Those About to Die

by Daniel Pratt Mannix

  Gradually the games began to degenerate into spectacles of pointless massacre. People develop an immunity to scenes of cruelty and bloodshed and demand more and more in­genious methods to titivate their jaded interest. A favourite trick was to pit an armed man against an unarmed man. Naturally, the armed man always won. Then he was disarmed and another armed man sent out to kill him. This routine would go on all day.

  Seneca, the famous philosopher, said of these exhibitions: "All previous games have been merciful, these are pure murder. The men have no defence, their bodies are open to every blow and every attack is bound to be successful. Most spectators prefer this to the regular duels of skill. They would! Protection and training only postpone death, which is what the crowd have come to see."

  Exhibitions like this began to take the place of the regular gladiatorial combats. Actually, a fight between two trained and evenly matched swordsmen is about as interesting as a chess tournament. It can go on for an hour or more and there's comparatively little action until the final thrust, each man conserving his strength and feeling out his opponent with light jabs and thrusts. The early Romans were all swordsmen themselves and could appreciate the fine points of combat, but the mob wanted something faster and bloodier, much as modern sports fans want to see plenty of action in a wrestling bout whereas honest wrestling is a slow business and a man may take twenty minutes to break a difficult hold.

  Also, the shows had constantly to be "bigger and better than ever." Every emperor had to outdo his predecessors. Barnum and Bailey's went through a similar period. I remem­ber a time when there were seven rings all going at once and no one had the slightest idea what was happening. By the end of the third century, there were a dozen amphitheatres in Rome, most of them in almost continuous operation. Some of the best known were the Circus Maxentius on the Via Appia, the Circus Flaminus near the Circus Maximus, the Circus of Caligula-and-Nero where St. Peter's now stands, the Circus of Hadrian, the Circus Castrense (for the Praetorian Guard) and the Circus of Sallust. There was also, of course, the Flavian Amphitheatre or Colosseum. Emperors stamped their coins with the heads of famous gladiators rather than their own images, and politicians had the number of games they gave engraved on their tombs.

  What did these things cost? They finally got so expensive that the government and the aspiring politician had to share expenses to pay for a big spectacle. We only know what the government contributed toward these big games as we have only the governmental records. But it is almost impossible to translate the sums into modern currency. Today, labour costs are the principal factor in any enterprise, while in Rome all labour was done by slaves. Then, too, trying to compute the sums in modern purchasing power is very difficult. For ex­ample, King Herod of Judea gave a series of games that cost him five-hundred gold talents. Thomas H. Dyer in Pompeii (written in 1871) computes this sum as being equal roughly to Ј200,000. But Dyer wasn't thinking of modern purchasing power. Even computing Herod's five-hundred talents as being worth Ј400,000, the actual purchasing power of the money at the time was far more. This doesn't take into consideration slave labour, gifts of gladiators and animals from subject kings, and contributions from private citizens who needed to stay in with the administration.

  Simply to name some figures as a rough estimate, Titus' one hundred days of games which opened the Colosseum cost nearly three million pounds, and the six days of Domitian's games described here cost about Ј12,000 a day. In 521 a.d., Justinian spent over Ј300,000 on the games to celebrate his rise to power. Yet in 51 a.d. the total cost of all games for a year had been only Ј15,000. We know that the cost became a crushing one for any politician to carry. A magistrate named Milo exclaimed: "It's cost me three inheritances to stop the mouth of the people." But the shows continued. Although originally only the emperor or some great noble was per­mitted the honour of presenting the shows, by the second cen­tury any rich man could present them to advance himself socially—just as fifty years ago many a rich man in Great Britain discovered that public philanthropy was helpful in obtaining a title. Some games were put on by rich cobblers and wealthy tailors. Still, they continued to grow in magnifi­cence. After the triumph of the Emperor Aurelian over Zeno-bia, the warrior queen of Palmyra, in 272 a.d., Aurelian entered the arena in a chariot drawn by four stags, with Zenobia chained to the wheels by golden chains. He had a guard of twenty trained elephants, and two hundred other tamed animals walked in the procession. There was a "great host" of captives, each group led by a man with a placard around his neck giving the name of the tribe. The loot was carried in ox-carts heaped high with gold and jewels or on litters borne by slaves. In the games that followed, eight hundred pairs of gladiators fought as well as ten "Amazons," women fighters from some Middle Eastern tribe.

  In 281 a.d., the Emperor Probus had "large trees torn up by the roots and fixed to beams in the arena. Sand was then spread over the beams so the whole circus resembled a forest. Into the arena were sent a thousand ostriches, a thousand stags, a thousand boars, one hundred lions, a hundred lion­esses, a hundred leopards, three hundred bears and numerous other animals. These were all killed in a great hunt" (Vopiscus). Later, antelope were released and members of the crowd could amuse themselves trying to catch the animals. Sometimes naked girls were turned loose and any member of the crowd could keep anything he caught. Other emperors used silk imported from China for the awning instead of wool, had the nets employed to keep the animals off the podium woven of gold cords, plated the marble colonnades with gold and put mosaics of precious stones on the tier walls.

  Sadism, instead of being incidental to the games, became the order of the day. Claudius used to order a wounded gladi­ator's helmet removed so he could watch the expression on the man's face while his throat was being cut. Girls were raped by men wearing the skins of wild beasts. Men were tied to rotting corpses and left to die. Children were suspended by their legs from the top of high poles for hyenas to pull down. So many victims were tied to stakes and then cut open that doctors used to attend the games in order to study anatomy.

  Wholesale crucifixions in the arena became a major attrac­tion, and the crowd would lay bets on who would be the first to die. As with every betting sport, a lot of time and trouble was devoted to fixing the business. By bribing an attendant, you could arrange to have a certain victim die almost imme­diately, last an hour, or live all day. If the spikes were driven in so as to cut an artery, the man would die in a few minutes. If driven so as to break the bones only, the man would live several hours. Occasionally, though, a victim would cross you up. He might deliberately pull at the spikes to make himself bleed to death or even beat his brains out against the upright. You could never be sure.

  As far as being exhibitions of skill or courage, the games became a farce. Of course, there had always been scandals. Back in 60 a.d., a young charioteer had gone flying out of the chariot when his team made their usual jackrabbit start from the stalls. He was still given first prize. Still, the fact that he was the Emperor Nero might have had something to do with it. There was also the time when the Emperor Caligula had decided to auction off his victorious gladiators to a group of nobles. One man fell asleep and Caligula insisted on taking his nods for bids. When the man woke up, he found that he owned thirteen gladiators costing him nine million sesterces. However, generally people frowned on that sort of thing. Yet in 265 a.d., the Emperor Gallienus presented a wreath to a bullfighter who had missed the bull ten times. When the mob protested, the emperor explained via heralds, "It's not easy to miss as big an animal as a bull ten times running." Augus­tus had had to pass laws forbidding knights and senators from becoming gladiators, so eager were these men to show their valour in the arena. By the third century, no such laws were necessary. No one, patrician or plebeian, had any desire to climb into that arena.

  For fifteen hundred years historians and, lately, psycholo­gists have wondered why these games, which not only cor­rupted but bankrupted the greatest empire of all time, were such an obs
ession with the Roman mob. Orgies of death and suffering are forbidden today, but we know they exert a strong fascination for most of us. Crowds gather around an auto­mobile accident, go to bullfights, and block traffic if there's someone on a high ledge threatening to commit suicide. Even the early Christians, who were themselves often sufferers in the arena, felt this intoxication with torture. St. Augustine tells of a young boy, Alypius, who was studying to be a monk. Some friends dragged him off to the arena against his will. Alypius sat with eyes closed and his fingers in his ears until an especially loud shout made him look. Two minutes later, he was out on his feet yelling, "Give him the sword! Cut his guts out!" He became an habituй of the games and gave up all thoughts of joining the church. St. Hilarion was such a devotee of the games that he could not stay away from them. He finally had to flee to the African desert where there were no circuses. Even so, in his dreams charioteers used to drive him like a horse and gladiators fight duels at the foot of his bed.

  There is a definite connection between cruelty and sex, especially among weak, ineffectual people. Ovid remarked humorously, "Girls, if you can get a man to play with you while watching the games, he's yours." As the mob gradually lost all interest in finding work, serving in the legions or taking any civic responsibility, the games became increasingly more brutal and lewd. Finally they were simply excuses for sadistic debauches.

  The more intelligent Romans were perfectly conscious of this deadly trend but they were helpless to prevent it. Augus­tus tried to limit the games to two a year. He found it impos­sible. Marcus Aurelius, who defined the games as an "expen­sive bore," passed a law that the gladiators had to fight with blunted weapons. The popular opposition was such that he not only had to rescind the order but even ended by increasing the number of games from 87 to 230 a year. His annual bill for gladiators alone was about a million pounds. Vespasian, who was famous for being a tightwad and swore that he was going to put an end to this game nonsense, finished by building the Colosseum.

  Curiously, the Roman philosophers were almost unanimous in their endorsement of the games. Cicero said, "It does the people good to see that even slaves can fight bravely. If a mere slave can show such courage, what then can a Roman do? Besides, the games harden a warrior people to sights of carnage and prepares them for battle." Tacitus couldn't understand why Tiberius didn't like the fights and quotes the emperor's habit of turning away from scenes of slaughter as a sign of weakness in his character. Pliny speaks of the games appro­vingly and so do many other serious thinkers.

  Almost the only Roman philosopher who came out openly against the games was Seneca, who lived at the time of Nero. He records a conversation he had with a spectator at a show.

  "But," my neighbour says to me, "that man whom you pity was a highway robber."

  "Very well, then hang him, but why nail him to a cross and set wild beasts on him?"

  "But he killed a man."

  "Let him be condemned to death in his turn. He deserves it. But you, what have you done that you should be condemned to watch such a spectacle?"

  Seneca was cordially disliked and finally committed suicide by order of Nero.

  Originally only a few Criminals of the worst type were killed in the arena, but when it became obvious that the mob regarded these killings as the main attraction, holocausts of victims were arranged. Finding enough prisoners for these spectacles became increasingly difficult. Probably the persecution of the Christians eventually became only another way of getting fresh fodder for the arena.

  The first of the Christian persecutions were under Nero. According to Roman historians, Nero dreamed of turning Rome from a rabbit warren of twisting streets and wooden slums into a city of marble. He also wanted to clear away a large section in the centre of the city where he could build a palace worthy of him—"The Golden House." Later, the Colo­sseum was built on the site of the Golden House as an apology to the people. Nero's agents fired the city, but popular resent­ment forced the emperor to find a scapegoat. He settled on the despised and suspected sect called Christians.

  Tacitus tells us: "Nero had all admitted Christians seized. These informed on others who were also arrested, not so much for setting fire to the city as for their hatred of mankind.

  Everything was done to make their deaths humiliating. They were dressed in animal skins and torn to pieces by dogs, crucified, or covered with pitch and used as torches to light the arena after dark. Although as Christians they deserved punishment, still people felt that they were being punished to satisfy the emperor's love of cruelty and not for the good of the nation."

  Suetonius supplies some other details. Nero used to dress himself up as a lion or a leopard and attack the private parts of men and women tied to stakes in the arena. Afterwards, one of his freemen named Doryphorus would enter the arena dressed as a venador and pretend to kill the emperor. It was probably exhibitions like this that caused St. John to speak of the arena as the "mother of fornication . . . the church of sacred sanguinary." Nero also spent large sums trying to locate a legendary Egyptian ogre who was supposed to kill and eat people. Nero wanted to exhibit him in the arena. The ogre never turned up.

  Some of the most terrible persecutions of the Christians took place under Marcus Aurelius in 166 a.d. Marcus Aurelius was one of the most enlightened emperors Rome ever had, but he didn't like Christians. As pacifists, Christians refused to serve in the legions at a critical period when the barbarian hordes were breaching the defences on all sides, they de­nounced wealth which made the Romans regard them as dangerous radicals, and they refused to sacrifice to the em­peror's genius—roughly equivalent today to refusing to salute the flag or repeat the oath of allegiance. Scratched on a wall in Rome there is a crude drawing showing a donkey nailed to a cross with the legend below: "All Christians are donkeys." Marcus Aurelius decided to stamp out this vicious cult and went about it systematically.

  Records by the early church fathers tell us that Christians in the arena had red-hot plates of iron strapped to their bodies, their flesh was torn from their bones with hot pincers, they were chained in iron seats over fires, and roasted on spits. Eusebius tells of the death of Blandina, one of these martyrs. She was first forced to watch the death of her friends in the arena. When that didn't break her resolve, she was made to run the gauntlet between two lines of men armed with whips and iron bars. She was then hung from a pole as bait for starved hyenas and wolves. Half-dead, she was cut down and forced to watch her little brother flogged, burned over a fire and finally flung to wild beasts—constantly told that if she would recant, the child's life would be spared. As Blandina still stood firm, she was finally put in a net and swung from the scaffolding of the arena for wild bulls to gore.

  We have an eye witness account of these martyrdoms left us by two brothers, Felix and Verus Macarius. The events described took place on October ii, 290 a.d. under the Emperor Maximus.

  "The stadium was crowded; Maximus also attended. A number of wild beasts being let loose, many criminals were devoured. We Christians in the stands kept ourselves con­cealed and were awaiting with great fear to see the martyrs brought forth. The martyrs were Tharacus, Probus, and Andronicus. They were carried by other condemned people, having been tortured so they could not walk. They looked so pitiful that we wept, hiding our faces so the crowd would not notice. They were tossed like refuse on the sand. Many people murmured and Maximus shouted to the soldiers, 'Note those people. They'll be down with those Christians if they're so fond of them.'

  "The wild beasts were let loose, especially a very frightful bear; then a lioness. Both roared fearfully at each other but did not attack the martyrs, much less devour them. The Master of the Games became enraged and commanded the spearmen to kill them. The bear was pierced through, but the lioness made her escape through a door left open by some of the bestiarii who ran away in terror. Then Maximus com­manded the Master of the Games to let the gladiators kill the Christians and afterwards fight to the death among them­selves. When th
is tragedy was over, Maximus before he left the podium ordered ten soldiers to mutilate both the martyrs and the gladiators so the Christians couldn't tell them apart"

  It was usual for Christians to bribe the arena slaves for the bodies of the martyrs so that they could be given decent burial.

  How many Christians were martyred we have no idea. Taci­tus only says that Nero "killed a great multitude of Christians." However, later we have a few statistics. During the persecu­tions under Maximus, nineteen hundred Christians were martyred in Sicily alone. Diocletian killed seventeen thousand in one month. Eusebius says that during one of the persecu­tions, ten thousand men (not counting women and children) were killed in Egypt. The executioners blunted their swords and had to work in relays. Of course, compared to Hitler, who killed 2,500,000 people in concentration camps within a few years, this is pretty small potatoes, but the Romans did their best.

  Very few of the Christians recanted, although an altar with a fire burning on it was generally kept in the arena for their convenience. All a prisoner had to do was scatter a pinch of incense on the flame and he was given a Certificate of Sacri­fice and turned free. It was also carefully explained to him that he was not worshipping the emperor; merely acknowledg­ing the divine character of the emperor as head of the Roman state. Still, almost no Christians availed themselves of the chance to escape. Naturally, there were a few exceptions. Polycarp tells of one man in a provincial amphitheatre who held out until actually in the arena. Then he collapsed and begged to be allowed to sacrifice. The editor refused and demanded that the animals be released. The only animal was a lion who had been starved to make him savage. But the bestiarius had overdone it, and when the lion was released, the poor brute just lay down and died. The martyr had to be burned at the stake.