarius beginner

  Pardus provocator veteran

  Aurelius Felicianus (?civilian)

  Miletus murmillo veteran

  Aurelius Felix (?civilian)

  decuria II

  Zoilus civilian

  Vitulus murmillo veteran

  Flavius Marissus (?civilian)

  Demosthenes armguard-maker

  Flavius Sanctus (?civilian)

  Felicianus retiarius beginner

  Diodorus civilian

  Servandus retiarius beginner

  decuria IIII

  Iuvenis murmillo sword-maker

  Aprilis paegniarius

  Ripanus contraretiarius beginner

  Zosimus thraex sword-maker

  Silvanus contraretiarius beginner

  ( CIL VI, 631)

  The likely burial function of the collegium is reflected by the

  post of cryptarius, the man who looked after the burial plot. It

  is noticeable how all of the veterans were in the first decuria, the

  beginners in the second and assorted other statuses in the third

  and fourth decuriae. Likwise, there were sword- and armour-

  makers, as well as a masseur. Presumably, all of the gladiators

  in the collegium belonged to the same familia, but this is not

  stated. It is known that there was a collegium for summa rudes in

  Rome since a tombstone of one of its members, Publius Aelius,

  is known from Pergamum (Turkey).

  Retirement

  A gladiator who survived to retirement was awarded with

  freedom and the wooden sword or rudis, which was of course the

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  Rudis from Saalburg (photo by C. Rusalen)

  very practice weapon with which they had trained. It is unclear

  whether this would have been an actual double-weight wooden

  sword, or whether it might in fact have been a symbolic replica,

  such as the slightly scaled-down wooden swords excavated from

  Carlisle (UK) and Saalburg (Germany). The wooden sica from

  the Roman fort at Oberaden mentioned above may have served

  a similar purpose for a thraex.

  A successful gladiator, who had in most cases been a slave,

  might receive their freedom, enabling them to set up in business

  or (certainly in the turbulent Late Republican period) perhaps get

  into the security trade, acting as a politician’s henchman. They

  might even aspire to the role of lanista and train other gladiators.

  Even after retirement, it might be possible to persuade a

  gladiator to fight again for a very special occasion. The Emperor

  Tiberius offered a massive fee of 100,000 sesterces to rudiarii

  (‘men who have received the rudis’) who would fight in a games

  in honour of his grandfather Drusus.

  Life, health and death

  Gladiators were expected to eat healthily as well as train in order

  to maintain peak fitness. Cyprian alludes to this in his Christian

  diatribe against the games:

  The body is fed up with stronger food, and the vigorous mass of

  limbs is enriched with brawn and muscle, that the wretch fattened

  for punishment may die a harder death. Man is slaughtered that

  man may be gratified, and the skill that is best able to kill is an

  exercise and an art. (Cyprian, Letter to Donatus 1.7)

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  Paegnarius (‘play fi ghter’)

  • Armour: padded left arm

  • Special feature: whip or cane

  • Period: Imperial

  • Common opponent: paegnarius

  Analysis of the bones from the gladiator cemetery at Ephesus

  (Turkey) confi rms that they enjoyed a special diet and showed

  just how much it diff ered from that of the general population.

  Th ey apparently had a vegetarian diet (called sagina or ‘stuffi ng’),

  preferring carbohydrate over protein. Gladiators were indeed

  nicknamed hordearii (‘barley boys’) and Galen notes that they

  mainly ate bean soup and barley, sometimes served as a pudding,

  sometimes watered down as a drink. However, aside from leading

  to excessive fl atulence, barley and legumes could not provide

  everything they required for peak fi tness and Galen made eff orts to

  improve the diet of the gladiators under his charge at Pergamum.

  It has even been suggested that, to avoid calcium defi ciency,

  gladiators consumed a special concoction which scientists believe

  was made from the ashes of burnt plants. Th is would ensure that

  their calcium levels were not just maintained but markedly higher

  than that of the general population. It has been speculated that

  one eff ect of this diet may have been to increase the subcutaneous

  body fat of the combatants, making it possible for them to receive

  fairly impressive-looking wounds without it having too much

  direct impact on their ability to fi ght. Cicero repeatedly plays on

  the word ‘gladiator’ in his Th ird Philippic speech against Julius

  Caesar’s former right-hand man, Marc Antony, as a way of both

  sneering at his slightly thuggish physique and demeaning his

  status.

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  One of the paradoxes of the Roman world was that, apart

  from the very wealthy, those whose lives were most at risk

  (such as soldiers and gladiators) had access to some of the

  best living conditions (relatively speaking) and the highest

  quality healthcare. The physician Galen, whose writings were

  highly influential upon medieval medicine, began work as the

  doctor ( medicus) for a gladiatorial school in Pergamum from

  AD 158 to 161 before becoming the personal physician of the

  Emperor Marcus Aurelius. He was clearly good at what he did,

  since his predecessor had lost 60 gladiators under his charge,

  whereas Galen only lost two. As he was treating the living and

  patching together the wounded, he was learning about anatomy,

  dissection of humans no longer being popular amongst the

  medical profession of his time.

  Galen described treating an eques who had suffered a nasty

  wound to his thigh (an occupational hazard for any mounted

  warrior) and how he went about stitching it back together.

  Learning on the job, Galen’s knowledge of drugs and how to

  use them slowly improved and he evidently diligently sought the

  correct treatments.

  Again, skeletal analysis of the remains of 68 individuals from the

  gladiator cemetery at Ephesus has proved extremely informative

  with regard to the injuries and wounds they received. Most of

  those wounds were to the head and usually fatal, although a

  diamond-shaped puncture wound resembling the cross-section

  of a gladius blade showed signs of healing, whilst the triple

  puncture characteristic of a retiarius’ trident was decidedly fatal.

  Others had been finished off with a blow to the head with a

  hammer, doubtless dealt by the figure dressed as Dis Pater or

  Charun. Some healed wounds to the head, it was suggested, may

  have resulted from over-vigorous training sessions.

  We even have a joint epitaph with a medical twist from one of

  the training schools in Rome:

  Claudius Agathocles, medicus of the emperor, physician at the

  Ludus M
atutinus, made this for himself, Claudius the lanista of the

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  emperor, Primitivus, keeper of the morgue, and Thelesphorus the

  retiarius, may the earth rest lightly upon you. ( CIL VI, 10171)

  Like everybody else in the Roman world, gladiators were usually

  concerned to make some sort of provision for a memorial once

  they were dead. At Ephesus, not only do many of the gladiators’

  tombstones survive, but there is also a gladiator cemetery

  which has been examined archaeologically. Scientific analysis of

  the bodies of some of the deceased has produced a wealth of

  extremely interesting information about the lives and deaths of

  the gladiators buried there.

  Accommodation

  True to the notion of the familia gladiatoria, gladiators usually

  lived together in some form of barracks. Various ludi in Rome

  and elsewhere with practice arenas and cells for accommodation

  have already been mentioned but two sets of gladiatorial

  accommodation are known from Pompeii. The first, which

  apparently dated back to the beginning of the Imperial period,

  was a peristyle courtyard structure in Regio V of the town known

  as the House of the Gladiators. Excavated at the end of the 19th

  century, it was found to include over 100 graffiti connected with

  gladiators, recording Thracians, murmillones, retiarii, equites and

  essedarii. However, it was badly damaged in the earthquake of

  AD 62 and the barracks was moved to the quadriporticus next

  to the Triangular Forum in Regio VIII, which was uncovered

  in the 18th century. There were rooms on two floors around

  the central courtyard, the lanista having rooms on the upper

  floor whilst the gladiator cells were at ground level. There was

  even a kitchen with mess hall for communal dining and, on its

  wall, somewhat enigmatically, was written the name of Lucius

  Annaeus Seneca, that critic of at least some aspects of the games.

  When the building was first excavated, the remains of eighteen

  individuals were found including, in one cell, the skeleton of a

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  woman wearing jewellery, lying next to the remains of a man;

  this poignant scene has invited many different interpretations

  over the years. The barracks also produced a number of pieces of

  gladiatorial armour – including helmets, greaves, belts, daggers,

  a shield and a spear – as well as graffiti attesting to the presence