Wargames

by Martin van Creveld

  Drenched with blood as they regularly were, doubtless the Colosseum and other amphitheaters throughout the Empire were hell for many, possibly most, of those who fought in them. Still they did not bear over their gates the inscription, “Give up all hope, you who enter here.” To be sure, some emperor might take a special dislike to this or that gladiator and inflict arbitrary punishment on him regardless of his performance. Provided prowess was allowed to speak for itself, though, if anything their motto might have been “Bravery in battle makes free,” even if one was a prisoner of war; and even if one was a condemned criminal of the worst kind. Compared with the alternatives – suffering execution in one of many exotic ways or being thrown to the beasts – being selected as a gladiator almost amounted to a reprieve.

  Having reached the lowest possible point in life a gladiator could redeem himself by offering proof of courage and fighting ability. Cicero, who as we shall see was by no means uncritical of the games, has the following to say about this aspect of the matter:72

  Down-and-outs or barbarians the [gladiators] may be, but just like well-brought up men, they’d rather take a hit than dodge away in cowardly fashion. Look at how often their main concern seems to be to court the approval of either their master or the people. Even when covered in wounds, they will send someone to their master to ask what he wants of them. If he feels they have done enough, they are prepared to die. What gladiator of even the most mediocre caliber has ever groaned or so much as winced? Which of them has ever disgraced himself by failing to move, let alone by giving in? Which of them has ever pulled his head in after submitting and hearing the coup de grâce announced?

  Dionysius Halicarnassus, the Greek historian who did his work a generation or so after Cicero, likewise expressed his admiration for the gladiators’ valor. It stood, he says, in strange contrast to the terrible things they saw and often underwent. The philosopher and lawyer Pliny the Younger praised a friend for holding a munus in honor of his deceased wife; unlike many other kinds of shows, he added, gladiatorial shows did not enfeeble the mind. Indeed they were capable of inspiring even those despicable forms of lowlife, criminals and slaves, to perform courageous deeds.73 As one modern historian wrote, “by engaging in courageous duels . . . gladiators were meant to illustrate the virtues that had made Rome great.”74 In this respect they were not unlike the soldiers who were remembered for having bravely served their country in war.

  Seneca, Nero’s tutor, who ended up being forced by his former student to commit suicide, went so far as to claim that “the gladiator judges it ignominious to be set against an inferior, as he knows it is without glory to defeat one who can be defeated without danger.” He also said that wise men should model themselves on gladiators, accepting the fact that the possibility of death was always there and behaving accordingly.75 As if to bring out the fact that, at bottom and when everything else had been stripped away, the fights were understood as tests of courage above all, at the beginning of each one the gladiators were made to utter the famous cry, “Hail Caesar, those who are about to die salute you” (Ave Imperator, morituri te salutant).76 However perverted things may have been in practice, the ideal that inspired the words shines through clearly enough. It is only those who, by looking death in the face, have been placed where neither punishment nor reward can reach them who are truly free; and whose greeting, therefore, is worth having in the first place.

  It was after many gladiators had engaged in combat and killed each other that Claudius, impressed by their exceptional courage, let the rest go.77 Conversely, spectators were not slow to boo gladiators who failed to perform as expected or to condemn those who, having surrendered, took up their arms and perfidiously resumed the fight.78 Seneca’s rough contemporary, the poet Juvenal, describes an occasion when an otherwise unknown aristocrat by the name of Gracchus volunteered to go down into the arena. Equipped as a retiarius, instead of fighting he kept running this way and that, failing to use his weapons to any effect. All the while he cast terrified glances at the tribunes, so that “even [his] opponent feels the shame of it more painfully than any wound.”79 It was precisely because the fights put on by Caligula and Commodus, who either themselves killed defenseless men or had handicapped ones fight, did not provide room for a show of courage that our sources condemned them.

  How often did the spectators get their wish for a courageous fight, and to what extent was the “ideal,” if the use of the word is permitted in so horrible a context, of courage realized? Obviously, considering the above-mentioned criticisms to which Caligula and Commodus were subjected, not always. However, the shows in question were exceptional. In fact it is only for that reason that they appear in the record; Cassius Dio all but apologizes for mentioning them, saying that they are beneath the dignity of history. One very partial answer to the question comes from a graffito from Pompey. Out of twenty men who entered the arena ten were proclaimed winners. Two died – whether they did so during combat itself or after being denied quarter remains unclear. Eight were granted missio, meaning that they were allowed to leave the arena alive after asking for quarter by raising a finger of the left hand. Now a display of courage was the reason par excellence why gladiators were sometimes granted quarter in the first place; even so, both the crowd and the presiding magistrate were capricious so that the outcome was by no means certain. It therefore appears that, in at least eight out of ten fights on this list, the spectators got what they had hoped for.

  Indeed gladiators themselves, for all their degradation and the ruthless conditions under which they lived and fought, seem to have retained some pride and esprit de corps. In one story we are told of a group of gladiators who claimed they lacked for nothing and encouraged travelers whom they happened to meet on the road to follow their example and become gladiators themselves. Some took on pseudonyms intended to emphasize their valor and intimidate opponents: either they identified themselves with mythological heroes or else they chose names such as Pugnax (the Pugnacious), Ferox (the Ferocious), Velox (the Fast), or Tigris (the Tiger). Some had their portraits painted. Some seem to have complained that they were not allowed to fight, whereas others set up funeral monuments for their fallen comrades.

  Most of these monuments show the men fighting and/or triumphing in the arena, but a few carry peaceful, even idyllic, domestic scenes. Many express their owners’ pride in their profession. In one or two cases a gladiator, or those who erected his monument for him, took care to note that his death was the result of generosity since the man who killed him was one whom he had previously spared.80 Some cemeteries dating to Imperial times apparently had special plots set aside for the disposal of gladiators’ bodies.81 Late in the second century AD some of Commodus’ gladiators even established a sort of professional association complete with its own patron gods. Unsurprisingly, the main ones were Mars, Diana, Hercules, Victoria, and Fortuna. The first four served as models of prowess whereas the last one directed the fortune to which gladiators entrusted their lives. However, the principal patroness of the shows was Nemesis, the “dark-faced” goddess of justice and retribution. Closely connected to Fortuna, she was a key link between the human world and the divine one. Many amphitheaters had shrines for her built into them; had it not been for the gladiators, indeed, Nemesis would have found few people who worshipped her and practiced her cult.82

  In thirty-two fights that took place during the first century AD whose outcome is known, six out of sixty-four participants were killed.83 If each fight ended with a winner and a loser, losers also numbered thirty-two. Statistically, therefore, losers could expect to obtain quarter and survive almost five out of six combats, a surprisingly high figure. If we count both victors and losers, then the chances of emerging alive out of any single encounter were just short of ten out of eleven. However, we have failed to take draws into account. Judging by the career of one gladiator whose epitaph provides us with the necessary information, about a third of the fights ended without a victor.84 Using this fact – admitte
dly, we are talking about a sample of one – to recalculate the results, then the chances rise to about thirteen out of fourteen.

  Certainly the gladiators’ life was harsh. For a great many, fighting in the amphitheater was a horrible experience from which even the victor could very well emerge with grave injuries (one wonders about post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD, but since none of our sources mention it there is no point in discussing it here). Most gladiators seem to have died aged between twenty and thirty with between five and thirty-five fights to their names. Not surprisingly, the sources mention a couple of men who chose to commit suicide rather than amuse the mob by fighting. Still, if it is true that many died early, it is also true that some are known to have ended their careers and retired more or less successfully. A few outstanding champions even returned to the arena of their own free will in return for fabulous sums of money.85

  The hope for gain and fame explains why there was always a sprinkling of men (and women) who were not forced into the arena but volunteered for it. Their number seems to have increased with time until, early in the Imperial age, they may have made up a considerable percentage of all the gladiators.86 The fact that, doing so, they assumed the status of slaves does not seem to have disturbed them unduly; already in antiquity questions were raised about their motives as well as what their existence might mean in terms of the nature of man.87 Some were probably debtors who hoped to use this desperate method to avoid payment. A few may have been possessed by sheer lust for fighting, but it is improbable that they were at all numerous. As we saw, even some emperors participated, albeit their lives were too valuable for their appearances to deserve the name fights. If volunteers were in fact common then it is hardly surprising that their combats raised few eyebrows. Where our sources do grow indignant is when senators or knights (equites) engaged in similar pursuits.

  The way the Romans saw it, public performances of every kind – not only gladiatorial ones, but those that involved hunting in the theater, chariot races, acting, dancing, and making music – were degrading and on a par with prostitution. Marcus Aurelius at one point even proclaimed that gladiators and their trainers were not fit to pay taxes.88 Such performances conflicted with dignitas, which the Romans considered one of their principal virtues and which, as the argument concerning the relationship between athletics and war shows, supposedly distinguished them from the degenerate Greeks in particular. It simply would not do for spectators to say that so-and-so fighting in the arena is the descendant of Scipio, or Aemilius Paulus, or whoever.89 Yet as was so often the case during the late Republic and Empire,90 traditional values proved to be of no avail. So many senators and knights acquired experience in the matter that in 65 BC Caesar could ask some of them to train his own gladiators.91 Now we know that the gladiators in each category had their own specialized coaches;92 hence the men in question must have had experience not just in war but in the arena too.

  Long before that, in 122 BC, Gaius Gracchus had passed a law that excluded knights who had hired themselves out as gladiators from the courts. In 46 BC Caesar himself passed one that banned senators from entering the arena − to no avail, since it had to be repeated eight years later.93 This was not the end of the matter. In 29 BC a senator by the name of Quintus Vitellius, a distant relation of the future Emperor Aulus Vitellius who reigned for a few months in AD 69, fought as a gladiator. In 22 BC Augustus repeated the prohibition, and this time he saw fit to ban knights who were the descendants of senators as well as females of the upper classes. He even had the measure formally passed by the Senate,94 to no avail, as far as anybody can tell. In AD 5 a knight, unnamed but said to be “distinguished for his wealth” fought as a gladiator, proving that penury was not the only motive involved. Telling of the episode, Cassius Dio can hardly hide his astonishment; to emphasize just how unusual it was, he adds that, during the same ludi, an elephant vanquished a rhinoceros.95 Similar cases must have abounded. In AD 11 Augustus, notwithstanding his usual conservative bent, saw himself forced to rescind the prohibition which was being disregarded in any case. Since it was assumed that free men would fight better than slaves, contests in which knights participated quickly became centers of attraction.96 The emperor himself, accompanied by the praetors who supervised the games, came to watch.

  Nevertheless, the situation remained ambiguous. In AD 15 “certain knights” wished to enter fights organized by Tiberius’ nephew and adopted son, Nero Claudius Drusus Germanicus. The games were held in honor of the latter’s victory over the Germans in which he avenged Varro’s defeat of AD 9. Yet not only did the emperor refuse to be present, but after one of the knights had been killed he prohibited the other from ever fighting as a gladiator again.97 On one occasion Caligula put to death a number of knights, some of whom “had merely practiced gladiatorial combat.”98 Yet this was the same emperor who, whenever he felt like it, made whoever he disliked come down and fight. In all probability, subsequent emperors gave up the struggle as useless. Shortly after his accession Septimius Severus took the senators to task for fighting in the arena.99 Yet he, too, does not seem to have done anything to stop the practice.

  Seen from a modern point of view, all the games did was to pile atrocity upon atrocity. Along with most other things that took place in the amphitheater, such as executions, animal hunts, and the sexual abuse of women who were mounted by animals, they were manifestations of Roman brutality and bloodthirstiness. To quote the most famous modern historian of all, “in terms of morality, combat-games both represented and fed the worst that the ancient world had to offer.”100 Seneca provides us with a vivid record of the crowds’ shouts as they encouraged the fighters to thrash and kill their opponents.101 Still there was another side to the matter. Though atrocities have always been frequent in war, in principle at any rate atrocity and war are not the same. In a sense they may been seen as opposites that exclude one another. War demands courage above all, whereas atrocities, by being committed on the defenseless, exclude it, and in the long run turn those who commit them into cowards.

  The point is that, excepting only the handful ordered to fight by a Caligula, a Nero or a Commodus, trained gladiators were anything but defenseless. To the contrary, they were selected men. No lanista would invest in men who were obviously unfit, and no editor would buy them or rent them. Volunteers too must have considered themselves fit, or else they would hardly have embarked on so perilous a career. As literary sources and the remains of gladiatorial schools show, everything was done to prepare the men for the ordeal as thoroughly as possible. It has even been claimed that they were trained to inflict stabbing wounds which, though fatal, would not cause unnecessary pain.102 An indication of the quality of the medical care gladiators received is provided by the fact that remedies first developed for treating them were later applied to society at large.103 Early in his career Galen, who later worked as a private physician to Marcus Aurelius and went on to become one of the most famous doctors in history, was in charge of a gladiatorial training institute. Far from feeling ashamed of the fact, he boasted that, by his care, he reduced the gladiators’ mortality.104

  The ancient Romans were nothing if not class-conscious. Emperors and other members of the higher classes in particular well understood that their privileges depended in large part on the impression they made on their inferiors. They called the fact that men of standing fought as gladiators “perverse” (the early third-century AD Christian writer Tertullian), but seldom took effective measures to prevent them from doing so.105 In this they resembled many early modern rulers who, while repeatedly prohibiting duels, were unable or unwilling to end them once and for all. However, few seem to have cared about the lives of low-class people, let alone felt that there was anything basically wrong with the combats. If ordinary people had any objection to others of their own kind killing each other for the spectators’ amusement, then we have precious little evidence of the fact. Some Romans even placed mosaics with images of the shows in their dining-rooms, carefully lo
cating them in such a way that guests were able to see and admire them.106 All the more reason, therefore, to try and find out why they declined and ultimately disappeared.

  Decline, demise, and legacy

  In all probability, one of the principal reasons behind the games’ decline was the enormous and growing costs they entailed as editores vied with one another for influence, power, and popularity. They had more than a little in common with the custom, known from many parts of the world, of potlatching in which property is deliberately destroyed to see who is richer and more generous; in Seneca’s words, “[the rich] throw into the gladiatorial schools all the best-looking, the most fit for combat.” The aforementioned Nicolas Damascus also tells of a rich man who, in his will, designated his best-looking slaves to fight each other to the death at his funeral.107

  Undoubtedly some persons may keep engaging in potlatching even under adverse economic circumstances in order to disguise the decline in their fortunes. However, in the long run the activity is conceivable only as long as things are going well. Augustus’ will did not in fact end the age of expansion – Tiberius added parts of Germany, and Claudius occupied Britain as far as the southern border of Scotland. Early in the second century AD Trajan conquered Dacia as well as, temporarily, Mesopotamia as far as the Persian Gulf. More or less peaceful consolidation in the form of the absorption of client states also continued. After that, the frontiers froze in place. Increasingly the Empire’s wars changed their character. Sometimes it was a question of border clashes with Persia which went on for centuries without doing much to change the balance between the two powers. On other occasions barbarian tribes had to be prevented from crossing into the Empire, or else rival pretenders fought each other for the throne. In AD 275 Dacia itself had to be evacuated, a portent of other withdrawals to come.