Wargames
Page 11
Perhaps surprisingly, the equipment in use was not closely modeled on that of contemporary soldiers. Apparently no gladiator ever entered the arena dressed as a Roman soldier would be; possibly this had something to do with the need to keep the two types separate in the public mind.28 In time, the gap between games and reality grew.29 The earliest, and for a long time the most common, type of gladiator was the Samnite. According to Livy,30 his origins went back to the time when the first shows were held in Campania during the fourth century BC. Samnites carried a rectangular, curved, and elongated shield similar to that of legionaries. Like legionaries they only wore greaves that reached up to the shins; unlike them, they did not have body armor. Offensive arms were broadly similar to the ones legionaries carried, consisting of a sword – as time went on, its length tended to increase – and/or a javelin or spear. Though we do have images of them, the last two are often a little hard to tell apart. After all, a spear is not much more than a longer, heavier javelin, and vice versa. The two were often confused with one another, and not just in antiquity either. Suppose that what we see on one first-century AD grave monument are indeed pila, which in skilled hands were very effective weapons with a range of perhaps 80–100 feet.31 In that case serious safety problems would have ensued: either a javelin might have inadvertently struck the spectators, or some gladiator, despairing of life, might have deliberately set out to take one or two of them with him to the nether world.
Another well-known type was the Thrax or Thracian – presumably Spartacus, who originated in that country, was one of them. Then there were the secutores, the murmillones, the retiarii, the hoplomachi, the provocatores, the equites, the crupellarii, the praegenarii, the laquerarii, and the sagittarii. The list ends with the essedarii.32 As countless monuments show, Roman military equipment was never completely uniform – no more so than that of modern armed forces, one could add. Not only did that of the legionaries vary considerably, but as time passed the army took on a growing number of auxiliary units. The troops who made up those units originated from different nations and carried a wide array of different weapons. Furthermore, these things did not remain constant. Over time some arms were added, others put aside.
Even taking all this into consideration, though, one cannot help but be struck by the strange nature of some of the above-mentioned types. For example, Thraeces were armed with a small curved sword (sica) and carried a small shield that might be either round or square. Apparently to compensate for this lack of protection, they wore long leg pieces that covered both thighs and shins. Secutores, “pursuit men,” carried a sword and a long shield, and wore greaves that only covered the shins. Both were evidently light troops. The murmillones, or “fish men,” were akin to the secutores but were distinguished by having the top of their helmets decorated with a fish. This in turn was because they were most frequently matched with the retiarii. The latter were a highly specialized kind of fighter who wore no armor – not even a helmet – apart from a plate that covered their left shoulder and upper arm and wielded, as their offensive weapons, a net and a trident. Hoplomachi, literally “arms-bearing fighters” were similar to Thraeces but wore a distinctive “Boeotic” helmet with a visor that only left narrow slits for the eyes. They also carried a spear (hasta) as well as a sword.
Provocatores, or “challengers,” carried long rectangular shields, wore breastplates and leg-plates (on the left leg only) and used short swords for stabbing. Apparently they were employed mainly for fighting each other; some modern authorities consider that the men were beginners who, having been tested in this way, would later be assigned to one of the remaining categories on the basis of their performance. The equites were what their name implies, i.e. horsemen. Provided with curious helmets with wings that made them look like latter-day Vikings, they too fought each other. References to sagittarii or “bowmen” are rare. In case they did participate, their use must have required considerable security precautions. Finally, the term essedarius is derived from essedum, a two-wheeled war chariot. The conquering Romans encountered it first in Gaul and subsequently in Britain where, famously, it was used by Queen Boadicea. Charioteers too may have fought mainly each other. Yet considered as a real-life weapon system chariots were hopelessly antiquated: they were much more at home in the first half of the first millennium BC than in the second. Just how they were used in the limited space of the arena is a little hard to imagine. At least one author has argued that the name is misleading and that the essedarii must have been some other kind of fighters about whom, however, we know nothing.33
Obviously some types of gladiators originated with peoples whom the Romans had defeated and who, taken prisoner, were made to fight in the arena. However, there were also some even stranger, if apparently less common, kinds. One was the dimachaerus (“man with two swords”); another, the veles (“fast one”), who may have used a spear; another still, the laquearius. He came into the arena armed with a lasso and was often matched with a retiarius. Of the retiarii we know, and of the laquearii we may suspect, that they stood at the very bottom of the social ladder. Probably this was because their light equipment forced them to be on the run much of the time, looking for an opportunity to stop, turn around, and kill their imprudent adversaries. Perhaps strangest of all were the crupelarii, a Gallo-Roman type who carried such heavy armor that, once they had lost their footing, they could not get up, and the praegenarii, who seem to have been unarmed. Both are rarely mentioned and both may have been intended more for comic relief rather than serious fighting.
Most gladiators, having been assigned to one class or another, remained in it. Men able to master more than one fighting technique were rare. Judging by some pictures and statuettes, the various types were not always kept strictly separate. Hybrid types, designed to increase interest or simply made necessary by a momentary shortage of this or that kind of fighter and/or this or that kind of equipment, also made their appearance. As far as may be seen, the various types were remarkably uniform throughout the Empire: in all probability, provincial towns looked to Rome for inspiration.
A graffito found at Pompeii, representing the score of a four-day show held in that city during the early Imperial period, explains how some of the types were paired with each other. First a Thrax fought a murmillo. Then it was the turn of a hoplomachus to do the same. Then a dimachaerus engaged a hoplomachus. Then again two Thraeces sequentially fought two murmillones (murmillones seem to have been very popular at Pompeii). Then a hoplomachus fought a Thrax. Then another Thrax fought a murmillo. Then two essedarii fought one another. The proceedings ended with two more fights between Thraeces and murmillones.34 None of the above-listed types seem to have had much in common with the heavy infantry that formed the backbone of the legions from Republican times until at least the early years of the fourth century AD. By that time even the one that came closest, i.e. the Samnite, had long disappeared. Nor were gladiators supposed to carry the kind of digging and building equipment that, during the first century BC, caused legionaries to be nicknamed “Marius’ Mules”: modern trials have confirmed how heavy and cumbersome it was.35
Even if we assume that the larger gladiatorial shows did not consist simply of a free-for-all, and even if some of them involved some kind of command arrangement, clearly there was little the fights had to offer commanders. The goal was to provide amusement by demonstrating prowess, not to achieve military objectives at the least possible cost to oneself. As a result many experienced military men probably regarded most gladiators’ weapons, along with the fighting techniques that went with them, as sheer foolishness. One who certainly took this point of view was Pompey: Cicero in one of his letters says that he saw the shows as a waste of time and money. Caesar himself displeased the crowd by using the time he spent at them to do his paperwork. Tiberius, who as a soldier was almost equally experienced but whom the sources present as a miser and a morose character, hardly bothered to hide his aversion to the shows. Vespasian too did not much enjoy them.36 Towar
d the end of the first century AD Vespasian’s son Domitian annoyed the crowed by failing to watch the proceedings and conversing with what looked like a deformed dwarf instead. Marcus Aurelius, and after him Julianus the Apostate, were equally contemptuous.37
Descending from the level of the commander to that of the ordinary soldier, things were different. For all that many of the weapons that gladiators wielded were strange and outlandish, the training they received was of a very high order and the discipline to which they were subjected extremely strict. Strength, technique, agility, and endurance all counted; many gladiators had enough in common with soldiers for some of their skills to be transferrable to the latter. As far as we know, the first time instructors (doctores) from the schools were asked to lend a hand in training troops was in 105 BC; probably it is no accident that this was very close to the time when the old Republican system of part-time citizen soldiers was finally abolished and a professional army established. The reform is attributed to one Publius Rutilius Rufus (158−c. 78 BC). A great-uncle of Julius Caesar, he had gained considerable military experience while campaigning in Numidia. Serving as consul, it was he, along with his colleague Gnaeus Malius Maximus, who completed the process that turned privately organized combats into public, even official, occasions. Two centuries later Frontinus, or rather the anonymous author who wrote the fourth book of the Strategemata in his name, tells us that Marius, who by any standard was one of the greatest Roman commanders, was so impressed by the troops Rutilius had trained that he preferred them to his own.38 Clearly soldiers had to be physically fit, and clearly they had to know how to use their weapons to best effect. In these fields gladiators, as professional fighters who spent much of their lives in training, were at an advantage.
Vegetius, a late fourth-century author who penned what was destined to become the best-known treatise on Roman military organization of all time, provides a fairly extensive description of the armatura, or weapon-training course.39 First, each gladiator or soldier was assigned a stake, or palus, which, firmly planted in the ground, projected six feet above it. Wielding a wickerwork shield and a wooden sword, both of them twice as heavy as those used in combat, trainees “fought” the stake under the watchful eye of the instructors. Now they advanced, now they retreated. Now pretending to attack this body part or that, now defending themselves, they would learn how to inflict injuries without exposing their own bodies. Above all, it was considered vital that they should get used to stabbing rather than slashing, since doing so both inflicted more serious injuries and, since the swordsman did not have to raise his arm away from his body and expose himself, was much safer. The importance of training at the stake is brought out by the fact that the group of best combatants were called primi pali, the next one secundi pali, and so on. In the words of Valerius Maximus,40 training joined courage with craft, and craft with courage. Craft was made bolder and more vehement by courage, and courage was rendered more circumspect by craft.
For displaying courage, both soldiers and gladiators could be decorated with the torques (necklace) and the hasta (honorary lance). In spite of their very different social status – the army would not take slaves – they were interchangeable to some extent. A public person who owned too many gladiators could become dangerous. Realizing this fact, in 63 BC the Senate became sufficiently alarmed to take some precautions against Catilina using them for the purpose of the conspiracy on which he had embarked. At the outbreak of the civil war between the duumvirs in 49 BC Caesar was suspected of planning to enlist gladiators from Capua. However, he was preempted by Pompey who, though he did not himself use them, broke up the schools in which they were concentrated and dispersed them. If Decimus Brutus, one of the conspirators against Caesar, was able to play an important role after the latter’s murder then this was primarily because he was in charge of the gladiator teams that were housed in Rome. Caesar’s would-be successor Antony enlisted some gladiators. They fought against Augustus and remained loyal to the bitter end.41 As our sources disapprovingly note, both Caligula and Nero sometimes recruited gladiators as bodyguards.42 So, three hundred years later, did Pope Damasius (366–84). At least one woman, the wife of an Asiarch, did the same; unfortunately the inscription to which we owe this information, which was found on Cos, cannot be dated.43
Though both Otho and Vitellius recruited gladiators into their armies when fighting over the Imperial throne in AD 69, they do not seem to have served them very well. Vitellius’ gladiators later betrayed him and went over to his rival Vespasian, but their performance still remained below par. Faced with the nth German invasion, Marcus Aurelius at one point enlisted gladiators (and bandits) into his army. The outcome was to raise prices, much to the chagrin of the population of Rome which was loath to lose its beloved circuses and suspected that the emperor wanted to turn all of them into philosophers! Aurelius’ successor-once-removed, Didius Julianus, followed his example. Conversely, in 193 after Septimius Severus replaced the personnel of the Praetorian Guard with his legionaries, some of the former took up the gladiator’s profession. Around AD 360 Ammianus Marcelinus, an officer of no mean experience, mentions soldiers who fought in the manner of murmillones. Possibly they did so by crouching behind their shields and waiting for the enemy to make a wrong move.
However, important differences between soldiers and gladiators also existed. Whether or not pila were permitted in the arena, few gladiators appear to have trained with the bow or with the sling, let alone used those long-range weapons in a fight against their own kind. In fact the rare references to sagittarii that we do have are not at all clear as to what these men actually did. Lack of real-life experience in fighting real-life soldiers may have been one reason why the gladiators recruited by Otho and Vitellius gave such a disappointing performance.44 Given that they were not free men and were only expected to fight, not to campaign, it is hard to imagine gladiators participating in road marches that, again according to Vegetius, were standard in the legions. Instead, living in the schools, they were carefully locked up at night. For the same reason, and also because their lives were forfeit, it is hard to think of them as taking the swimming lessons Vegetius also mentions. On the other hand, there could be no question of training soldiers with some of the more exotic weapons gladiators were made to wield.
To sum up, there were very strict limits to what the shows, bloody though they were, could do to represent real-life war. The artificial conditions under which they took place prevented anything of the sort, as indeed they were designed to do. Tactically the similarities were somewhat greater, but still rather limited. This was particularly true when it came to the choice of weapons which in turn went far in dictating fighting techniques. Many of the weapons used by the gladiators would have been useless in war. A few were so outlandish that they were probably intended to provide little but comic relief. Yet strategy and tactics are not the most important factors of all; rather, they are merely by-products of the spirit that often causes people to fight each other in the first place. Just how did the shows reflect that spirit, which more than anything else lies at the very heart of both war and games?
Games, crowds, and emperors
First things first: regardless of who invented the gladiatorial shows, and regardless also of their original purpose, there can be no doubt concerning their popularity. The Romans did not have mass media and could not broadcast the fights on TV. Nevertheless, that popularity has probably never been equaled before or since. One person who came to feel the effect of this was the playwright Terence. In 160 BC the premiere of his comedy Hecyna had to be interrupted because the crowd, deserting the theater en masse, ran to the nearby Forum Romanum where gladiatorial fights were being held.
The Forum in question was the largest open space in the entire city. A century and a half later, the architect and town-planner Vitruvius went so far as to claim that the reason why Roman squares, unlike Greek ones, were given an oblong shape and did not carry as much decoration was because “it is a custom, ha
nded down from our ancestors, that gladiatorial shows should be given in the forum.” Accordingly he recommended that the squares be provided with certain kinds of colonnades rather than others.45 Each time a show was planned it was advertised by every available means. A special class of scribes was employed to spell out the details of the forthcoming contests on tablets that were strategically placed along the roads leading to cities. One surviving tablet of this kind reads as follows:46
Twenty pairs of gladiators, owned by D. Lucretius Sater Valens, lifelong priest to Nero Caesar Augustus, and ten pairs of gladiators, owned by his son D. Lucretius Valens, will engage in combat in Pompeii on the 8th, 9th, 11th, and 12th of April. There will also be wild animal hunts, as permitted by law. The seats will be shaded with awnings.
At the time Pompeii was destroyed in AD 79 many of its buildings carried similar advertisements, some of them referring to events that had taken place years previously. The measures taken in other cities were no different. Programs (libelli munerarii) on sale at the entrance to the amphitheater contained the names of the gladiators scheduled to participate.47 A standardized system was used to note the past achievements of individual combatants; V meant victor, M missus (i.e. that the man, though defeated, had fought sufficiently well to leave the arena alive). Each sign was accompanied by a number. However, to increase tension they did not say who was to fight whom.
As with modern “professional” wrestlers, the wish to generate excitement accounts for the strange outfits many gladiators wore and the weapons they used. The outcome was a considerable variety of different fighting techniques. Some emphasized strength, others agility. Mastering such exotic instruments as the net and the lasso must have been no mean feat. The number of possible combinations was in the dozens. Probably about eight out of every ten pairs of fighters involved a different type on each side. Yet things were not simple; care had to be taken to match the combatants in such a way as to give each individual or group a fair chance, or else the fights would have come to an end almost before they began and the crowd would have lost interest.