The Classical World

by Robin Lane Fox

  To us, the gladiators are more mysterious than the animal sports. However, most of the gladiators began as war-captives or criminals and had the status of slaves. A career in the arena gave these 'dregs' a sudden chance to win glory. Like the hunts, gladiatorial shows had never been part of the fixed calendar of games at Rome. They, too, had begun as private displays at funerals, but they then became the gift, or 'promise', of prominent men who were celebrating triumphs or bidding for yet more honours (like the young Julius Caesar, as aedile in 65). Here, the key is that many onlookers identified with the military values of the armed duels. Custom-built amphitheatres first appear in colonies of Roman veteran soldiers in Italy and the sport was then spread widely by Roman army-camps abroad. It was even said to be good for spectators to see such social inferiors being 'sol­dierly' and enduring wounds. Deaths did indeed occur, but they were not the essence of the show. Sometimes fighters were released with an honourable 'draw'; at other times the wounded one surrendered and the fight was stopped. We hear of prize-fighters who survived thirty fights, including a few combats which they lost. The Emperor Claudius, however, was known to be fond of a bloody finish.

  Potentially, there was good money and a good career to be made here, and for the slaves or criminals there could be freedom too. In the crowds, fans went wild for particular 'stars': at Pompeii, graffiti applaud them as 'darling of the girls' or 'netter of chicks by night'.14 For women too, 'heavy metal' and muscle could be horribly sexy: Augustus ruled that at gladiatorial shows women must sit only in the highest seats at the back. A glamour grew up around these fights, which drew free competitors into the arena too. Children played games of 'being gladiators' and there were female gladiators from time to time: at Ostia, a benefactor boasts in his inscription of being the 'first of all since Rome was founded to make women fight'.15 Minorities, too, found a new public esteem in the arena. In 57, for a visiting Oriental prince, Nero staged the 'all-blacks', a show of north African contestants only, including women and children. It was left to Domitian to show women fighting dwarves.16

  For Augustus and his successors, this intensified culture of the spectacle was a valuable public card. Unlike the big names of the Republic, the emperors now monopolized triumphs: they had far the greatest resources; they could show supreme 'liberality' and mag­nificence in shows for the plebs which nobody else could rival. Soon, the emperors had a special school for gladiators (probably beginning with Augustus). They owned gladiatorial troupes and increasingly came to predominate in staging the combats; they also dominated the chariot racing. But as 'First Citizens', they were expected to attend the shows in person. They were approved if, like Augustus or Hadrian, they took a keen interest in the events, whereas Julius Caesar, by contrast, had unwisely read his letters during the contests. Emperors were well advised to be keen, because audiences of several thousand in the theatre or 150,000 or more in the Circus Maximus would use the occasion to shout specific complaints or praises at their ruler and his family. Contemporaries did see these shows as an alternative to politics, but they were also something else. They were a dialogue between a ruler and his people whose demands were hardly very radical. The crowds usually shouted specific items of a limited, some­times comic, scope. The occasion was one for frank speech and 'licence' in a non-political setting rather than a substitute for absent democracy. But it was also a potent reminder to foreign visitors and senatorial spectators that 'Caesar' enjoyed a relationship with the plebs which they could never possibly replicate.

  The problem, for Augustus, was not so much the crowd as some of the young members of his esteemed upper orders. From the 40s bc onwards members of high society at Rome had shown a 'disgraceful' wish to appear on stage in person or even to fight in the arena. It did not help the promotion of ancestral values when Augustus' own nephew, Marcellus, allowed a Roman knight and some respectable Roman matrons to appear in the public show which he gave as a

  junior magistrate. Senators, knights and their families were banned from appearing as actors or gladiators, but the ban eventually proved futile. In ad il Augustus had to lift the ban on knights appearing as gladiators: he himself, in his old age, then sat and watched them doing it. It was still forbidden for free-born women to participate, but only if they were under twenty. Chariot racing, however, seems to have remained unregulated.

  Austere Tiberius soon had the ban reinstated, but it did not last. It was so much more thrilling for young bloods to compete with a net, a sword or a trident in the arena than to uphold ancient morality in a heavy white toga. In due course, there were emperors who agreed. Caligula liked playing the gladiator, while Nero appeared on stage and drove a chariot at the races. In the 180s the ultimate shock was Commodus. Once, after fighting ostriches in the arena, he cut off their necks and advanced on the senators in their special seats, brandishing a sword in one hand and the bloodied head of a bird in the other. He gesticulated at the Senate as if their necks might be the next ones for his attention. And yet when he died there were senators who bought up his gladiatorial equipment.17

  43

  The Roman Army

  Total absentees 456

  including 5 centurions

  Remainder, present 296

  including 1 centurion

  From those:

  Sick 15

  Wounded 6

  Suffering from inflammation of the eyes 10

  Total of these 31

  Remainder, fit for active service 265

  including 1 centurion.

  Strength report of the First Cohort of Tungrians on 18 May (probably in the early 90s ad) at Vindolanda in north Britain (Tabulae Vindolandenses 1.154)

  For nearly sixty years Augustus' most important relationship was not with theatre crowds: it was with the army. The soldiers had lived through profound changes during the fall of the Republic which were crucial to the real 'Roman revolution'. Since the days of Sulla, there were so many more of them under arms. After Julius Caesar's murder there had been more than forty legions (each legion numbered about 5,000); the settlement of veterans remained a massive operation, inside and outside Italy. Under Augustus, the legions reduced at first to twenty-six, but in ad 23, when we are given clear figures, there were still reckoned to be 150,000 citizen-soldiers in the legions (now numbering twenty-five) and another 150,000 auxiliary soldiers in the important supporting units, almost all of whom were non-Romans and would receive citizenship only on discharge. As the Empire's frontiers moved forward, these troops were being stationed ever further afield, but the sum total was still enormous.

  Service, also, had been greatly increased. The age of 'triumvirs' had been characterized by long periods under arms, but after Actium those periods became official. Legionaries now had to serve for sixteen years (increased in ad 5 to twenty years) and in 13 bc a further four years 'under the standards' were added for men who had served their span. During this extra time, they were supposed to be called on only for combat with an enemy. In fact, service could drag on for up to thirty years without full discharge; in the Republic, the maximum length had been six years. Under Augustus, therefore, there was a real stand­ing army. It was quite different from the citizen-armies which had been briefly called up in the Greek city-states, and it was far bigger than the core armies of Hellenistic kings, which were enlarged in wartime by hiring mercenaries and calling up military colonists from land-settlements. There were even localized fleets in naval bases, form­ing a small standing navy.

  Like every emperor, Hadrian recognized the importance of this army, especially as he had to preside over its withdrawal from his predecessor's disastrous ventures in the East. Not a fighting emperor, he became a touring emperor. He gave off a military aura by address­ing the troops in each province, and even sharing their diet of bread and cheese. By then (c. 120) their numbers were still bigger, as the auxiliaries and fleets had increased: up to 500,000 people were under arms, perhaps one in every 120 inhabitants of the Empire. Not until the seventeenth century, in France, woul
d such proportions be matched again in a kingdom.

  Since Augustus, each emperor was the acknowledged Commander (Imperator). Statues, therefore, often show emperors in military dress, and defeat of the barbarians was a major part of their image in art and poetry. They wore a wreath of laurel (signifying Victory) and at festivals, the special robe of a 'triumphing' commander. We can well see why Augustus' poor track record in combat was such a weakness. For as emperor, it was he who dealt with the army in general. It was he who fixed the pay-scales, allowances and lengths of service for each rank.' Until ad 6 he paid their rewards on discharge and gave the 'diplomas' for each retiring auxiliary. It was on his authority only that colonies were settled for veterans: the details of each colony's 'map' and property rights would be deposited, duly signed, in the emperor's own record office.2 If the land for the colony was bought (sometimes it was not), it was Augustus who paid for it, a point which he empha­sizes in his record of his achievements, because nobody had ever paid for so much land before. Most of the legions were in provinces which were the emperor's, not the 'public ones', and in them, his agents saw to the troops' pay.' In them, he alone gave out military decorations, but all veterans everywhere were 'his'. When he disbanded veterans after Actium, he gave them the full rights of Roman citizenship, the right to vote at Rome in whatever tribe they chose, exemption from all civic obligations in their local towns if they so wished, and a valuable immunity from tribute. However, veterans who settled in a colony in Spain would hardly bother about voting in Rome, while their local townsmen could no doubt make them hold local office with offers which they could not refuse. The privileges had to be asserted by their recipients, but they were not curtailed until the late second century (when they dropped to four years) and were not abolished until the third century.

  Looking up to their emperor as Commander, the troops observed a calendar of Roman religious festivals and sacrifices. Probably, its form went back to Augustus' reign, although we only encounter evi­dence for it later, when the number of sacrifices to deified emperors and empresses had expanded. In the centre of a legionary camp, a shrine contained the legion's standards and images of the emperor and the Roman divinities (the soldiers' savings were also deposited here). Roman rituals of purification and of omen-taking were prac­tised: we have the calendar of an auxiliary unit, of non-citizens, which included vows on 3 January for the well-being of the emperor, the eternity of the Roman Empire and sacrifices to the three great gods of the Roman Capitol.4

  Under the Republic, refusal to serve when called had been punished by the death penalty. In the new age that sanction receded. Hencefor­ward, service in the legions was almost always voluntary and forcible conscription was exceptional. At two moments of 'crisis', in ad 5 and 9, Augustus did resort to it; in the 6os, however, the Emperor Nero found that he could not even hold a forcible levy when he wished.5 When levies are attested locally in the Empire, they are either levies of volunteers or levies for the non-citizen auxiliary units. Even so, the recruiting officers who conducted them were the emperor's men. About 6,000 recruits are the army's estimated yearly need, after the usual deaths and retirements, in order to maintain the legions at full strength each year. Surviving figures for the Roman census suggest that the rising citizen-population could have met that need very comfortably. It would therefore take a sudden very heavy demand for troops to make forcible enlistment a necessity. Otherwise, the emperor and his men simply saw to it. Already in ad 23 it was quite exceptional that the Emperor Tiberius discussed army recruitment in the Senate.6 Even the appointments to quite minor commands came to be sub­mitted outside the public eye to the emperor's judgement. Quite by chance, we discover (through a poem in the 80s) that one of the emperor's secretaries had to receive letters about cavalry commanders, military tribunes and other subordinate officers, either so as to approve their appointments or to assist the emperor if he wished to appoint them himself from on high.7

  The soldiers' tactics had become more varied during the Republic's fall, but the basic legionary had not changed: he was still armed with a javelin (pilum) to be thrown at close quarters, backed up by effective use of the sword. He still wore open sandals with heavy nailed soles ('military boots'), a shirt of chain mail (later replaced by a breastplate of jointed iron strips), a solid metal helmet and an oval shield or, by ad 100, one which was rectangular. In full armour, he could not swim, although swimming was one of his skills and a recommended part of his training. In close formation, his line of shields could stand firm against missiles; by opening out, it could let through the scythed chariots which were launched at it without much effect by armies in Britain. There were also stone- and arrow-shooting catapults, powered by torsion (one type, from its 'kick', was called the wild ass). Romans copied these from the Greek world, and stationed up to sixty machines behind each legion so that they could begin battle with a powered barrage, shot over the legionaries' heads.

  The main tactical development was the increasing use of local non-Roman auxiliaries. By the late first century ad light-armed provincial troops would be put in front of the traditional legionary line and would take most of the initial battering. On the wings, squadrons of non-Roman cavalry would shoot arrows or javelins, while riding rapidly at a diagonal or circling on their enemy's flank. The angled cavalry charge towards the centre, the hallmark of Alexander's great victories, was not now in fashion. Opposing cavalry tended to be skirmishers, especially in the Near East where the Parthian horsemen would shoot scores of arrows as they retreated.

  There had always been Roman citizen cavalry too, but they had last been used effectively in 109 bc: back in Augustan Rome, cavalrymen with 'public horses' now included people like the poet Ovid. Rome's cavalry strength, therefore, had to be provincial and auxiliary. In the 50s and 40s bc Julius Caesar had discovered and recruited the exceptional skill of German and Gallic cavalry. In Spain, too, Augus­tus was amazed by the fast Spanish horsemen and their skill with throwing javelins on horseback, which he described in his autobiogra­phy. After observing such troops in Germany, Pliny the Elder wrote a manual on the art, some of which survives: it is noticeable that technical Latin cavalry-terms are often based on Spanish or Gallic words. We can still read the Emperor Hadrian's speech in north Africa, remarking on his mounted troops' fine display of this art. There were still no stirrups to hold the riders steady, but the Romans adopted a saddle, a Celtic speciality: they gave it two 'horns', or pommels, which wedged the cavalryman firmly.

  One particular body of cavalrymen reached the highest honour: German horsemen, huge strapping characters whose 'amazing bodies' were first admired and recruited by Julius Caesar as his personal horseguards. On his death, these guards split between Antony and the new 'Caesar'. After victory, Augustus kept them on as his tall, magnificent bodyguards and stationed them in Rome, tactfully north of the Tiber. In 118, under Hadrian, a poem describes how one such German horseguard swam 'the wide waters of the deep Danube in full armour ... I shot an arrow from my bow which I hit and broke with another while it hung in the air and fell back . . . Let anyone see if after me they can match my deeds.'8 They could not, nowadays, and yet these German guards continued on and off for centuries: Augustus' successors sometimes put them under the command of a proven gladi­ator. They were a crucial support for the 'First Citizen'.

  Even more prominent were the Commander's guards, or Prae­torians. These infantry troops had first developed during the final stages of the Civil War when they had served each of the two main leaders. Highly paid and carefully selected, the Praetorians were amal­gamated by the victor and numbered up to 9,000; Augustus' Prae­torians came overwhelmingly from Italy. From the ad 2.0s they were concentrated in barracks in Rome, a most unrepublican presence, and their command, which had begun with low-key equestrians, went to some of the early Empire's most influential schemers, Sejanus under Tiberius or the odious Tigellinus who did nothing to improve the Emperor Nero's morals. They became a crucial element in every emperor's succession and su
rvival.

  The main legions were always manned with Roman citizens. How­ever, local volunteers could quickly be given the Roman citizenship before being enrolled. Auxiliaries, by contrast, served always as non-citizens, with the prospect of citizenship only when they retired. Their units bore ethnic names, but they soon included people of mixed nationalities, a real melting pot. Wild and untamed people very seldom served in their own homeland. Britons, therefore, were sent off to serve in central Europe, while strapping Germans paraded near Scotland on Hadrian's Wall. Legionary pay was not particularly lavish and under Augustus the costs of weapons, tents and clothing were deducted. Inevitably, there were back-hand payments, too, required by centurion-soldiers to 'assure' a fellow soldier's leave. Not until ad 69 were 'back-handers' abolished (at least officially), and in due course the deductions did dwindle; the sums which were held back for tents and armour became treated as a deposit, to be released to the soldier on discharge.9 The Praetorian guards were much more highly paid, whereas auxiliaries received less but on varying scales which some­times amounted to as much as a legionary's wages (the exact rates are still disputed). Soldiering, as always, was the most widespread salaried career in antiquity.

  The prize was the reward on discharge. Antony and Octavian had begun by trying to find plots of land of about 30 acres for each veteran soldier in Italy: after Actium, a great wave of settlement took veteran soldiers mostly into the provinces. From ad 6 a cash payment was offered instead, financed by the newly established military treasury: nonetheless, the payment was less than two-thirds as big as the ones first offered in the wars of the late 40s bc. It did not help that this treasury was partly financed by the introduction of the hated inheritance tax on Roman citizens. Bits of land continued to be offered, too (Nero even reverted to trying to offer them in Italy), but in ad 14 soldiers were complaining they were being fobbed off with bits of marshland or rough mountain.