Similar considerations may explain why, in marked contrast to what went on in “real” war, most gladiators, though they normally wore helmets and had their limbs protected in some way, fought bare-breasted. This even applied to the hoplomachi, notwithstanding that the original meaning of hoplon is “suit of armor.” The intention must have been to shelter vulnerable body parts, such as heads, arms, and legs, where even a slight injury might seriously handicap a fighter and either put an end to the show or make it uninteresting. It has further been argued that exposed torsos both made for better athletic performance and enabled spectators to get a much better view of the wounds being inflicted and the blood flowing out of them. Last but not least, bare chests increased the sex appeal of the shows, already reeking of testosterone, further still. Where the Romans drew the line was in that they made even the most lightly armed gladiators wear leather belts with loincloths suspended from them. Gaily decorated, the cloths did as much to draw attention to the genitals as to cover them. However, gladiators did not enter the arena naked as Greek athletes were expected to do.
Awaited with impatience, the combats and the ludi of which they formed part imposed their rhythm on everyday life. On the appointed day both men and women flocked to the amphitheater. The fights took up much less time than the other parts of the program, such as executions, animal hunts, and various forms of entertainment and athletic competition. Nevertheless they easily overshadowed all the rest and were accordingly reserved for the end of the day. The gladiators were the subject of everyday conversation and of countless graffiti. An entire industry specialized in producing images of them. There was money to be made even by having them painted and the pictures exhibited in public; indeed Pliny the Elder claims that, “for many generations” this art commanded the greatest interest of all.48 People dreamt of being gladiators, and specialists were called upon to explain the meaning of the dreams. Even children played at being gladiators.49 Some technical terms originating in the arena left it and entered everyday language, particularly that of rhetoricians and lawyers.
As in modern sports events, people placed bets on the outcome of the fights. Here and there the gladiators’ enthused supporters fought regular battles against each other, even resorting to weapons.50 So many spectators came to watch one of Caesar’s shows that some, including two senators, were crushed to death by the crowd.51 As the first-century AD philosopher Seneca tells us, people abandoned their normal occupations and flocked to the amphitheater. The outcome, an unnatural quiet interrupted only by an occasional roar, provided him with an opportune time for some of his meditations.
From the city of Rome the combats spread all over the Empire, albeit that the scale on which they were held was normally much smaller than in the capital. The most affected, or perhaps one should say infected, were the western provinces, i.e. Gaul and Spain. Yet Africa and the east did not remain immune: long before Rome took over the Middle East, Antiochus IV Epiphanes (reigned 175–164 BC) introduced the shows into Syria. Probably this was because he had spent part of his youth as a hostage in Rome, and significantly his objective was to “rouse in young men a joy in arms.” After all, his father had been badly defeated by the Romans and he himself might very well have to face them again. Another explanation is that he wanted to upstage the above-mentioned Aemilius Paulus.52 If the sources may be believed, at first his subjects were terrified, but later they turned to the shows as enthusiastically as anyone else. Inscriptions from the island of Delos show that gladiatorial games were being held there during approximately the same period; countless later ones, found all over Greece and the Middle East, prove how popular they became.53
Josephus Flavius, the late first-century AD Jewish historian, says that Herod’s grandson, the puppet monarch Agrippa, once had 700 pairs of gladiators fight at Berytus, the modern Beirut.54 According to Philostratus, a second-century AD writer, a hundred years before his time the Athenians used to “run in crowds to the theater.” Their enthusiasm, he adds, was even greater than that of the Corinthians in his own day.55 Archaeological finds tell an even clearer tale. Besides over two hundred amphitheaters, not all of which have been excavated,56 they include extensive mosaics showing the fights as well as statuettes of gladiators and objects decorated with images of them. Thousands of such objects, including lamps, vases of every size and description, drinking cups and weapons have been found in practically every province of the Empire. Clearly the shows acted as instruments of Romanization just as roads, aqueducts, baths, statues of the emperor and coins bearing his portrait also did.
To speak with a well-known modern political scientist, they were an important element in Rome’s “soft power” − part and parcel of everything it stood for.57 Conversely, one reason why cities all over the Empire vied with each other in staging the combats was to prove that they, too, were an integral part of it. This was especially true during the first century AD when an Imperial visit to this city or that might be promptly followed by the erection of an amphitheater there, but as late as 217 major improvements were made to the theater at Corinth in anticipation of a visit by Caracalla who, however, was killed before he got there.58 The process of cultural assimilation may not have been entirely one-sided. Some historians believe that what took place was a gradual fusion of Roman and Greek values which led to changes in both.59 Several legionary bases in countries far from Italy had amphitheaters, and some army units may even have owned their own troupes of gladiators; Julius Capitolinus, the biographer of Emperor Antoninus Pius, is quoted as saying that soldiers were obliged to watch gladiatorial combat to learn how to fight and die fearlessly.60
The shows’ immense popularity explains both the growing scale on which they were held and the readiness of people to pay for them. Things reached the point where, during the late Republic, men sometimes left money in their wills for games to be held in their names much in the way that medieval people often set aside money so that monks might continue to say masses for their souls. Over time the identity of the editores underwent a gradual change. Originally anyone was permitted to hold the games, whether for pure entertainment or as an act of piety towards some deceased family member is immaterial. Later they turned into an instrument in the hands of the rich, the powerful, and the ambitious who used them in order to gain popular support, win elections, and build their careers. Cicero on one occasion warned a young friend that character and diligence were more useful in creating admiration than giving shows. However, the man in question, Gaius Scribonius Curio, did not heed the advice; instead he went on to ruin himself by spending money on them, and had to be rescued by Caesar who appreciated his rhetorical skills.61 By that time holding the shows had become part of the duty of certain magistrates, which placed the entire bloody business on an official basis. Later the same task was taken over by the emperors. Most of them played ball, but not all: probably one reason why, at the end of his life and after his death, Tiberius was so hated was because he had sought to limit the number and cost of the shows.
Whether for personal or political reasons, most emperors did not follow Tiberius’ example. Augustus took good care to demonstrate that he, unlike his great-uncle Julius Caesar, was keenly interested in the shows. He and his successors turned them into one of the normal benefits granted to the citizens of Rome, akin to the distribution of free grain; it was the satirist Juvenal who coined the phrase “bread and circuses” as the means par excellence of keeping the population in its place.62 The cost, needless to say, rose into the stratosphere. As time passed, the tendency to turn the shows into an Imperial monopoly became more pronounced. During the civil wars of AD 68–9 all four emperors tried to legitimize their rule by holding games. In Rome itself they could only be held by the emperor or in his name, with his explicit permission. Domitian went a step further, prohibiting private persons from owning gladiators; perhaps this reflected his fear of conspiracies (he ended by being killed in one). Elsewhere the shows were often organized by the local colleges of Imperial priests o
f whom the above-mentioned Lucretius Sater was one. As with other public ceremonies, there can have been few in which the emperor was not honored in one way or another.
Conversely, when Marcus Aurelius wanted to punish the city of Antioch for its support for a rebellion in AD 176 he forbade it from holding gladiatorial shows as well as public assemblies of any kind. The ban was only lifted after several years. The role the shows played in political and social life is brought out by the fact that Suetonius in his biographies of the emperors regularly includes a chapter on the way each of them dealt with the issue. Unless there was some special reason to think otherwise, he praises the generous and condemns the miserly. The Historia Augusta, which is our main source for the emperors of the third century AD, does the same. To cap it all, not only Caligula but some of his successors – Titus, Hadrian, Lucius Verus (dual emperor along with Marcus Aurelius) and Didius Julianus (who reigned for several months in 193) all fought, or pretended to fight, as gladiators. The most notorious emperor in this respect was Marcus Aurelius’ son and successor Commodus (reigned from 180 until 192). Dressed as a secutor, carrying a shield on his right and a wooden sword in his left (as in modern tennis, a left-handed gladiator enjoyed a certain advantage), he regularly entered the arena and fought opponents likewise armed with wands.
Cassius Dio, who claims to have been present during a number of Commodus’ fights and to whom we owe this account, says that they were simply “a little game.”63 With good reason, since obviously very great precautions had to be taken to make sure that neither he nor any of the other emperors should be hurt. Not only is there no record of this happening, but it is hard to imagine how an emperor could have allowed himself to lose and his opponent to win: that, incidentally, is a problem with which many other kinds of wargames besides the Roman gladiatorial ones also had to cope. Both ancient and modern historians have wondered what may have motivated these men. Some, notably Caligula and Commodus, were probably more than a little mad. That is how many sources, especially literary ones written by high-class historians such as Cassius Dio himself, present them. If so, then the engagements in which they took part were simply a continuation of other strange acts they committed inside and outside the arena. Caligula for one was determined to prove that he was shameless and up for anything.64 Perhaps it is not surprising that the man who used to take away other men’s wives, sleep with them, and then describe their performance in public entered the arena with a real sword and ran through opponents armed only with a wooden one. Commodus went further still: we are told that, had they not feared for their lives, his “exploits” would have made the spectators laugh out aloud.65 On one occasion he ordered all people who, owing to accident or illness, had lost their left foot to enter the arena, gave them sponges to fight with, and went on to kill them with a heavy club.
It is, however, possible that, in some of these cases, there was method behind the madness. This was because the shows, like so many others at all times and places, did not only seek to duplicate some aspects of war but represented grand theater as well.66 To do so, even the seating arrangements at the amphitheater were made to reflect the Roman world in miniature. During Republican times, people had been allowed to select their own seats and mix freely; not so under the Empire when various emperors issued decrees to separate them by class. The higher the class to which a person belonged the better the seat he was entitled to occupy. He also gained other privileges such as the right to use cushions or wear a sunhat.67 The emperor, of course, occupied the best seat of all. It not only offered an excellent view of the arena but was located in such a way that everybody could see the occupant. Thus the shows gave emperors a unique opportunity to demonstrate both their unity with the people and their power over them. That power was accentuated by the fact that, in deciding whether defeated gladiators should be allowed to live, they might or might not adhere to the spectators’ demands. Furthermore, precisely because the fights in which emperors participated were sham, they provided another proof of their ability to kill anyone they pleased at any time they pleased in any way they pleased. So did the displays of summary “justice” when people were simply ordered into the arena without further ado.
To show that he had indeed become a Spaniard, Emperor Charles V once entered a ring and killed a bull in a corrida. Much later, a drawing of the episode was made by Francisco Goya. Some Roman emperors may have participated in gladiatorial shows because, in a way, they stood for everything Roman. Here is what Cicero, as good an observer of social and political life as one might wish for, had to say about them: “this countless throng of men, this unanimous expression of the whole Roman people.”68 With the exception of the various forms of single combat, most wargames at most times and places did their best to limit the number of casualties. In fact, the limited number of casualties was what mainly differentiated them from “real” war and allowed them to be held in the first place. Not so in Rome, where the gladiatorial games, and of course the executions and the animal hunts as well, owed their appeal precisely to the unapologetic way in which copious amounts of blood were shed. To make sure it would be shed, each fight was preceded by a special ceremony in which the quality of the weapons was carefully and publicly examined.
Two factors made the bloodshed possible. First, unlike the tribal contests we have described and also unlike early medieval tournaments, gladiatorial combat took place inside temporary or permanent structures specially designed for the purpose. Every precaution was taken to protect the spectators and prevent escalation; this was just what enabled the fights to proceed without any restrictions whatsoever. Second and even more importantly, the vast majority of gladiators were men who had been compelled to fight against their will, if necessary by the most brutal available means. Livy’s description of one of the rare exceptions to this rule, which supposedly took place fairly early in the history of the games, merely serves to bring out this aspect of the matter even more:69
[After the end of the Second Punic War] Scipio [Africanus] returned to [New] Carthage [in Spain] to pay his vows to the gods and to conduct the gladiatorial show which he had prepared in honor of his deceased father and uncle. The exhibition of gladiators was not made up from the class of men which lanistae are in the habit of pitting against each other, that is slaves sold on the platform and free men who are ready to sell their lives. In every case the service of the men who fought was voluntary and without compensation. For some were sent by their chieftains to display an example of the courage inbred in their tribe; some declared on their own motion that they would fight to please the general; in other cases rivalry and the desire to compete led them to challenge or, if challenged, not to refuse.
Apparently Livy, as he went over his sources, was initially incredulous and could hardly make himself believe that, once upon a time, such things had indeed been possible.
This unique episode apart, and disregarding the sprinkling of volunteers of whom Livy also speaks and on whom more later, those who fought in the arena fell into four classes. First and for a long time most numerous were prisoners of war. The Romans – and, to be fair, not only the Romans – convinced themselves that anybody who refused to accept their rule and put up armed resistance instead was a criminal and deserved to be punished if the opportunity offered. One only has to look at the Germans, their hands tied behind their backs and about to be beheaded, who figure on Marcus Aurelius’ victory column to see what this could and often did mean. In cases when prisoners were taken, their captors often did not know what to do with them. That was why, for centuries on end, slave dealers armed with chains and similar instruments of coercion used to follow every army into the field. They bought the prisoners and later sold those who seemed fit for the purpose to the lanistae. But for them, the huge shows of the period from 100 BC to AD 200 would almost certainly have been impossible.
Second came men convicted of one of four cardinal crimes, i.e. murder, treason, robbery, or arson. The third category was formed by slaves whom their owner
s had condemned by way of a punishment. Presumably all these had to undergo some kind of preliminary physical examination, training, and preparation. Not so those who comprised the fourth group. They were sent into the arena at a moment’s notice on the whim of some ruler (known cases are limited to emperors, but one cannot rule out the possibility that lesser potentates in provincial cities imitated them) without any regard as to whether they were or were not fit for it. Caligula, Claudius, and Commodus were particularly notorious in this respect. During their reigns anybody who offended them inside or outside the theater, or simply attracted their unfavorable attention for some other reason, might find himself (rarely if ever, herself) sharing the gladiators’ fate.70
However it was done, clearly those who fought in the arena were the lowest of the low, socially speaking. Having been captured, convicted, sold by their owners, or simply singled out by some ruler, they had literally lost the right to live. Their blood, unlike that of other people, was a free commodity, so to speak. To emphasize this fact even more they were made to swear a solemn oath (sacramentum), promising to endure even the worst kinds of humiliation and to suffer death by fire, in chains, or by the sword. Of this oath Seneca says that it was the most honorable of all.71 A festive meal held on the eve of the fight, used by some to engage in all kind of excess and by others in quiet preparation for the morrow, put the last seal on their situation. Briefly, gladiators were men who had taken their leave of this world. As they presented themselves to the crowd and made ready to fight, legally if not physically they were already dead.
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