by M. C. Bishop
What is perhaps surprising to a modern reader is that the
subsequent adoption of Christianity as the state religion by
Constantine did not instantly see the banning of gladiatorial
combat. However, this is to misunderstand the context of the
times and the everyday brutality with which the inhabitants of
the Roman Empire were familiar. The voices raised against the
games, which had always been there, became more insistent and
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Retiarius (‘net fi ghter’)
• Armour: shoulderguard
• Special feature: net, trident
• Period: Imperial
• Common opponent: arbelas; essedarius;
murmillo; secutor
now had scripture to back them up, but as yet they had not been
very successful.
In fact, Constantine did produce a rescript (a response for
clarifi cation on a specifi c legal question) in AD 325 related to
curtailing deaths in the arena. However, it was not aimed at
gladiators as such, but rather at those condemned to the arena
( damnatio ad ludum ) as a method of execution – the same group
that made Seneca so uncomfortable. Th is form of punishment
was still going on in AD 315, when the vicarius of Africa, one
Domitius Celsus, provided a rescript changing the sentence
for kidnappers from being condemned to the mines ( damnatio
ad metallum ) to being condemned to the games ( damnatio
ad ludum ). He specifi cally ruled that they be handed over to
an Imperial ludus and that they die without going through
gladiatorial training.
In a famous (or perhaps, more correctly, infamous) passage,
the 4th-century AD Christian writer Augustine of Hippo tells
the story of his student Alypius of Th agaste (who later went
on to become a bishop) as a warning against the corrupting
infl uence of the games:
He, retaining that worldly way which his parents had taught him
to follow, had preceded me to Rome in order to study law, and
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there he became extraordinarily obsessed with gladiatorial shows.
For, being utterly opposed to and detesting such spectacles, he
one day happened to meet various friends and fellow-students
returning from dinner, and they with a friendly violence led him,
vehemently objecting and resisting, into the amphitheatre, on a
day of these cruel and deadly shows, as he protested: ‘Th ough you
drag me in and keep me there, can you force me to pay attention
and watch these shows? So I shall not be there whilst there and
will overcome both you and them.’ Hearing this, they dragged him
on regardless, possibly hoping to see whether he could do as he
said. When they had arrived there and had taken their places, the
whole place became excited with the inhuman sports. He, however,
shutting his eyes, trying to ignore this evil; if only he had shut his
ears too! For, when someone fell in combat, a mighty cry from the
whole audience stirring him strongly, he, overcome by curiosity,
and prepared as it were to despise and overcome it, no matter what
it were, opened his eyes, and was struck with a deeper wound in
his soul than the other, whom he desired to see, was in his body;
and he fell more miserably than the man whose fall had caused the
mighty uproar, which entered through his ears, and unlocked his
eyes, to make way for the striking and beating down of his soul,
which was now bold rather than valiant; and so much the weaker in
that it presumed on itself, which ought to have depended on You.
For, as soon as he saw blood, he developed a sort of savagery. He did
not look away, but stared, drinking in madness unconsciously, and
was delighted with the guilty contest, and drunk with the bloody
Sagittarius (‘archer’)
• Armour: unknown
• Special feature: composite bow
• Period: Imperial
• Common opponent: unknown
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events. And he was no longer the same as he had been when he
came in, but was now one of the crowd and a true companion
for those who had brought him in. Need I say more? He looked,
shouted, became excited, and took away with him the obsession
which would drive him to return, not only with those who first
tempted him, but also in fact ahead of them, bringing others with
him. (Augustine, Confessions 6.8)
late instances
One of the most famous depictions of gladiatorial combat –
the Borghese mosaic from Torrenova, just outside Rome (see
p. 141) – has been dated to the first half of the 4th century
AD. From the level of detail it depicts, it seems safe to say that
gladiatorial combat with a range of armaturae was not only
familiar to the artist but in fact acutely observed. Indeed, in AD
337, Constantine received a request from the town of Hispellum
in Spain to perform a sacrifice and hold gladiatorial games in his
honour. He responded by denying permission for the sacrifice as
un-Christian, but allowing the gladiatorial combat. The Church
declared that gladiators and lanistae could no longer be baptised.
Even so, in 354, the annual December games were still held in
Rome, according to the Calendar of Philocalus.
The continued existence of gladiators is to some extent
confirmed by the fact that, in AD 367, Pope Demasius employed
a troop of gladiators in his bodyguard. In 392, Dio Chrystostom
mentions gladiatorial performances in Antioch, whilst the local
bishop in Apamea (Syria) hired gladiators to help him destroy
pagan temples. Nevertheless, it is generally thought that munera
largely vanished from the East after the middle of the 4th century
AD, continuing in just the Western Empire, although even
there, Valentinian I (AD 364–75) ended the condemnation of
criminals to gladiatorial schools. The Imperial training barracks
in Rome are last mentioned in AD 397 and it has been suggested
that they may have closed soon after. The historian Ammianus
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Marcellinus, writing in the latter part of the 4th century AD on
the laziness of the common people, included a list of types of
public show when making his point:
And it has now come to this, that in place of the lively sound of
approval from men appointed to applaud, at every public show an
actor of afterpieces, a beast-baiter, a charioteer, every kind of player,
and the magistrates of higher and lower rank, and even matrons,
are greeted with the shout ‘You should be these fellows’ teachers!’
but what they ought to learn no one is able to explain. (Ammianus
Marcellinus 28.4.33)
The omission of gladiators may be significant. However, it
was not until AD 404 that gladiatorial games were supposedly
formally banned by the Emperor Honorius (AD 384–423),
although doubt has even been cast over this. The only legislation
from Honorius’ time dealt with exiling gladiators who moved
from training schools to the households of senators, possibly to
>
prevent them being used as armed bodyguards for the nobility.
Similarly, there have been claims that a decree of Valentinian III
(AD 425–55) in around AD 440 actually brought about the end
of gladiatorial combat but the evidence for this is lacking.
Rather than being legislated out of existence, gladiatorial games
may just have declined in popularity as tastes changed. Wild
beast hunts and chariot racing continued and the latter were still
to be found in Constantinople up to the beginning of the 13th
century. The 5th-century AD Christian writer Prudentius seems
to have had no issues with animal hunts:
Command that the dead bodies of wretched men be not offered
in sacrifice. Let no man fall at Rome that his suffering may give
pleasure, nor [the Vestal] Virgins delight their eyes with slaughter
upon slaughter. Let the ill-famed arena be content now with wild
beasts only, and no more make a sport of murder with blood-stained
weapons. (Prudentius, Against Symmachus 2.1126–9)
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The range of exotic animals declined as Rome’s fortunes failed
and her empire started to crumble. What was once a sign of
the extent of her control now became a warning of its limits.
Nevertheless, animal hunts continued with beasts that could be
obtained nearer to home. There are records of venationes in AD
519 and 523 by the consuls and it is suggested that this was done
with the approval of Theodoric. He subsequently wrote to the
consul Anicius Maximus deploring the show, whilst conceding
that they remained popular with the common people.
Indeed, the one area of gladiatorial combat that seems to have
continued into the medieval period, right through to the modern
day, is bull fighting, precisely because Christian thinkers were by
and large untroubled with the welfare of animals. Roman arenas
such as Arles and Nîmes in France are still used for bull fights
nowadays (although in Spain open plazas were preferred until
comparatively recently). Bull fighting has remained popular from
the medieval period onwards in certain selected provincial areas,
but now there are indications that it is declining in popularity.
A recent poll claimed that only 9.5% of Spaniards paid to visit a
bullfight in 2015, placing it tenth behind attending the cinema,
monuments, museums, public libraries, football matches,
modern music concerts, exhibitions, the theatre and art galleries.
The day may soon come when this last vestige of the munera has
vanished and there are doubtless many who will wonder why it
has taken so long. Which brings us right back to the ambivalence
of both the Romans and the modern public towards gladiatorial
games, that fine balance between horror and fascination that
ensures it is now still a topic of conversation.
Perhaps this is also the appropriate point to reflect upon
not why gladiators died out, but how they managed to last so
long. Societies and their institutions inevitably evolve and the
Romans, for all their innate conservatism, were no different.
Just as the Roman army at any stage was radically different from
what it had been a century before or would be in one hundred
CHApTeR 7: THe enD Of THe GLADIATORS | 153
years’ time, so the institution of gladiatorial combat changed.
What is intriguing is how it ceased to evolve under the High and
Late Empire, but rather appeared to freeze in the form it had
adopted under the early emperors. Why was this? We cannot
know for sure, but it seems unlikely that it was down to just
one factor and was most likely a result of a combination of
circumstances, some of which we may be able to identify, whilst
others remain obscure. The formalisation of locations for the
games may well have played a significant part, particularly once
the Colosseum had been constructed and inaugurated. Once
ad hoc venues were no longer needed, the structure itself could
become part of the institution. Similarly, the types of gladiator
underwent their most active phase of change towards the end of
the Republic and the beginning of the Empire. Old types (like
the Samnite and Gaul) were dropped and new ones (such as the
retiarius) adopted. After that, however, there was developmental
stagnation that lasted into the Late Roman period, so perhaps it
is not surprising that ultimately there was no need for legislation
to finish off gladiatorial combat as it had already doomed itself
to irrelevance. In which case, the objections of the Christian
thinkers may have been symptomatic, rather than a cause, of
its end.
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Note oN traNslatioNs
With the exception of the quotation from Vegetius and
most of the inscriptions, which are my own translations, all
of the texts cited here are derived from public domain works
freely available on the internet. These are usually old Loeb
texts, many of which have been transcribed through the efforts
of Bill Thayer, who deserves acknowledgement for his stalwart
contribution to the dissemination of valuable source material. In
one or two places I have tweaked the English to render the text
less dated. Readers wishing to find links for all of the sources
cited here, both textual and visual, should visit http://tinyurl.
com/GladiatorsFTTD for more information.
Note oN traNslatioNs | 157
iNdex
andabata (gladiator fighting blind)
crupellarius (gladiator covered in
11, 29, 84
steel) 45, 58, 86–7
arbelas (‘hide-scraper’) 48, 79, 84,
96, 144, 149
dimachaerus (‘two swords’) 69, 87
Augustus, emperor 41–4, 56, 74, 77, Diocletian, emperor 64–5
101, 142
eques, equites (‘horseman/men’) 32,
bestiarius (‘beast-fighter’) 10, 31, 73,
34, 67, 73, 87–8, 90, 125, 126,
74, 75, 84–6, 99, 124
135, 136
essedarius (‘charioteer’) 76, 79, 88,
Caerleon amphitheatre, Wales 102–4
136, 144, 149
Caesar, Julius 11, 35, 36, 38–40, 42,
50, 85, 88, 120
Forum Romanum, Rome 19–20,
Caligula (Gaius), emperor 47–8,
26, 101