by Will Durant
The most stupendous of all the spectacles offered at Roman celebrations was the sham naval battle. The first large naumachia was given by Caesar in a basin excavated for the purpose on the outskirts of the city. Augustus marked the dedication of his temple to Mars the Avenger by presenting 3000 fighters in a replica of the battle of Salamis on an artificial lake 1800 by 1200 feet. Claudius, as already noted, celebrated the completion of the Fucine tunnel with a conflict of triremes and quadriremes involving 19,000 men. They fought with a disappointing courtesy, and soldiers had to be sent among them to ensure a proper shedding of blood.106 At the dedication of the Colosseum Titus had its arena flooded, and reproduced that battle of the Corinthians and Corcyreans which had brought on the Peloponnesian War. The combatants in these engagements were war captives or condemned criminals. They butchered one another until one side or the other was killed off; the victors, if they had cut bravely, might be granted freedom.
The games reached their climax in the contests of animals and gladiators in the amphitheater—after Vespasian, in the Colosseum. The arena was an immense wooden floor strewn with sand; parts of this floor could be lowered and then quickly raised with a change of scene; and at brief notice the whole floor could be covered with water. Large chambers beneath it held the animals, machines, and men scheduled for the program of the day. Just above the arena’s guard wall was a podium or marble terrace on whose ornate seats sat senators, priests, and high officials; above this was the suggestum, a high loge where the emperor and empress sat on thrones of ivory and gold, surrounded by their family and retinue. Behind this aristocratic circle sat the equestrian order, in twenty tiers of seats. A lofty intervening wall, decorated with statuary, separated the upper orders from the lower classes in the stands above. Any free person, male or female, could come, and apparently no admission was charged. The crowd took advantage of the emperor’s presence, here and at the circus, to shout its wishes to him—for the pardon of a prisoner or a fallen fighter, the emancipation of a courageous slave, the appearance of favorite gladiators, or some minor reform. From the topmost wall awnings could be unrolled to the arena railing to shade such parts of the assemblage as might suffer from the sun. Here and there fountains threw up jets of scented water to cool the air. When noon came most of the spectators hurried below to eat lunch; concessionaires were on hand to sell them food and sweets and drinks. On occasion the entire multitude might be fed by the order and bounty of the emperor, or dainties and presents might be scattered among the scrambling crowd. If, as sometimes occurred, contests were presented at night, a circle of lights could be lowered over the arena and the spectators. Bands of musicians performed in the interludes and accompanied the crises of the combats with exciting crescendo strains.
The simplest event in the amphitheater was an exhibition of exotic animals. Gathered from all the known world, elephants, lions, tigers, crocodiles, hippopotami, lynxes, apes, panthers, bears, boars, wolves, giraffes, ostriches, stags, leopards, antelopes, and rare birds were kept in the zoological gardens of emperors and rich men, and were trained to skillful exploits or merry pranks; apes were taught to ride dogs, drive chariots, or act in plays; bulls let boys dance on their backs; sea lions were conditioned to bark in answer to their individual names; elephants danced to cymbals struck by other elephants, or they walked a rope, or sat down to table, or wrote Greek or Latin letters. Animals might be merely paraded in bright or humorous costumes; usually, however, they were made to fight one another, or with men, or they were hunted to death with arrows and javelins. In one day, under Nero, 400 tigers fought with bulls and elephants; on another day, under Caligula, 400 bears were slain; at the dedication of the Colosseum 5000 animals died.107 If the animals wished to compromise they were stung to combat by lashes, darts, and hot irons. Claudius made a division of the Praetorian Guard fight panthers; Nero made them fight 400 bears and 300 lions.108
Combats of a bull with a man, long popular in Crete and Thessaly, were introduced into Rome by Caesar and were a frequent spectacle in the amphitheater.109 Condemned criminals, sometimes dressed in skins to resemble animals, were thrown to beasts made ravenous for the occasion; death in such cases came with all possible agony, and wounds were so deep that physicians used such men to study internal anatomy. All the world knows the story of Androcles, the runaway slave; captured, he was flung into the arena with a lion; but this lion, we are told, remembered that Androcles had once drawn a thorn from its paw, and refused to injure him. Androcles was pardoned, and made a living by exhibiting his civilized lion in taverns.110 The condemned man was sometimes required to play in no make-believe way some famous tragic role: he might represent Medea’s rival, and be garbed in a handsome robe that would suddenly burst into flame and consume him; he might be burned to death on a pyre as Heracles; he might (if we may believe Tertullian) be publicly castrated as Atys; he might play Mucius Scaevola and hold his hand over burning coals until it was shriveled up; he might be Icarus and fall from the sky into no merciful ocean but a crowd of wild beasts; he might be Pasiphaë, and bear the embraces of a bull. One victim was dressed as Orpheus; he was sent with his lyre into an arena set as a pleasant grove of trees and brooks; suddenly hungry animals emerged from recesses and tore him to pieces.111 Laureolus, a robber, was crucified in the arena for the amusement of the populace; but as he took too long in dying, a bear was brought in and was persuaded to eat him, piece by piece, as he hung upon the cross. Martial describes the spectacle with fascination and approval.112
The supreme events were the combats of armed men, in duels or en masse. The contestants were war captives, condemned criminals, or disobedient slaves. The right of victors to slaughter their prisoners was generally accepted throughout antiquity, and the Romans thought themselves generous in giving captives a chance for their lives in the arena. Men convicted of capital crimes were brought to Rome from all parts of the Empire, were sent to gladiatorial schools, and soon appeared in the games. If they fought with exceptional bravery they might win immediate freedom; if they merely survived they had to fight again and again as holidays recurred; if they lasted three years they were released into slavery; if then they satisfied their masters for two years they were freed. Crimes entailing condemnation to a gladiatorial career were limited to murder, robbery, arson, sacrilege, and mutiny, but sedulous governors responsive to imperial needs might override these restrictions if the arena ran short of men.113 Even knights and senators might be sentenced to fight as gladiators, and sometimes a passion for applause led members of the equestrian order to offer themselves as volunteers. Not a few men, under the lure of adventure and danger, enlisted in the gladiatorial schools.
Such schools had existed in Rome as early as 105 B.C.. Under the Empire there were four of them there, several more in Italy, and one in Alexandria. Rich men, in Caesar’s day, had their own schools for preparing slaves to be gladiators. They used the graduates as bodyguards in peace and as aides in war, hired them out to fight at private banquets, and lent them to the games. On entering a professional gladiatorial school many a novice took an oath “to suffer himself to be whipped with rods, burned with fire, and killed with steel.”114 Training and discipline were rigorous; diet was supervised by physicians, who prescribed barley to develop muscle; violation of rules was punished by scourging, branding, and confinement in chains. Not all of these candidates for death were discontented with their lot. Some were elated with victories and thought of their prowess rather than their peril; some complained that they were not allowed to fight often enough;115 such men hated Tiberius for giving so few games. They had the stimulus and consolation of fame; their names were daubed by admirers upon public walls; women fell in love with them, poets sang of them, painters portrayed them, sculptors carved for posterity their iron biceps and terrifying frowns. Many, however, were despondent at their imprisonment, their brutalizing routine, and their brief expectation of life. Several committed suicide; one by stuffing his throat with a sponge used to clean privies, another by
inserting his head between the spokes of a moving wheel, several by hara-kiri in the arena.116
On the eve of their combat they were given a rich banquet. The rougher ones ate and drank heartily; others took sad leave of their wives and children; those who were Christians joined in a last agapé, or “supper of love.” The next morning they entered the arena in festal dress and paraded from one end of it to the other. They were usually armed with swords, or spears, or knives, and armored with bronze helmets, shields, shoulderplates, breastplates, and greaves. They were classified according to their weapons: retiarii, who entangled their opponents with nets and dispatched them with daggers; secutores, skilled in pursuit with shield and sword; laqueatores, slingshooters; dimachae, with a short sword in each hand; essedarii, who fought in chariots; bestiarii, who contended with beasts. Besides these enterprises the gladiators engaged in duels, in pairs or in groups. If a dueler in a single combat was seriously wounded, the provider of the games asked the spectators for their will; they held thumbs up—or waved handkerchiefs—as signs of mercy, or turned thumbs down (pollice verso) to signify that the victor was to kill the defeated forthwith.117 Any combatant who betrayed a reluctance to die aroused the resentment of the people and was prodded to bravery by hot irons.118 Richer slaughter was furnished by mass battles in which thousands of men fought with desperate ferocity. In the eight spectacles given by Augustus 10,000 men took part in such wholesale conflicts. Attendants in the garb of Charon probed the fallen with sharp rods to see if they were feigning death, and killed such actors with mallet blows on the head. Other attendants, dressed like Mercury, dragged the bodies away with hooks, while Moorish slaves gathered up the bloodied ground in shovels and spread fresh sand for the next death.
Most Romans defended the gladiatorial games on the ground that the victims had been condemned to death for serious crimes, that the sufferings they endured acted as a deterrent to others, that the courage with which the doomed men were trained to face wounds and death inspired the people to Spartan virtues, and that the frequent sight of blood and battle accustomed Romans to the demands and sacrifices of war. Juvenal, who denounced everything else, left the games unscathed; the younger Pliny, a highly civilized man, praised Trajan for providing spectacles that impel men “to noble wounds and the scorn of death”;119 and Tacitus reflected that the blood spilled in the arena was in any case vilis sanguis—the “cheap gore” of common men.120 Cicero was revolted by the slaughter; “what entertainment,” he asks, “can possibly arise, to a refined and humanized spirit, from seeing a noble beast struck to the heart by its merciless hunter, or one of our own weak species cruelly mangled by an animal of far greater strength?” But, he added, “when guilty men are compelled to fight, no better discipline against suffering and death can be presented to the eye.”121 Seneca, dropping in at the games during the noon recess, when most of the assemblage had left for luncheon, was shocked to see hundreds of criminals driven into the arena to amuse the remaining audience with their blood.
I come home more greedy, more cruel and inhuman, because I have been among human beings. By chance I attended a midday exhibition, expecting some fun, wit, and relaxation . . . whereby men’s eyes may have respite from the slaughter of their fellow men. But it was quite the contrary. . . . These noon fighters are sent out with no armor of any kind; they are exposed to blows at all points, and no one ever strikes in vain. . . . In the morning they throw men to the lions; at noon they throw them to the spectators. The crowd demands that the victor who has slain his opponent shall face the man who will slay him in turn; and the last conqueror is reserved for another butchering. . . . This sort of thing goes on while the stands are nearly empty. . . . Man, a sacred thing to man, is killed for sport and merriment.122
VII. THE NEW FAITHS
Religion accepted the games as proper forms of religious celebration and inaugurated them with solemn processions. The Vestal Virgins and the priests occupied seats of honor in the theaters, at the circus, and before the arena. The emperor who presided was the high priest of the state religion.
Augustus and his successors had done everything they could to revitalize the old faith, except to live moral lives; even the declared atheists among them, like Caligula and Nero, had carried out all the ritual traditionally due the official gods. The Luperci priests still danced through the streets on their festival day; the Arval Brethren still mumbled prayers to Mars in old Latin that no one could understand. Divination and augury were assiduously practiced and widely trusted; all but a few philosophers believed in astrology, and the emperors who banished astrologers consulted them. Magic and sorcery, witchcraft and superstition, charms and incantations, “portents” and the interpretation of dreams were deeply woven into the tissue of Roman life. Augustus studied his dreams with the diligence of a modern psychologist; Seneca saw women sitting on the steps of the Capitol waiting the pleasure of Jupiter because their dreams had told them they were desired of the god.123 Every consul celebrated his inauguration by sacrificing steers; Juvenal, who could laugh at everything else, piously slit the throats of two lambs and a young ox in gratitude for the safe voyage of a friend. Temples were rich with gold and silver offerings; candles burned before the altars; the lips, hands, and feet of divine images were worn by the kisses of the devout. The old religion seemed still vigorous; it created new gods like Annona (gatherer of the world’s corn for Rome), put new life into the worship of Fortuna and Roma, and gave powerful support to law, order, and tyranny. If Augustus had returned a year after his death he might well have claimed that his religious revival had proved a happy success.
Despite these appearances the ancient faith was diseased at the bottom and at the top. The deification of the emperors revealed not how much the upper classes thought of their rulers, but how little they thought of their gods. Among educated men philosophy was whittling away belief even while patronizing it. Lucretius had not been without effect; men did not mention him, but merely because it was easier to practice epicureanism than to study Epicurus or his passionate expositor. The rich youths who went to Athens, Alexandria, and Rhodes for higher education found no sustenance there for the Roman creed. Greek poets made fun of the Roman pantheon, and Roman poets leaped to imitate them. The poems of Ovid assumed that the gods were fables; the epigrams of Martial assumed that they were jokes; and no one seems to have complained. Many of the mimes ridiculed the gods; one whipped Diana off the stage, another showed Jove making his will in expectation of death.124 Juvenal, like Plato five centuries before him and ourselves eighteen centuries after him, noted that the fear of a watchful deity had lost its power to discourage perjury.125 Even on the tombstones of the poor we note increasing skepticism, and some candid sensuality. Non fui, fui, non sum, non curo, reads one—“I was not, I was, I am not, I care not”; and another, Non fueram, non sum, nescio—“I had not been, I am not, I know not”; and another, “What I have eaten and drunk is my own; I have had my life.”126 “I believe in nothing beyond the grave,” says one tombstone; “There is no Hades, no Charon, no Cerberus,” asserts another. “Now,” a harassed soul wrote, “I need never fear hunger, need never pay rent, and am at least free from gout”; and a somber Lucretian writes of the buried flesh: “The elements out of which he was formed take possession of their own again. Life is only lent to man; he cannot keep it forever. By his death he pays his debt to Nature.”127
But doubt, however honest, cannot long take the place of belief. Amid all its pleasures this society had not found happiness. Its refinements wearied it, its debaucheries exhausted it; rich and poor were still subject to pain and grief and death. Philosophy—least of all so coldly superior a doctrine as Stoicism—could never give the common man a faith to grace his poverty, encourage his decency, solace his sorrows, and inspire his hopes. The old religion had fulfilled the first of these functions; it had failed in the rest. Men wanted revelation, and it gave them ritual; they wanted immortality, and it gave them games. Men who had come, enslaved or free, from oth
er states felt excluded from this nationalistic worship; therefore they brought their own gods with them, built their own temples, practiced their own rites; in the very heart of the West they planted the religions of the East. Between the creeds of the conquerors and the faith of the defeated a war took form in which the weapons of the legions were useless; the needs of the heart would determine the victory.