19 S. K. Lothrop, The Indians of the Tierra de Fuego, New York: Holt, 1928, pp. 619–20.
20 A. R. Holmberg, Nomads of the Longbow: The Siriono of Eastern Bolivia, Garden City, NJ: Natural History Press, 1969, p. 156.
21 M. B. Poliakoff, Combat Sports in the Ancient World, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1987, p. 57.
22 Poliakoff, ibid., pp. 68–79, examines the question of gloves in some detail.
23 See, on the role of sport, M. Golden, Sport and Society in Ancient Greece, Cambridge University Press, 1998, pp. 1–45.
24 Clouds, 984–5, 1052–4; Frogs, 1069–73, in The Complete Plays of Aristophanes, New York: Bantam, 1984.
25 T. Wintringham and J. N. Blashford-Snell, Weapons and Tactics, Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1973 [1943], p. 43.
26 V. D. Hanson, The Western Way of War: Infantry Battle in Classical Greece, New York: Random House, 1989, pp. 55–88 , has a list of complaints about the weight of armor.
27 Homer, Iliad, LCL, 1924, 23 .670–1.
28 Euripides, Autolycus, quoted by Galen, in J. Juethner and F. Brein, Die athletischen Leibesuebungen der Griechen, Vienna: Austrian Academy of Sciences, 1965, 1 , 95.
29 Plato, Laws, 796, and 830c–831a.
30 Xenophon, Anabasis, LCL, 1922, 5 .8.23.
31 Plutarch, Moralia, LCL, 1959, 192c , 788a; Plutarch, Philopoemen, 3.2–4; Plutarch, Alexander, 4, both in Lives, LCL, 1914.
32 Tyrtaeus, Fragment 12w.
33 Philostratus, Gymnasticus, LCL, 1931, 9 .11.43; Plutarch, Moralia, 639a–40a; Lucian, Anacharis, in Works, LCL, 1968.
34 Polybius, The Histories, LCL, 1972, 6 .52–4.
35 Cicero, Philippics, LCL, 1931, Fifth Philippic, 14.
36 Pliny, Natural History, LCL, 1952, 35 .13; Tacitus, Annales, LCL, 1937, 14 .20; Plutarch, Moralia, 274d.
37 A. Krieger, “Sieg Heil to the Most Glorious Era of German Sport: Continuity and Change in the Modern German Sports Movement,” International Journal of the History of Sport, 4, 1, 1987, pp. 5–20 ; J. Tollener, “Formation pour la vie et formation pour l’armée: La Fédération Nationale des Sociétés Catholiques de Gymnastique et d’Armes de Belgique, 1892–1914,” Stadion, 17, 1, 1991, pp. 101–20 ; and L. W. Burgener, “Sport et politique dans un état neutre: l’instruction préliminaire en Suisse, 1918–1947,” Information Historique, 48, 1, 1986, pp. 23–9 ; M. Spivak, “Un concept mythologique de la Troisième République: le renforcement du capital humain de la France,” ibid., 4, 2, 1987, pp. 155–76.
38 The story is taken from D. C. Large, Nazi Games: The Olympics of 1937, New York: Norton, 2007, p. 337.
39 Decker, Sports and Games in Ancient Egypt, p. 101.
40 Aristotle, Politics, 8.4.1338b.
41 Quoted in D. Birley, Sport and the Making of Britain, Manchester University Press, 1993, p. 62.
42 Ibid., p. 259.
43 See C. Uygur, “How Teddy Roosevelt Ended Unfettered Football and Saved the Game,” Huffington Post, April 21, 2009, available at: www.huffingtonpost.com/cenk-uygur/how-teddy-roosevelt-ended_b_189310.html.
44 Only about 10 percent of hunting societies had no war: see K. F. Otterbein, “A History of Research on Warfare in Anthropology,” American Anthropologist, 101, 4, 2001, p. 797.
45 See on this A. Gat, War in Human Civilization, Oxford University Press, 2006, pp. 67–113.
46 The expression comes from Melanesia: D. J. J. Brown, “The Structuring of Polopa Feasting and Warfare,” Man, 14, 4, December 1979, p. 722.
47 F. Boas, Kwakiutl Ethnography, H. Codere, ed., University of Chicago Press, 1966, p. 108.
48 See, for a useful list of figures, A. Gat, “The Pattern of Fighting in Simple, Small-Scale, Prestate Societies,” Journal of Anthropological Research, 55, 4, 1999, pp. 574–5.
49 Herodotus, The Persian Wars, LCL, 1921, 5.18–20.
50 For example, Greek phalanxes: P. Krentz, “Fighting by the Rules: The Invention of the Hoplite Agon,” Hesperia, 71, 2002, pp. 27–8.
51 See, for a short account of the apparatus in question, M. van Creveld, The Rise and Decline of the State, Cambridge University Press, 1999, pp. 2–7.
52 See, for a brief survey, B. F. Knauff, “Not for Fun,” in Cornell and Allen, War and Games, pp. 137–57.
53 C. Grant, The Rock Paintings of the Chumash, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1965, p. 43.
54 A. Salmond, Between Worlds: Early Exchanges between Maori and Europeans, 1773–1815, Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1997, pp. 462–63; Brown, “The Structuring of Polopa Feasting and Warfare,” pp. 712–33.
55 L. N. Keeley, War before Civilization: The Myth of the Peaceful Savage, New York: Oxford University Press, 1996, especially pp. 59–65.
56 Otterbein, “A History of Research on Warfare in Anthropology,” p. 796; K. F. Otterbein, Feuding and Warfare, Longhorne, PA: Gordon & Breach, 1994, pp. 75–96.
57 M. Meggitt, Blood is their Argument, Paolo Alto, CA: Mayfield, 1977, pp. 17–21.
58 Ibid., p. 53.
59 R. M. Berndt, “Warfare in the New Guinea Highlands,” American Anthropologist, 64, 4, August 1983, p. 183.
60 According to G. Landtman, The Kiwai Papuans of British New Guinea, London: Macmillan, 1927, p. 148.
61 N. A. Chagnon, Yanomano: The Fierce People, New York: Holt, 1977, pp. 113–37 . It is only fair to say that, like all famous works, that of Chagnon has been widely criticized.
62 B. Albert, “On Yanomami Warfare: Rejoinder,” Current Anthropology, 31, 5, December 1990, p. 561.
63 L. E. Sponsel, “Yanomami: An Area of Conflict and Aggression in the Amazon,” Aggressive Behavior, 24, 1998, pp. 107–9 ; B. Albert, “Indian Lands, Environmental Policy, and Geopolitics of Amazonian Development in Brazil: The Yanomami Case,” Urihi, 8, 1989, pp. 3–36.
64 W. Lloyd Warner, A Black Civilization, New York: Harper, 1937, pp. 174–6.
65 C. W. Hart and A. R. Piling, The Tiwi of Northern Australia, New York: Holt, 1960, p. 807.
66 R. Glasse, Huli of Papua: A Cognatic Descent System, The Hague: Mouton, 1968, p. 2.
67 K. F. Otterbein, “Higi Armed Combat,” Southwestern Journal of Anthropology, 24, 2, Summer 1968, pp. 202–3 .
68 E. S. C. Handy, “Native Culture in the Marquesas,” B. P. Bishop Museum Bulletin, 9, 1923, pp. 262–3.
69 See the description in J. Morgan, The Life and Adventures of William Buckley, Canberra: Australian National University Press, 1980 [1852], pp. 40 , 41, 42, 49–50, 60, 68–9, 76–7, 81, 82. Most anthropologists now agree to take Buckley more or less seriously.
70 R. M. Utley and W. E. Washburn, Indian War, Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin, 1977, pp. 42–3.
71 See F. R. Secoy, Changing Military Patterns of the Great Plains Indians, New York: Augustin, 1953, pp. 34–5.
72 E. W. Nelson, The Eskimo about Bering Strait, Washington DC: Smithsonian, 1983 [1899], p. 327 ; E. Burch, “Eskimo Warfare in Northwest Alaska,” Anthropological Papers of the University of Alaska, 16, 1974, pp. 2, 4.
73 See the diary of a certain Bayer, missionary, quoted in H. Fischer, ed., Wampar: Berichte ueber die alte Kultur eines Stammes in Papua New Guinea, Bremen: Uebersee Museum, 1978, p. 181.
74 See e.g. P. Brown, “New Guinea: Ecology, Society and Culture,” Annual Review of Anthropology, 7, 1978, pp. 263–91 ; A. P. Vayda, “Why Marings Fought,” Journal of Anthropological Research, 45, 2, Summer 1989, pp. 159–77.
75 W. T. Divale and M. Harris, “Warfare and the Male Supremacist Complex,” American Anthropologist, 78, 3, September 1976, pp. 525–7.
76 Harrison, “The Symbolic Construction of Aggression and War,” pp. 583–99.
77 Landtman, The Kiwai Papuans, p. 148.
78 See Vayda, “Why Marings Fought,” pp. 166–70.
79 R. C. Kelly, Warless Societies and the Origins of War, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2003, p. 100.
80 Meggitt, Blood is their Argument, p. 17; Vayda, “Why Marings Fought,” p. 166.
81 P. A. B. Weiner, Women of Val
ue, Men of Renown: New Perspectives on Trobriand Exchange, Austin: University of Texas Press, 1976, p. 91.
82 E.g. V. G. Kiernan, The Duel in European History, Oxford University Press, 1988, pp. 20–34.
83 See on this story, Ahmad, Sheikh Massoud, at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ahmad_Shah_Massoud.
84 A translation of the part of the text referring to these events is printed in Y. Yadin, The Art of Warfare in Biblical Lands, New York: McGraw-Hill, 1963, pp. 72–3.
85 For what follows, including the translation, see T. Jacobsen, “The Battle between Marduk and Tiamat,” Journal of the American Oriental Society, 88, 1, January−March 1968, pp. 104–5.
86 W. G. Lambert, “The Great Battle of the Mesopotamian Religious Year: The Conflict in the Akitu House,” Iraq, 25, 2, Fall 1963, pp. 189–90.
87 See e.g. P. H. Seeley, “The Firmament and the Water Above,” Westminster Theological Journal, 53, Fall 1993, pp. 241–61 . The paper is available at: http://www.thedivinecouncil.com/seelypt1.pdf.
88 1 Samuel 17.
89 2 Samuel 2.
90 Thanks to my friend Amihai Borosh, who is both a rabbi and a scholar, for bringing the relevant texts to my attention.
91 M. von Oppenheim et al., Der Tell Halaf: Eine neue Kultur im ältesten Mesopotamien, Leipzig: Brockhaus, 1931 , plate 35b.
92 2 Samuel 17.1.
93 A. Yadin. “Goliath’s Armor and Israelite Collective Memory,” Vetus Testamentum, 54, July 2004, pp. 373–95.
94 Homer, Iliad 3.15−4.126.
95 Ibid., 7.37–404.
96 Ibid., 23.800–23.
97 See, on the fighting techniques of Homeric armies, V. M. Udwin, Between Two Armies: The Place of the Duel in Epic Culture, Leiden: Brill, 1999, pp. 71–5.
98 Homer, Iliad, 7.242–3.
99 See Udwin, Between Two Armies, pp. 89–90, 107–8.
100 Hesiod, Fragments, LCL, 2007, nos. 90 and 93 ; Euripides, Phoenician Women, LCL, 2007 , 1255, 1274–6, 1361, 1468ff; Strabo, Geography, LCL, 1932, 393 and 633 ; Pausanias, Description of Greece, LCL, 1933, 9.25 and 8.53.
101 Herodotus, The Persian Wars, 9.26. This story is also mentioned by a much later ancient historian, Diodorus Siculus, Library of History, LCL, 1933, 4.58.2–5.
102 Herodotus, The Persian Wars, 5.1–2.
103 Livy, History of Rome, LCL, 1919, 1.24–6.
104 Ibid., 45.39.16.
105 Plutarch, Romulus, in Lives, 16.3–4.
106 Livy, History of Rome, 4.19–20.
107 Plutarch, Marcellus, 8.
108 See for this episode H. I. Flower, “The Tradition of the Spolia Opima: M. Claudius Marcellus and Augustus,” Classical Antiquity, 19, 1, 2000, pp. 34–64.
109 Procopius, History of the Wars, LCL, 1914, 7.4.21–9 ; 8.31.11–16.
110 See on such societies van Creveld, The Rise and Decline of the State, pp. 1–58.
111 Saxo Grammaticus, The History of the Danes, H. E. Davidson, ed., Cambridge: Brewer, 1979, p. 131 ; Paolo Diacono, Storia dei Longobardi, Milan: Rizzoli, 1967, 5.31 ; Richer, Histoire de France, R. Latouche, ed., Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1937, p. 93 ; Joinville, History of the Crusades, C. Smith, trans., London: Penguin, 2009 ; Henry of Huntington, History of the English People, D. Greenway, trans., New York: Oxford University Press, 1997 ; Froissart, Chronicles, G. Brereton, ed., Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1978.
112 See on this van M. van Creveld, The Culture of War, New York: Presidio, 2008, pp. 9–10.
113 Froissart, Chronicles, p. 179.
114 See J. S. A. Adamson, “The Baronial Context of the English Civil War,” Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 40, 1990, pp. 93–102.
115 See H. E. Davidson, The Sword in Anglo-Saxon England, Woodbridge: Boydell, 1994, p. 193.
116 J. M. Wallace-Hadrill, ed., The Fourth Book of the Chronicle of Fredegar, Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1981 [1896], pp. 51–3 . See, for the entire episode, S. T. Wander, “The Cyprus Plates and the Chronicles of Fredegar,” Dumbarton Oaks Papers, 29, 1973, pp. 345–6.
117 See, on the battle of Bader, M. Lings, Muhammad: His Life Based on the Earliest Sources, London: Islamic Texts Society, 1983, pp. 138–9 ; also M. M. Pickthall, The Meaning of the Glorious Koran, New York: Mentor, 1953, pp. 7–9, 17.
118 Boha ad Din, The Life of Saladin, C. L. Conder, trans., London: Palestine Pilgrims’ Texts Society, 1897, vol. XII, pp. 161–2; S. Trumbull, Samurai Warfare, London: Arms and Armor, 1996, p. 22.
119 R. L. Kilgour, The Decline of Chivalry as Shown in the French Literature of the Late Middle Ages, Gloucester, MA: Smith, 1966 [1937], pp. 10–11 , 375–6; J. J. Glueck, “Reviling and Monomachy as Battle-Preludes in Ancient Warfare,” Acta Classica, 7, 1964, pp. 26, 31.
2 Games and gladiators
Origins and development
The Roman ludi, best translated as festivals or games, have a long history. Held on fixed days of the calendar to honor some god, they went back at least as far as the monarchy which itself came to an end in 510 BC. Originally they featured a procession (pompa, in Latin). This was followed by chariot races, stage plays, and similar popular entertainments.1 From 275 BC on, hunts, animal fights, and the throwing of condemned criminals to the beasts were added. Over time, the number of festivals and their duration grew; by the time of Augustus they took up no fewer than sixty-one days each year. Since we know that Emperor Marcus Aurelius (AD 161–80) decided to cut them to 135, his successors must have added even more.
Apparently it was only towards the middle of third century BC that the ludi began to be supplemented by the introduction of life-to-death fights between pairs of specially selected gladiators (from gladius, the short sword that, along with the pilum or javelin, formed the legionaries’ principal offensive weapon). The clearest account of the fights’ origins is found in Nicolas Damascus. A Syrian/Greek historian, philosopher, and naturalist who lived at about the time of Christ, he had been tutor to the children of Anthony and Cleopatra. He was also a friend of Herod the Great and spent the last years of his life in Rome. While most of his books have been lost, fragments of them are quoted in the works of other ancient historians. In one of them, called Athletics, he wrote:2
The Romans organized performances by gladiators, a habit they had acquired from the Etruscans, not only at festivals and in the theaters but also at feasts. That is to say, certain people would frequently invite their friends for a meal and other pleasant pastimes, but in addition there might be two or three pairs of gladiators. When everyone had had plenty to eat and drink they called for the gladiators. The moment anyone’s throat was cut, they clapped their hands with pleasure. And it sometimes even turned out that someone had specified in his will that the most beautiful women he had purchased were to fight each other, or someone else might have set down that two boys, his favorites, were to do so.
An early seventh-century writer, Saint Isidore of Seville, believed that the Latin lanista, or manager of gladiators, derived from the Etruscan word for executioner. The title of Charun, an official whose task was to look after the remains of those who had been killed in the arena, also betrayed an Etruscan origin. Yet no known painting in any of the numerous Etruscan graves that have been excavated shows gladiatorial games.
These facts have caused recent historians to doubt that the Etruscans did in fact invent the fights. Other evidence, in the form of buildings or installations that may have been used for the purpose, is also scant or nonexistent.3 These historians point to Campanula, south of Rome, as the region where the shows may have originated. They base their argument on Livy who, writing a little later than Nicolas, says that “the Campanions, on account of their arrogance and their hatred of the Samnites, armed their gladiators, who performed during banquets, in the fashion of [the captured men] and addressed them as ‘Samnites.’”4 Livy’s account is supported by that of his contemporary Strabo. “As for the Campanians,” the traveler and geographer writes, “it was their lot, because of the fertility of their country, to enjoy in equal degree both evil things
and good. For they were so extravagant that they would invite gladiators, in pairs, to dinner, regulating the number by the importance of the dinners.”5
Fourth-century BC grave paintings from the town of Paestum, southeast of Naples, as well as the fact that the earliest known Roman gladiatorial schools were located in Campania, reinforce these claims.6 So does the fact that during the Republic gladiators equipped as “Samnites” are mentioned more often, and were presumably more numerous, than any other type.7 Perhaps, though, the question is unanswerable. That is because funeral games in which men fought one another, sometimes to the death, appear to have been fairly widespread in the Greek world, from which they may have reached Rome with or without intermediaries. The Homeric combat between Diomedes and Ajax has already been mentioned, but it is hardly the only one. Herodotus says that, around the time of the Persian invasion of 480 BC, the people of Thrace used to honor their richest dead by holding funeral games wherein the single combat (monomachia) carried the highest prize. According to the third-century BC writer Diylos, who was the son of one of Alexander the Great’s generals, the Macedonian chief Cassander had four of his soldiers fight each other at the funeral of a king and queen of Boeotia. Plutarch goes so far as to claim that, long before his time, the preeminent symbol of Greek civilization, the Olympic Games, used to include armed combat. However, he also admits that, when he saw the report, he was somewhat the worse for wine and that he was unable to remember where he found it.8
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