IL GLADIATORE

Speranza

Il gladiatore era un particolare lottatore della antica Roma.

Il nome "gladiatore" deriva dal "gladio", una piccola spada corta usata molto spesso nei combattimenti.

La pratica dei combattimenti di gladiatori proviene dall'Etruria.

Come molti altri aspetti della cultura etrusca, fu subito adottato dai romani.

La sua origine è da ricollegare al cosiddetto "munus".

Nell'antica Roma, "munera (plurale latino) erano le opere pubbliche previste per il bene del popolo romano da soggetti facoltosi e di alto rango.

La parola "munera" ("munus" al singolare - cf. l'italiano "munificenza") significa "dovere", "obbligo", esprimendo la responsabilità individuale di fornire un servizio o un contributo alla sua comunità.

"Munera" sono dovuti quindi alla munificenza privata di un individuo, in contrasto con i "ludi", giochi, competizioni sportive o spettacoli sponsorizzati dallo stato.

I "munera gladiatoria", in particolare, erano dovuti all'abitudine dei personaggi più facoltosi di offrire al popolo rompano, a proprie spese, pubblici spettacoli in occasione di particolari circostanze, per esempio duelli all'ultimo sangue fra schiavi in occasione del funerale di qualche congiunto.

I "munera" potevano essere "ordinaria", previsti cioè in occasione di certe festività, o "extraordinaria" per celebrare particolari occasioni.

L'ipotesi che i giochi gladiatori siano nati in Etruria o che i romani li abbiano mutuati dagli etruschi sembrerebbe trovare fondamento su testimonianze archeologiche, in particolare pitture tombali, e su fonti letterarie.

Sulle pareti di due tombe di Tarquinia, rispettivamente la tomba degli auguri (seconda metà del VI secolo a.C.) e la tomba delle olimpiadi (ultimo venticinquennio del VI secolo a.C.), è raffigurato un gruppo composto da uno strano personaggio mascherato, denominato "Phersu", che tiene al laccio un feroce cane che assale un uomo con la testa coperta da un sacco che si difende con una clava.

In questa cruenta scena di combattimento si ha ritenuto di vedere un'anticipazione dei giochi gladiatori romani che deriverebbero appunto dai giochi funebri dell'Etruria, nel corso dei quali venivano offerti al defunto selvaggi combattimenti tra avversari che cercavano disperatamente ciascuno di salvare la propria vita.

Su urne e sarcofagi etruschi si ritrovano frequentemente rappresentazioni di combattimenti anche se l'interpretazione di tali scene non sempre porta a ritenere che si tratti effettivamente di gladiatori piuttosto che di scene mitologiche o di combattimenti tra guerrieri.

Nicola di Damasco (in Ateneo, I Deipnosofisti, IV, 153 fr.), storico greco vissuto durante l'età di Augusto, ci riferisce che i giochi gladiatori sono stati importati a Roma dall'Etruria.

Il nome "lanista" con il quale i Romani chiamavano l'imprenditore che faceva commercio di gladiatori deriverebbe dall'etrusco (in questo senso Isidoro di Siviglia, Origini X, 247).

Da Tertulliano ("Apologeticum" 15, 5), vissuto nel II secolo d.C., apprendiamo che i gladiatori uccisi nei combattimenti nell'arena venivano trascinati via da incaricati mascherati da Caronte, armati di martello, attributo del demone etrusco Charun.

Nacquero queste figure a causa del sanguinario fanatismo del popolo romano e per questo erano considerati dei veri e propri eroi nazionali.

I gladiatori non erano dei veri e propri legionari, ma erano all'inizio degli schiavi riportati dalle conquiste imperialistiche, poi entrarono criminali e infine uomini liberi che avevano qualche conto da saldare con la giustizia.

Il primo spettacolo con gladiatori si svolse probabilmente nel 264 a.C.

Nel 105 a.C. i giochi divennero pubblici.

Il numero degli spettacoli gladiatorii aumentò enormemente durante l'Impero.

La dinastia flavia, iniziata con l'imperatore Flavio Vespasiano, fece costruire il più grande e più famoso anfiteatro del mondo, l'anfiteatro flavio, successivamente conosciuto con il nome di Colosseo.

Nel IV secolo, l'imperatore Costantino I, dopo aver abbracciato la fede cristiana, li proibì.

La loro grande popolarità fece in modo che questi giochi continuassero più o meno saltuariamente nonostante le reiterate proibizioni, in particolare nelle città lontane dall'Imperatore e dalla sua corte (come Roma) dove gli ultimi spettacoli gladiatori arrivano ad essere celebrati nei primi anni del medioevo.

I combattenti potevano essere dei veri professionisti, nuovi gladiatori inesperti, condannati (criminali, schiavi, galeotti, prigionieri di guerra, cristiani, e via dicendo), o degli uomini liberi, senza distinzioni di razza, né di sesso (i combattimenti di gladiatrici, estremamente rari, erano sempre quelli più richiesti).

I galeotti e i prigionieri di guerra, particolarmente agguerriti per essere sopravvissuti ad anni di lotte e di sofferenze, erano molto ricercati.

Molto spesso erano originari di terre lontane (per esempio Numidia, Tracia, Germania), e si proponevano volentieri, in modo da poter progredire in questa carriera.

Era infatti inconcepibile per un romano inserire in un combattimento di gladiatori qualcuno che non fosse volontario.

L'addestramento dei gladiatori era ancora più approfondito di quello praticato nelle scuole militari romane.

Praticavano la scherma con le spade specifiche, il maneggio di armi particolari, e miglioravano la loro condizione fisica con faticosissimi allenamenti.

Durante l'era cristiana, la gladiatura divenne uno sport di alto livello a Roma, e i centri di addestramento rivaleggiavano tra loro nel cercare di produrre i migliori combattenti.

Le condizioni di vita per i gladiatori erano eccezionali, in quanto essi avevano le porte aperte a tutte le serate mondane organizzate a Roma e nei suoi dintorni.

L'addestramento, avveniva nella cosiddetta "palestra", collegata al anfiteatro flavio tramite un corridoio sotterraneo ed era la loro vera estrema costrizione e occorreva aver cura di questi autentici atleti, dei loro momenti di rilassamento e del prestigio della loro reputazione.

I nuovi gladiatori non avevano il privilegio dell'accesso alle serate di feste ma questa notorietà faceva parte della vita che inseguivano tanti giovani gladiatori.

La rivolta di Spartaco prese corpo nel 73 a.C., in una scuola di gladiatori di Capua ma, all'epoca, questo sport era ancora poco e male regolamentato.

Stele del "secutor" (gladiatore) Urbico, fiorentino, morto dopo 13 combattimenti, a 22 anni, nel III secolo avanzato.

Nella lapide è compianto dalla moglie (da sette anni) Lauricia e dalle figlie bambine, Olimpia e Fortunense.

L'iscrizione conclude minacciando "chi uccide colui che aveva vinto" (?) e ammonendo che i tifosi (amatores) avrebbero coltivato il ricordo di Urbico.

La stele è conservata nell'Antiquarium di Milano
105 a.C. - Praticati dall'epoca dei Sanniti, i combattimenti dei gladiatori vengono inseriti nei giochi pubblici romani da Gaio Mario.

Questi combattimenti, certamente mortali, erano molto regolamentati e non somigliavano per niente alla caricatura presentata dai film di Hollywood.

Tuttavia, gli stessi romani si interrogarono molto presto sull'interesse e la legittimità di un tale sport spettacolo.

Alla gladiatura necessitava, in effetti, il riconoscimento ai diritti legati alla cittadinanza romana.

Ma ciò era pressappoco un'eresia per i romani.

Per certuni, il gioco valeva la candela poiché la gloria e la fortuna raccolta nell'arena erano veramente considerevoli.

Non bisogna però confondere i combattimenti di gladiatori con i veri spettacoli nei quali venivano impiegati animali selvatici o venivano proposte ricostruzioni di battaglie.

Gli storici studiano ormai con una nuova ottica la gladiatura romana, in un profilo più "sportivo", rimarcando così, nettamente, una separazione con la storiografia classica, influenzata dalla fede cristiana, molto ostile a certe pratiche.

I greci adottavano ugualmente sport marziale, ma la gladiatura non era praticata in tutto l'Impero Romano.

In Egitto e in Medio Oriente, in particolare, dove ci si contentava delle corse dei carri, lo sport principe dell'antichità.

35 a.C.

Strabone riferisce nella sua opera, "Geografia", della trappola ai danni di un certo Seleuro, detto figlio della città di "Aitna" che, portato a Roma per assistere ai combattimenti fra gladiatori, fu fatto sbranare dalle belve.

27– La tragedia di Fidènes

Approfittando della politica di austerità di Tiberio, alcuni opportunisti, mettevano su delle prove che non erano assolutamente coperte dalle migliori garanzie di sicurezza.

Il crollo di un anfiteatro edificato in fretta e furia a Fidènes, qualche chilometro fuori Roma, segnò profondamente i Romani.

Tacito che racconta la tragedia nei suoi Annales cita la cifra di 50.000 tra morti e feriti.

In conseguenza di questa tragedia, la legislazione sull'organizzazione di spettacoli sportivi fu successivamente molto regolamentata in tutto l'Impero.

37 –

In controtendenza al regno di Tiberio, l'imperatore romano Caligola, ( dal 37 al 41) moltiplicò il numero delle corse dei carri ed altre prove sportive a Roma.

Egli privilegiò ugualmente la gladiatura che, già di suo, faceva figura di grande sport romano, rispetto alla boxe ed alle corse dei carri.

399 –

Sotto la pressione cristiana, chiusura delle scuole di gladiatori a Roma.

Questo spettacolo romano era disprezzato dai cristiani, i quali non giunsero tuttavia ad interdirne la pratica del tutto nemmeno a Roma.

439.

Ultimi combattimenti di gladiatori a Roma (più di un secolo dopo la prima interdizione da parte dell'imperatore Costantino).

Secondo la cultura popolare, prima del combattimento i concorrenti si recavano sotto la tribuna dell'Imperatore, quando egli era presente, e urlavano:

AVE CAESAR MORITVRI TE SALVTANT

Ave Cesare, coloro che si apprestano a morire ti salutano.

Pare invece che la storiografia recente abbia confermato l'infondatezza di questa "notizia".

Si ritiene che la frase sia stata pronunciata da un gruppo di condannati a morte che, tentando di ingraziarselo, la scandirono prima di iniziare a combattere per l'imperatore Claudio.

Per nulla intenerito, egli disse semplicemente "Continuate".

I combattimenti opponevano sempre delle coppie di gladiatori differenti:

-- il reziario

-- il secutore

-- il mirmillone

-- il tracio

-- il diimachaero

Ogni categoria di gladiatori aveva le proprie peculiarità, in materia di equipaggiamento e di colpi permessi.

Ogni categoria di gladiatori aveva dei vantaggi e degli svantaggi.

Cercando di rendere pari le chances di ogni combattente, i romani dosavano questi vantaggi e questi svantaggi.

I combattimenti più classici mettevano di fronte:

il reziario contro il secutore

il tracio contro il mirmillone

Si gareggiava poi per trovare idee sempre nuove, traendo ispirazione da episodi mitologici, o ricercando situazioni grottesche, come quella inscenata dell'imperatore Domiziano che, nel 90 fece combattere nani contro donne.

È da smentire la credenza secondo cui,
al termine del combattimento,
il GLADIATORE PERDENTE
fosse
generalmente ucciso per
giudizio della folla.

È probabilmente vero che il pubblico esprimeva il suo gradimento, e forse anche la volontà di vita e di morte.

Ma era estremamente raro che un gladiatore professionista fosse ucciso, perché questi atleti erano estremamente costosi da addestrare e mantenere.

Soltanto chi si comportava vilmente era condannato a morte dal pubblico, il che accadeva comunque raramente.

I combattenti di carriera erano esperti nel dare spettacolo e il pubblico non voleva vederli morire, affinché potessero tornare in futuro a dare spettacolo.

L'organizzatore, imperatore compreso, doveva pagare una cifra molto alta per ogni gladiatore ucciso.

Non era perciò francamente incline a chiedere spesso la morte.

I romani erano molto appassionati di statistiche sportive e si conservavano cimeli della carriera di alcuni gladiatori, dimostrando che essi erano stati sempre graziati o, vincitori.

Di più, il gladiatore, se fosse stato ferito, poteva in qualsiasi momento interrompere i combattimenti.

Quando comunque un gladiatore veniva ucciso dal suo avversario, gli si avvicinava uno schiavo con la maschera del dio MERCURIO, che aveva il compito di accertarne la morte toccandolo con un ferro rovente.

Sul famoso gesto del "pollice verso", le fonti sono scarse e discordanti.

Un passo delle Satire di Giovenale («verso pollice vulgus cum iubet») sembra dare spazio alla circostanza, ma le fonti storiche propriamente dette non ne parlano.

Prudenzio, in contra Symmachum 2.1096 usa il verbo convertere:

Et quoties victor ferrum jugulo inserit illa delicias ait esse suas pectusque jacentis virgo modesta jubet converso pollice rumpi.

Altre espressioni sono pollicem premere e pollex infestus.

In realtà, in tutti i passi latini, il problema verte su quale sia il senso da dare all'espressione «verso pollice» o «converso pollice» o simili, se cioè pollice girato debba intendersi all'insù o all'ingiù.

Appare certo, ad esempio, che il pollice rivolto in basso non significasse la morte per il gladiatore.

Per moderare la virulenza dei cruenti spettacoli del circo che inorridava la parte più moderata dei Romani alcuni imperatori cercarono di temperare il munus rendendolo più umano ricorrendo alla lusio.

Le hoplomachiae infatti potevano essere simulate, con armi adattate per non causare ferite, nel prologo al combattimento vero e proprio con la prolusio o con la lusio nei punti salienti dei munera.

Questi duelli simultanei incruenti tra gladiatori disarmati servivano alla loro preparazione per il vero scontro con l'uccisione dell'avversario.

Traiano, Marco Aurelio cercarono di ampliare nelle loro feste la parte dedicata al lusio diminuendo così quella del munus.

Dopo i fasti di Ostia, Traiano, il 30 marzo 108 organizzò una lusio della durata di tredici giorni con 350 coppie di gladiatori.

Marco Aurelio, il cui figlio COMMODO aspirava alla fama di gladiatore, cercò di diminuire, in ottemperanza alla sua filosofia stoica, le spese di bilancio destinate ai munera fuori Roma e quando offrì alla plebe romana le lotte tra gladiatori le organizzò sempre come lusiones.

I Romani continuarono però a preferire alle lusiones le hoplomachiae tanto che in Gallia e in Macedonia dal II secolo in poi furono modificati i teatri affinché potessero servire ai combattimenti tra gladiatori e alle venationes.

A Roma si pensò bene di trasferire le rappresentazioni di tragedie a forti tinte al Colosseo dove in una versione del Laureolus di Catullo un famoso bandito che impersonava il personaggio venne veramente crocefisso, nel Mucius Scaevola il protagonista doveva bruciare un braccio in un braciere e nella Morte di Ercole il mitico eroe veniva bruciato sul rogo.


Filmografia

Film:

Spartacus, 1960
Il gladiatore invincibile, 1961
Il gladiatore di Roma, 1962
Il gladiatore che sfidò l'impero, 1965
Il gladiatore, 2000
Gladiatori di Roma, 2012

Televisione[modifica | modifica sorgente]
Spartacus
Spartacus - Gli dei dell'arena
Gladiatori - Il torneo delle sette meraviglie

Note

Giacomo Devoto,
Gli antichi italici, Volume 79, Vallecchi, Firenze 1967, p.

Claudio Bernardi, Carlo Susa, Storia essenziale del teatro, Vita e Pensiero, Roma 2005, p. 61.

L'origine etrusca dei giochi gladiatori è stata affermata (O. Keck, in Annlnst, 53, 1881, p. 16 ss) e accettata da molti studiosi.» in Bianca Maria Felletti Maj, La tradizione italica nell'arte romana, Volume 1, G. Bretschneider, Roma 1977, p. 114.

Sandra Facchini, I luoghi dello sport nella Roma antica e moderna, Istituto Poligrafico e Zecca dello Stato, Libreria dello Stato, 1990, p.54
^ a b L.Jacobelli, Gladiatori a Pompei
^ P. Postinghel, P. Abbate, Roma, Tecniche Nuove, 2004, p.62

Domenico Augenti, Spettacoli del Colosseo: nelle cronache degli antichi, L'erma di Bretschneider, 2001 p.19

Forse non tutti sanno che..., La settimana enigmistica, n. 4087, 2010.

Giovenale, Satire, 3.35-37.


Jacques Paul Migne, Patrologia Latina, 864.

 Plinio, Naturalis Historia, XXVIII.2: «pollices, cum faveamus, premere etiam proverbio iubemur» testo latino su LacusCurtius.


Pollice Verso.
American Journal of Philology, Vol. 13, No. 2 (1892), pp.213‑225, da LacusCurtius.

Jérôme Carcopino, La vita quotidiana a Roma, Universale Laterza, 1971 pp.280-283
^ J. Carcopino, Op. cit. ibidem
^ Cfr. Collart in B.C.H., 1928, p.97
^ Marziale, De spect., 5, 7, 21, 25


Bibliografia:


Raymond Bloch, Gli Etruschi, Il Saggiatore Economici, 1994, p. 124

Federica Guidi,
Morte nell'arena: storia e leggenda dei gladiatori.
Arnoldo Mondatori Editore SpA, Milano, 2006. ISBN 88-04-55132-1.

Luciana Jacobelli, Gladiatori a Pompei, L'"Erma" di Bretschneider, Roma, 2003. ISBN 88-8265-215-7.

Voci correlate[modifica | modifica sorgente]
Sport nell'antica Roma
Auctoratus
Civiltà etrusca
Elenco delle categorie di gladiatori romani
Gladiatrice
Altri progetti[modifica | modifica sorgente]
 Commons contiene immagini o altri file su Gladiatore
Collegamenti esterni[modifica | modifica sorgente]
Arenes de Nimes, France
2010, York, ritrovamento cimitero di gladiatori (La Stampa)
Gladiatore in «Tesauro del Nuovo Soggettario», BNCF, marzo 2013.
[mostra] Spettacoli e giochi nell'antica Roma
AgoniSport nell'antica Roma
CircoCorsa dei carri
Giochi da tavolaGioco dei dadi · Gioco delle fossette · Latrunculi · Ludus duodecim scriptorum · Terni lapilli
Giochi gladiatorii
nell'anfiteatroAndabata · Bestiarius · Bustuarius · Categorie di gladiatori · Dimachaerus · Essedarius · Eques · Giochi inaugurali dell'anfiteatro Flavio · Gladiatore · Gladiatrice · Hoplomachus · Lanista · Laquearius · Mirmillone · Munera · Paegniarius · Pontarius · Provocator · Reziario · Sagittarius · Sannita · Scissor · Secutor · Trace · Veles · Venationes
LudiLudi capitolini · Ludi Romani · Ludi Saeculares · Ludi Triumphales
NaumachiaNaumachia Augusti
TeatroTeatri di Roma · Teatro latino
 Portale Antica Roma Portale Roma Portale Storia

For other uses, see Gladiator (disambiguation).



 Part of the Zliten mosaic from Libya (Leptis Magna), about 2nd century CE. It shows (left to right) a thraex fighting a murmillo, a hoplomachus standing with another murmillo (who is signaling his defeat to the referee), and one of a matched pair.
A gladiator (Latin: gladiator, "swordsman", from gladius, "sword") was an armed combatant who entertained audiences in the Roman Republic and Roman Empire in violent confrontations with other gladiators, wild animals, and condemned criminals. Some gladiators were volunteers who risked their legal and social standing and their lives by appearing in the arena. Most were despised as slaves, schooled under harsh conditions, socially marginalized, and segregated even in death.
Irrespective of their origin, gladiators offered spectators an example of Rome's martial ethics and, in fighting or dying well, they could inspire admiration and popular acclaim. They were celebrated in high and low art, and their value as entertainers was commemorated in precious and commonplace objects throughout the Roman world.
The origin of gladiatorial combat is open to debate. There is evidence of it in funeral rites during the Punic Wars of the 3rd century BCE, and thereafter it rapidly became an essential feature of politics and social life in the Roman world. Its popularity led to its use in ever more lavish and costly games.
The games reached their peak between the 1st century BCE and the 2nd century CE, and they finally declined during the early 5th century after the adoption of Christianity as state church of the Roman Empire in 380, although beast hunts (venationes) continued into the 6th century.


Contents
  [hide] 1 History of gladiatorial games 1.1 Origins
1.2 Development
1.3 Peak
1.4 Decline
2 The Gladiators 2.1 Women as gladiators
2.2 Emperors as gladiators
3 Outline of the games 3.1 Combat
3.2 Factions and rivals
3.3 Schools and training
3.4 Diet and medical care
3.5 Legal and social status
3.6 Amphitheatres
3.7 Death, disposal, and remembrance
4 Gladiators in Roman life 4.1 Gladiators and the military
4.2 Religion, ethics and sentiment
4.3 Gladiators in Roman art and culture
5 Modern reconstructions
6 See also
7 References 7.1 Citations
7.2 Sources
8 External links

History of gladiatorial games[edit]
Origins[edit]
Early literary sources seldom agree on the origins of gladiators and the gladiator games.[1] In the late 1st century BCE, Nicolaus of Damascus believed they were Etruscan.[2] A generation later, Livy wrote that they were first held in 310 BCE by the Campanians in celebration of their victory over the Samnites.[3] Long after the games had ceased, the 7th century CE writer Isidore of Seville derived Latin lanista (manager of gladiators) from the Etruscan word for "executioner," and the title of Charon (an official who accompanied the dead from the Roman gladiatorial arena) from Charun, psychopomp of the Etruscan underworld.[4] Roman historians emphasized the gladiator games as a foreign import, most likely Etruscan. This preference informed most standard histories of the Roman games in the early modern era.[5]
Reappraisal of the evidence supports a Campanian origin, or at least a borrowing, for the games and gladiators.[6] The earliest known Roman gladiator schools (ludi) were in Campania.[7] Tomb frescoes from Paestum (4th century BCE) show paired fighters, with helmets, spears and shields, in a propitiatory funeral blood-rite that anticipates early Roman gladiator games.[8] Compared to these images, supporting evidence from Etruscan tomb-paintings is tentative and late. The Paestum frescoes may represent the continuation of a much older tradition, acquired or inherited from Greek colonists of the 8th century BCE.[9]
Livy dates the earliest Roman gladiator games to 264 BCE, in the early stages of Rome's First Punic War against Carthage. Decimus Iunius Brutus Scaeva had three gladiator pairs fight to the death in Rome's "cattle market" Forum (Forum Boarium) to honor his dead father, Brutus Pera. This is described as a munus (plural: munera), a commemorative duty owed the manes of a dead ancestor by his descendants.[10] The gladiator type used (according to a single, later source), was Thracian.[11] but the development of the munus and its gladiator types was most strongly influenced by Samnium's support for Hannibal and subsequent punitive expeditions by Rome and her Campanian allies; the earliest and most frequently mentioned type was the Samnite.[12]

The war in Samnium, immediately afterwards, was attended with equal danger and an equally glorious conclusion. The enemy, besides their other warlike preparation, had made their battle-line to glitter with new and splendid arms. There were two corps: the shields of the one were inlaid with gold, of the other with silver...The Romans had already heard of these splendid accoutrements, but their generals had taught them that a soldier should be rough to look on, not adorned with gold and silver but putting his trust in iron and in courage...The Dictator, as decreed by the senate, celebrated a triumph, in which by far the finest show was afforded by the captured armour. So the Romans made use of the splendid armour of their enemies to do honour to their gods; while the Campanians, in consequence of their pride and in hatred of the Samnites, equipped after this fashion the gladiators who furnished them entertainment at their feasts, and bestowed on them the name Samnites. (Livy 9.40)[13]
Livy's account skirts the funereal, sacrificial function of early Roman gladiator combats and underlines the later theatrical ethos of the gladiator show: splendidly, exotically armed and armoured barbarians, treacherous and degenerate, are dominated by Roman iron and native courage.[14] His plain Romans virtuously dedicate the magnificent spoils of war to the Gods. Their Campanian allies stage a dinner entertainment using gladiators who may not be Samnites, but play the Samnite role. Other groups and tribes would join the cast list as Roman territories expanded. Most gladiators were armed and armoured in the manner of the enemies of Rome.[15] The munus became a morally instructive form of historic enactment in which the only honourable option for the gladiator was to fight well, or else die well.[16]
Development[edit]
In 216 BCE, Marcus Aemilius Lepidus, late consul and augur, was honoured by his sons with three days of gladiatora munera in the Forum Romanum, using twenty-two pairs of gladiators.[17] Ten years later, Scipio Africanus gave a commemorative munus in Iberia for his father and uncle, casualties in the Punic Wars. High status non-Romans, and possibly Romans too, volunteered as his gladiators.[18] The context of the Punic Wars and Rome's near-disastrous defeat at the Battle of Cannae (216 BCE) link these early games to munificence, the celebration of military victory and the religious expiation of military disaster; these munera appear to serve a morale-raising agenda in an era of military threat and expansion.[19] The next recorded munus, held for the funeral of Publius Licinius in 183 BCE, was more extravagant. It involved three days of funeral games, 120 gladiators, and public distribution of meat (visceratio data)[20] – a practice that reflected the gladiatorial fights at Campanian banquets described by Livy and later deplored by Silius Italicus.[21]
The enthusiastic adoption of gladiatoria munera by Rome's Iberian allies shows how easily, and how early, the culture of the gladiator munus permeated places far from Rome itself. By 174 BCE, "small" Roman munera (private or public), provided by an editor of relatively low importance, may have been so commonplace and unremarkable they were not considered worth recording:[22]

Many gladiatorial games were given in that year, some unimportant, one noteworthy beyond the rest — that of Titus Flamininus which he gave to commemorate the death of his father, which lasted four days, and was accompanied by a public distribution of meats, a banquet, and scenic performances. The climax of the show which was big for the time was that in three days seventy four gladiators fought.[23]
In 105 BCE, the ruling consuls offered Rome its first taste of state-sponsored "barbarian combat" demonstrated by gladiators from Capua, as part of a training program for the military. It proved immensely popular.[24] The ludi (state games), sponsored by the ruling elite and dedicated to a deity such as Jupiter, a divine or heroic ancestor (and later, during the Imperium, the well-being and numen of the emperor),[25] began to include the gladiator contests formerly restricted to private munera.[26]
Peak[edit]



 A retiarius stabs at a secutor with his trident in this mosaic from the villa at Nennig, Germany, c. 2nd–3rd century CE.
By the closing years of the politically and socially unstable Late Republic, gladiator games provided their sponsors with extravagantly expensive but effective opportunities for self-promotion while offering cheap, exciting entertainment to their clients.[27] Gladiators became big business for trainers and owners, for politicians on the make and those who had reached the top. A politically ambitious privatus (private citizen) might postpone his deceased father's munus to the election season, when a generous show might drum up votes; those in power and those seeking it needed the support of the plebeians and their tribunes, whose votes might be won with an exceptionally spectacular show, sometimes even the mere promise of one.[28] Sulla, during his term as praetor, showed his usual acumen in breaking his own sumptuary laws to give the most lavish munus yet seen in Rome, on occasion of his wife's funeral.[29]
Ownership of gladiators or a gladiator school gave muscle and flair to Roman politics.[30][31][32] In 65 BCE, newly elected curule aedile Julius Caesar topped Sulla's display with games he justified as munus to his father, who had died twenty years before. Despite an already enormous personal debt, he used three hundred and twenty gladiator pairs in silvered armour.[33] He had wanted more but the nervous Senate, mindful of the recent Spartacus revolt, fearful of Caesar's burgeoning private armies and even more fearful of his overwhelming popularity, imposed a limit of 320 pairs as the maximum number of gladiators a citizen could keep in Rome.[34] Caesar's showmanship was unprecedented not only in scale and expense but in putting aside a Republican tradition of munera as funeral offerings.[35] The practical differences between ludi and munera were beginning to blur.[36]
Gladiatorial games, usually linked with beast shows, spread throughout the Republic and beyond.[37] Anti-corruption laws of 65 and 63 BCE attempted but signally failed to curb their political usefulness to sponsors.[38] Following Caesar's assassination and the Roman Civil War, Augustus assumed Imperial authority over the games, including munera, and formalised their provision as a civic and religious duty.[39] His revision of sumptuary law capped private and public expenditure on munera, claiming to save the Roman elite from the bankruptcies they would otherwise suffer, and restricted their performance to the festivals of Saturnalia and Quinquatria.[40] Henceforth, the ceiling cost for a praetor's "economical" but official munus of a maximum 120 gladiators was to be 25,000 denarii ($500,000). "Generous" Imperial ludi might cost no less than 180,000 denarii ($3.6 million).[41][42] Throughout the Empire, the greatest and most celebrated games would now be identified with the state-sponsored Imperial cult, which furthered public recognition, respect and approval for the Emperor, his law, and his agents.[43] Between 108 and 109 CE, Trajan celebrated his Dacian victories using a reported 10,000 gladiators (and 11,000 animals) over 123 days.[44] The cost of gladiators and munera continued to spiral out of control. Legislation of 177 CE by Marcus Aurelius did little to stop it, and was completely ignored by his son, Commodus.[45]
Decline[edit]
The decline of the munus was a far from straightforward process.[46] The crisis of the 3rd century imposed increasing military demands on the imperial purse, from which the Roman Empire never quite recovered, and lesser magistrates found the obligatory munera an increasingly unrewarding tax on the doubtful privileges of office. Still, emperors continued to subsidize the games as a matter of undiminished public interest.[47] In the early 3rd century, the Christian writer Tertullian had acknowledged their power over the Christian flock, and was compelled to be blunt: the combats were murder, their witnessing spiritually and morally harmful and the gladiator an instrument of pagan human sacrifice.[48] In the next century, Augustine deplored the youthful fascination of his friend (and later fellow-convert and Bishop) Alypius, with the munera spectacle as inimical to a Christian life and salvation.[49] Amphitheatres continued to host the spectacular administration of Imperial justice: in 315 Constantine I condemned child-snatchers ad bestias in the arena. Ten years later, he banned the gladiator munera:

In times in which peace and peace relating to domestic affairs prevail bloody demonstrations displease us. Therefore, we order that there may be no more gladiator combats. Those who were condemned to become gladiators for their crimes are to work from now on in the mines. Thus they pay for their crimes without having to pour their blood.[50]



 A 5th-century mosaic in the Great Palace of Constantinople depicts two venatores fighting a tiger.
An imperially sanctioned munus at some time in the 330s suggests that yet again, imperial legislation to curb the games proved ineffective, not least when Constantine defied his own law.[51] In 365, Valentinian I (r. 364–375) threatened to fine a judge who sentenced Christians to the arena and in 384 he attempted, like most of his predecessors, to limit the expenses of munera.[52][53][54]
In 393, Theodosius (r. 379–395) adopted Nicene Christianity as the state church of the Roman Empire and banned pagan festivals.[55] The ludi continued, very gradually shorn of their stubbornly pagan munera. Honorius (r. 395–423) legally ended munera in 399, and again in 404, at least in the Western half of the Empire according to Theodoret, because of the martyrdom of Saint Telemachus by spectators at a munus.[56] Valentinian III (r. 425–455) repeated the ban in 438, perhaps effectively, though venationes continued beyond 536.[57] By this time, the popularity of munera had waned, unlike the theatrical shows, and the chariot races which, at least in the Eastern Empire, continued to attract the crowds, and a generous Imperial subsidy.
It is not known how many gladiatoria munera were given throughout the Roman period. Many, if not most, involved venationes, and in the later Empire some may have been only that. In the early Imperial era, the attested munera given by local politicians in Pompeii and neighbouring towns were dispersed from March to November. They included a provincial magnate's five-day munus of thirty pairs, plus beast-hunts.[58] One single late primary source, the Calendar of Furius Dionysius Philocalus for 354, survives to suggest how the gladiator featured among a multitude of official festivals in the Late Empire period. In that year, 176 days were reserved for spectacles of various kinds. Of these, 102 days were for theatrical shows, 64 for chariot races and just 10 in December for gladiator games and venationes.[59] Thomas Wiedemann interprets this in the much earlier context of the Historia Augusta, in which Alexander Severus (r. 222–235) was said to intend the redistribution of munera throughout the year. This would have broken with the traditional positioning of the major gladiator games at the year's end: as Wiedemann points out, December was the month for Saturnalia, the festival in which the lowest became the highest, and in which death was linked to renewal.
The Gladiators[edit]
Main article: List of Roman gladiator types
The trade in gladiators was Empire-wide, and subjected to official supervision. Rome's military success produced a supply of soldier-prisoners who were redistributed for use in State mines or amphitheatres and for sale on the open market. For example, in the aftermath of the Jewish Revolt, the gladiator schools received an influx of Jews – those rejected for training would have been sent straight to the arenas as noxii (lit. "hurtful ones").[60] The best – the most robust – were sent to Rome. In Rome's military ethos, enemy soldiers who had surrendered or allowed their own capture and enslavement had been granted an unmerited gift of life. Their training as gladiators would give them opportunity to redeem their honour in the munus.[61]



Pollice Verso ("With a Turned Thumb"), an 1872 painting by Jean-Léon Gérôme
Two other sources of gladiators, found increasingly during the Principate and the relatively low military activity of the Pax Romana, were slaves condemned to the arena, to gladiator schools or games (ad ludum gladiatorium)[62] as punishment for crimes, and paid volunteers (auctorati) who by the late Republic may have comprised approximately half – and possibly the most capable half – of all gladiators.[63] The use of volunteers had a precedent in the Iberian munus of Scipio Africanus; but none of those had been paid.[18] For Romans, "gladiator" would have meant a schooled fighter, sworn and contracted to a master.
For the poor, and for non-citizens, enrollment in a gladiator school offered a trade, regular food, housing of sorts and a fighting chance of fame and fortune. Gladiators customarily kept their prize money and any gifts they received, and these could be substantial. Tiberius offered several retired gladiators 100,000 sesterces ($500,000) each to return to the arena.[64] Nero gave the gladiator Spiculus property and residence "equal to those of men who had celebrated triumphs." [65] Mark Antony promoted gladiators to his personal guard.[66]

Women as gladiators[edit]
From the 60s CE female gladiators appear, as "exotic markers of exceptionally lavish spectacle".[67] In 66 CE, Nero had Ethiopian women, men and children fight at a munus to impress King Tiridates I of Armenia.[68] Romans seem to have found the idea of a female gladiator novel and entertaining, or downright absurd; Juvenal titillates his readers with a woman named "Mevia", hunting boars in the arena "with spear in hand and breasts exposed",[69] and Petronius mocks the pretensions of a rich, low-class citizen, whose munus includes a woman fighting from a cart or chariot.[70] A munus of 89 CE, during Domitian's reign, featured a battle between female gladiators and dwarfs.[71] In Halicarnassus, a 2nd-century CE relief depicts two female combatants named "Amazon" and "Achillia"; their match ended in a draw.[72] In the same century, an epigraph praises one of Ostia's local elite as the first to "arm women" in the history of its games.[72] Female gladiators probably submitted to the same regulations and training as their male counterparts.[73] Roman morality required that all gladiators be of the lowest social classes, and emperors who failed to respect this distinction earned the scorn of posterity; Cassius Dio takes pains to point out that when the much admired emperor Titus used female gladiators, they were of acceptably low class.[67]
Some regarded female gladiators as a symptom of corrupted Roman sensibilities, morals and womanhood, regardless of class. Before he became emperor, Septimius Severus may have attended the Antiochene Olympic Games, which had been revived by the emperor Commodus and included traditional Greek female athletics. His attempt to give Rome a similarly dignified display of female athletics was met by the crowd with ribald chants and cat-calls.[74] Probably as a result, he banned the use of female gladiators in 200 CE.[75][76]
Emperors as gladiators[edit]
Caligula, Titus, Hadrian, Lucius Verus, Caracalla, Geta and Didius Julianus were all said to have performed in the arena (either in public or private) but risks to themselves were minimal.[77] Claudius, characterised by his historians as morbidly cruel and boorish, fought a whale trapped in the harbor in front of a group of spectators.[78] Commentators invariably disapproved of such performances.[79]
Commodus was a fanatical participant at the ludi, much to the shame of the Senate, whom he loathed, and the probable delight of the populace at large. He fought as a secutor, styling himself "Hercules Reborn". As a bestiarius, he was said to have killed 100 lions in one day, almost certainly from a platform set up around the arena perimeter which allowed him to safely demonstrate his marksmanship. On another occasion, he decapitated a running ostrich with a specially designed dart, carried the bloodied head and his sword over to the Senatorial seats and gesticulated as though they were next.[80] He was said to have restyled Nero's colossal statue in his own image as "Hercules Reborn" and re-dedicated it to himself with the inscription; "Champion of secutores; only left-handed fighter to conquer twelve times one thousand men." For this, he drew a gigantic stipend from the public purse.[81]
Outline of the games[edit]
The earliest munera took place at or near the tomb of the deceased and these were organised by their munerator (who made the offering). Later games were held by an editor, either identical with the munerator or an official employed by him. As time passed, these titles and meanings may have merged.[82] In the Republican era, private citizens could own and train gladiators, or lease them from a lanista (owner of a gladiator training school). From the Principate onwards, private citizens could hold munera and own gladiators only under Imperial permission, and the role of editor was increasingly tied to state officialdom.
Legislation by Claudius required that quaestors, the lowest rank of Roman magistrate, personally subsidise two-thirds of the costs of games for their small-town communities – in effect, both an advertisement of their personal generosity and a part-purchase of their office. Bigger games were put on by senior magistrates, who could better afford them. The largest and most lavish of all were paid for by the emperor himself.[83][84] An outline of these later games can be conjectured, using written histories, contemporary accounts, statuary, ephemera, memorabilia and stylised pictographic evidence.[85] Almost all the evidence comes from the Late Republic and Empire, and much of it from Pompeii.[83][86]



 This mosaic depicts some of the entertainments that would have been offered at the games.
Games were advertised beforehand on conspicuously placed billboards, giving the reason for the game, its editor, venue, date and the number of paired gladiators (ordinarii) to be used. Other highlighted features could include details of venationes, executions, music and any luxuries to be provided for the spectators, including a decorated awning against the sun, and water sprinklers. Food, drink, sweets and occasionally "door prizes" could be offered. For enthusiasts, a more detailed program (libellus) was prepared for the day of the munus, showing the names, types and match records of gladiator pairs (of interest to gamblers) and their order of appearance. Copies of the libellus were distributed among the crowd on the day of the match.[87] Left-handed gladiators were advertised as an interesting rarity; they were trained to fight right-handers, which gave them advantage over most opponents and produced an interestingly unorthodox combination.[88]
The night before the munus, the gladiators were given a banquet and opportunity to order their personal and private affairs; Futrell notes its similarity to a ritualistic "last meal".[89] These were probably both family and public events which included even the noxii and damnati and they may have been used to drum up more publicity for the coming match.[90][91]
From Augustus's time, official munera seem to have followed a standard sequence.[92] A procession (pompa) entered the arena led by lictors bearing fasces that signified the magistrate-editor's power over life and death. They were followed by a small band of tubicines playing a fanfare. Images of the gods were carried in to "witness" the proceedings, followed by a scribe (to record the outcome) and a man carrying the palm branch used to honour victors. The magistrate editor entered among a retinue who carried the arms and armour to be used; more musicians followed, then horses. The gladiators presumably came in last.[93]
These official games usually began with venationes (beast hunts) and bestiarii (beast fighting) gladiators. Sometimes beasts were unharmed and simply exhibited.[94] Next came the ludi meridiani, of variable content but usually involving executions of noxii (sometimes as "mythological" re-enactments) or others condemned (damnati) to the arena.[95] Gladiators may have been involved in these though the crowd, and the gladiators themselves, preferred the "dignity" of an even contest.[96] There were also comedy fights; some may have been lethal. A crude Pompeian graffito suggests a burlesque of musicians, dressed as animals named Ursus tibicen (flute-playing bear) and Pullus cornicen (horn-blowing chicken), perhaps as accompaniment to clowning by paegniarii during a "mock" contest of the ludi meridiani.[97]
Before the listed contests were fought, the gladiators may have held informal warm-up matches, using blunted or dummy weapons – some munera, however, may have used blunted weapons throughout.[98] The editor, his representative or an honoured guest would check the weapons (probatio armorum) for the scheduled matches.[99] These were the highlight of the day, and were as inventive, varied and novel as the editor could afford. Armatures could be very costly – some were flamboyantly decorated with exotic feathers, jewels and precious metals. Increasingly the munus was the editor's gift to spectators who had come to expect the best as their due.[100] In late Republican munera, between 10 and 13 pairs could have fought on one day; this assumes one match at a time in the course of an afternoon.[90] Fights were interspersed or accompanied by music, perhaps intended to accentuate or follow the action. Music may have heightened the suspense during a gladiator's appeal; blows may have been accompanied by trumpet-blasts. The gravestones of several musicians and gladiators mention such modulations.[101] The Zliten mosaic in Libya (circa 80–100 CE) shows musicians playing an accompaniment to provincial games (with gladiators, bestiarii, or venatores and prisoners attacked by beasts). Their instruments are a long straight trumpet (tubicen), a large curved horn (Cornu) and a water organ (hydraulis).[102] Similar representations (musicians, gladiators and bestiari) are found on a tomb relief in Pompeii.[103]
Combat[edit]



 Mosaic at the National Archaeological Museum in Madrid showing a retiarius named Kalendio (shown surrendering in the upper section) fighting a secutor named Astyanax. The Ø sign by Kalendio's name implies he was killed after surrendering.
In the earliest munera, death was considered the proper outcome of combat. During the Imperial era, matches were sometimes advertised sine missione (without release [from the sentence of death]), which suggests that missio (the sparing of a defeated gladiator's life) had become a common practice at the games. The contract between editor and lanista could include compensation for unexpected deaths.[104][105] As the demand for gladiators began to exceed supply, matches sine missione were officially banned, a pragmatic Augustan decision that also happened to reflect popular demands for "natural justice". Refusals by Caligula and Claudius to spare popular but defeated fighters did nothing to boost their own popularity. In most circumstances, a gladiator who fought well was likely to be spared.[106]
Among the cognoscenti, bravado and skill in combat were esteemed over mere bloodshed; some gladiators made their careers and reputation from bloodless victories. Suetonius describes an exceptional munus by Nero, in which no-one was killed, "not even noxii (enemies of the state)."[107]
By common custom, the spectators decided whether or not a losing gladiator should be spared, and chose the winner in the rare event of a "standing tie".[108][109] Most matches employed a senior referee (summa rudis) and an assistant, shown in mosaics with long staffs (rudes) to caution or separate opponents at some crucial point in the match. A gladiator's self-acknowledged defeat, signaled by a raised finger (ad digitum), told the referee to stop the combat and refer to the editor, whose decision would usually rest on the crowd's mood. During the match, referees exercised judgement and discretion; they could stop bouts entirely, or pause them to allow combatants rest, refreshment and a "rub-down".[110]
Most gladiators fought at two or three munera annually. An unknown number died in their first match and a few fought in up to 150 combats.[111] At a Pompeian match between chariot-fighters, Publius Orosius, with previous 51 wins to his credit, was granted missio after losing to Scylax, with 26 victories.[112] A single bout probably lasted between 10–15 minutes, or 20 minutes at most;[113] Spectators preferred well matched ordinarii with complementary fighting styles but other combinations are found, such as several gladiators fighting together or the serial replacement of a match loser by a new gladiator, who would fight the winner.[114]
Victors received the palm branch and an award from the editor. An outstanding fighter might receive a laurel crown and money from an appreciative crowd but for anyone originally condemned ad ludum the greatest reward was manumission (i.e., emancipation), symbolised by the gift of a wooden training sword or staff (rudis) from the editor. Martial describes a match between Priscus and Verus, who fought so evenly and bravely for so long that when both acknowledged defeat at the same instant, Titus awarded victory and a rudis to each.[115] Flamma was awarded the rudis four times, but chose to remain a gladiator. His gravestone in Sicily includes his record: "Flamma, secutor, lived 30 years, fought 34 times, won 21 times, fought to a draw 9 times, defeated 4 times, a Syrian by nationality. Delicatus made this for his deserving comrade-in-arms."[116]
]


 The Amphitheatre at Pompeii, depicting the riot between the Nucerians and the Pompeians.
Popular factions supported favourite gladiators and gladiator types.[117] Under Augustan legislation, the Samnite type was renamed secutor (equipped with an oblong or "large" shield), whose supporters were secutarii.[118] As the games evolved, any lightly armed, defensive fighter could be included in this group. The heavily armoured and armed Thracian types (Thraex) and Murmillo, who fought with smaller shields, were parmularii (small shield), as were their supporters. Trajan preferred the parmularii and Domitian the secutarii; Marcus Aurelius took neither side. Nero seems to have enjoyed the brawls between rowdy, enthusiastic and sometimes violent factions, but called in the troops if they went too far.[119][120]

Once a band of five retiarii in tunics, matched against the same number of secutores, yielded without a struggle; but when their death was ordered, one of them caught up his trident and slew all the victors. Caligula bewailed this in a public proclamation as a most cruel murder.[121]
There were also local rivalries. At Pompeii's amphitheatre, trading of insults between Pompeians and Nucerian spectators during public ludi led to stone throwing and riot. Many were killed or wounded. Nero banned gladiator munera (though not the games) at Pompeii for ten years as punishment. The story is told in graffiti and high quality wall painting, with much boasting of Pompeii's "victory" over Nuceria.[122]
Schools and training[edit]
The earliest named gladiator school (singular: ludus; plural: ludi) is that of Aurelius Scaurus at Capua – he was lanista of the gladiators employed by the state circa 105 BCE to instruct the legions and simultaneously entertain the public.[123] Few other lanistae are known by name: they were head of their familia gladiatoria, with legal power over life and death of every family member, including servi poenae, auctorati and ancillaries but socially they were infames, on a footing with pimps and butchers and despised as price gougers.[124] No such stigma was attached to a gladiator owner (munerarius or editor) of good family, high status and independent means;[125] Cicero congratulated his friend Atticus on buying a splendid troop – if he rented them out, he might recover their entire cost after two performances.[126]
The Spartacus revolt had originated in a gladiator school privately owned by Lentulus Batiatus, and had been suppressed only after a protracted series of costly, sometimes disastrous campaigns by regular Roman troops. In the late Republican era, a fear of similar uprisings, the usefulness of gladiator schools in creating private armies, and the exploitation of munera for political gain led to increased restrictions on gladiator school ownership, siting and organisation. By Domitian's time, many had been more or less absorbed by the State, including those at Pergamum, Alexandria, Praeneste and Capua.[127] The city of Rome itself had four; the Ludus Magnus (the largest and most important, housing up to about 2,000 gladiators), Ludus Dacicus, Ludus Gallicus, and the Ludus Matutinus, which trained bestiarii.[82]
In the Imperial era, volunteers required a magistrate's permission to join a school as auctorati.[128] If this was granted, the school's physician assessed their suitability. Their contract (auctoramentum) stipulated how often they were to perform, their fighting style and earnings. A condemned bankrupt or debtor accepted as novice (novicius) could negotiate with his lanista or editor for the partial or complete payment of his debt. Faced with runaway re-enlistment fees for skilled auctorati, Marcus Aurelius set their upper limit at 12,000 sesterces.[129]
All prospective gladiators, whether volunteer or condemned, were bound to service by a sacred oath (sacramentum).[130] Novices (novicii) trained under teachers of particular fighting styles, probably retired gladiators.[131] They could ascend through a hierarchy of grades (singular: palus) in which primus palus was the highest.[132] Lethal weapons were prohibited in the schools – weighted, blunt wooden versions were probably used. Fighting styles were probably learned through constant rehearsal as choreographed "numbers". An elegant, economical style was preferred. Training included preparation for a stoical, unflinching death. Successful training required intense commitment.[133]
Those condemned ad ludum were probably branded or marked with a tattoo (stigma, plural stigmata) on the face, legs and/or hands. These stigmata may have been text – fugitive slaves were marked thus on the forehead until Constantine banned the use of facial stigmata in 325 CE. Soldiers were marked on the hand.[134]
Gladiators were typically accommodated in cells, arranged in barrack formation around a central practice arena. Juvenal describes the segregation of gladiators according to type and status, suggestive of rigid hierarchies within the schools: "even the lowest scum of the arena observe this rule; even in prison they're separate". Retiarii were kept away from damnati, and "fag targeteers" from "armoured heavies". As most ordinarii at games were from the same school, this kept potential opponents separate and safe from each other until the lawful munus.[135] Discipline could be extreme, even lethal.[136] Remains of a Pompeian ludus site attest to developments in supply, demand and discipline; in its earliest phase, the building could accommodate 15–20 gladiators. Its replacement could have housed about 100 and included a very small cell, probably for lesser punishments and so low that standing was impossible.[137]
Diet and medical care[edit]
Despite the harsh discipline, gladiators represented a substantial investment for their lanista and were otherwise well cared for. Their high-energy, vegetarian diet combined barley, boiled beans, oatmeal, ash (believed to help fortify the body) and dried fruit. Compared to modern athletes, they were probably overweight, but this may have "protected their vital organs from the cutting blows of their opponents". The same research suggests they may have fought barefoot.[138][139]
Regular massage and high quality medical care helped mitigate an otherwise very severe training regimen. Part of Galen's medical training was at a gladiator school in Pergamum where he saw (and would later criticise) the training, diet, and long term health prospects of the gladiators.[140]
Legal and social status[edit]

"He vows to endure to be burned, to be bound, to be beaten, and to be killed by the sword." The gladiator's oath as cited by Petronius (Satyricon, 117).
Modern customs and institutions offer few useful parallels to the legal and social context of the gladiatoria munera[141] In Roman law, anyone condemned to the arena or the gladiator schools (damnati ad ludum) was a servus poenae (slave of the penalty), and was considered to be under sentence of death unless manumitted.[142] A rescript of Hadrian reminded magistrates that "those sentenced to the sword" should be despatched immediately "or at least within the year". Those sentenced to the ludi should not be discharged before five years or three years if awarded manumission.[143] On the one hand, only slaves found guilty of specific offences could be sentenced to the arena, and citizens were legally exempt from this sentence. On the other hand, citizens found guilty of particular offenses could be stripped of citizenship, formally enslaved and sentenced as slaves; and freedmen or freedwomen offenders could be legally reverted to slavery.[144] Arena punishment could be meted for banditry, theft and arson, or treasonous acts such as rebellion, census evasion to avoid paying due taxes and refusal to swear lawful oaths.[145]
Offenders seen as particularly obnoxious to the state (noxii) received the most humiliating punishments.[146] By the 1st century BCE, noxii were being condemned to the beasts (damnati ad bestias) in the arena, with almost no chance of survival, or were made to kill each other.[147] From the early Imperial era, some were forced to participate in humiliating and novel forms of mythological or historical enactment, culminating in their execution.[148]



 Painting of fighting gladiator, Spain.
Those judged less harshly might be condemned ad ludum venatorium or ad gladiatorium – combat with animals or gladiators – and armed as thought appropriate. These damnati at least might put on a good show and retrieve some respect. They might even – and occasionally did – survive to fight another day. Some may even have become "proper" gladiators.[149]
The phenomenon of the "volunteer" gladiator is more problematic. All contracted volunteers, including those of equestrian and senatorial class, were legally enslaved by their auctoratio because it involved their potentially lethal submission to a master.[150] Nor does the citizen or free volunteer's "professional" status translate into modern terms. All arenarii (those who appeared in the arena) were "infames by reputation", a form of social dishonour which excluded them from most of the advantages and rights of citizenship. Payment for such appearances compounded their infamia.[151] The legal and social status of even the most popular and wealthy auctorati was thus marginal at best. They could not vote, plead in court nor leave a will; unless they were manumitted, their lives and property belonged to their masters.[152] Nevertheless, there is evidence of informal if not entirely lawful practices to the contrary. Some "unfree" gladiators bequeathed money and personal property to wives and children, possibly via a sympathetic owner or familia; some had their own slaves and gave them their freedom.[153] One gladiator was even granted "citizenship" to several Greek cities of the Eastern Roman world.[154]
Among the most admired and skilled auctorati were those who, having been granted manumission, volunteered to fight in the arena.[155] Some of these highly trained and experienced specialists may have had no other practical choice open to them. Their legal status — slave or free — is uncertain. Under Roman law, a former gladiator could not "offer such services [as those of a gladiator] after manumission, because they cannot be performed without endangering [his] life."[156]
Caesar's munus of 46 BCE included at least one equestrian, son of a Praetor, and possibly two senatorial volunteers.[157] Under Augustus, senators and equestrians and their descendants were formally excluded from the infamia of association with the arena and its personnel (arenarii). However, some magistrates – and some later Emperors – tacitly or openly condoned such transgressions and some volunteers were prepared to embrace the resulting loss of status. Some did so for payment, some for military glory and, in one recorded case, for personal honour.[158] In 11 CE, Augustus, who enjoyed the games, bent his own rules and allowed equestrians to volunteer because "the prohibition was no use".[159] Under Tiberius, the Larinum decree[160] (19 CE) reiterated the laws which Augustus himself had waived. Thereafter, Caligula flouted them and Claudius strengthened them. Nero and Commodus ignored them. Valentinian II, some hundreds of years later, protested against the same infractions and repeated similar laws: his was an officially Christian empire.[161]
One very notable social renegade was an aristocratic descendant of the Gracchi, infamous for his marriage (as a bride) to a male horn player. He made a voluntary and "shameless" arena appearance not only as a lowly retiarius tunicatus but in woman's attire and a conical hat adorned with gold ribbon. In Juvenal's account, he seems to have relished the scandalous self-display, applause and the disgrace he inflicted on his more sturdy opponent by repeatedly skipping away from the confrontation.[162]
Amphitheatres[edit]
Main article: List of Roman amphitheatres



 The Colosseum in Rome, Italy. A photograph of the best known Roman era amphitheatre taken in the early evening. Gladiatorial combats were the main event and usually held around this time of day[citation needed]
As munera grew larger and more popular, open spaces such as the Forum Romanum were adapted (as the Forum Boarium had been) as venues in Rome and elsewhere, with temporary, elevated seating for the patron and high status spectators; they were popular but not truly public events:

A show of gladiators was to be exhibited before the people in the market-place, and most of the magistrates erected scaffolds round about, with an intention of letting them for advantage. Caius commanded them to take down their scaffolds, that the poor people might see the sport without paying anything. But nobody obeying these orders of his, he gathered together a body of labourers, who worked for him, and overthrew all the scaffolds the very night before the contest was to take place. So that by the next morning the market-place was cleared, and the common people had an opportunity of seeing the pastime. In this, the populace thought he had acted the part of a man; but he much disobliged the tribunes his colleagues, who regarded it as a piece of violent and presumptuous interference.[163][164]
Towards the end of the Republic, Cicero (Murena, 72–3) still describes gladiator shows as ticketed — their political usefulness was served by inviting the rural tribunes of the plebs, not the people of Rome en masse – but in Imperial times, poor citizens in receipt of the corn dole were allocated at least some free seating, possibly by lottery.[165] Others had to pay. Ticket scalpers (Locarii) sometimes sold or let out seats at inflated prices. Martial wrote that "Hermes [a gladiator who always drew the crowds] means riches for the ticket scalpers".[166]
The earliest known Roman amphitheatre was built at Pompeii by Sullan colonists, around 70 BCE.[167] The first in the city of Rome was the extraordinary wooden Amphitheatre of Gaius Scribonius Curio (built in 53 BCE).[168] The first part-stone amphitheatre in Rome was inaugurated in 29–30 BCE, in time for the triple triumph of Octavian (later Augustus).[169] Shortly after it burned down in 64 CE, Vespasian began its replacement, later known as the Amphitheatrum Flavium (Colosseum), which seated 50,000 spectators and would remain the largest in the Empire. It was inaugurated by Titus in 80 CE, the personal gift of the Emperor to the people of Rome, paid for by the Imperial share of booty after the Jewish Revolt.[170]



 Roman arena at Arles, inside view.
Amphitheatres were usually oval in plan. Their seating tiers surrounded the arena below, where the community's judgments were meted out, in full view of all. From across the stands, crowd and editor could assess each other's character and temperament. For the crowd, amphitheatres afforded unique opportunities for free expression and free speech (theatralis licentia). Petitions could be submitted to the editor (as magistrate) in full view of the community. Factiones and claques could vent their spleen on each other, and occasionally on Emperors. The emperor Titus's dignified yet confident ease in his management of an amphitheatre crowd and its factions were taken as a measure of his enormous popularity and the rightness of his imperium. The amphitheatre munus thus served the Roman community as living theatre and a court in miniature, in which judgement could be served not only on those in the arena below, but on their judges.[171][172][173] Amphitheatres also provided a means of social control. Their seating was "disorderly and indiscriminate" until Augustus prescribed its arrangement in his Social Reforms. To persuade the Senate, he expressed his distress on behalf of a Senator who could not find seating at a crowded games in Puteoli:

In consequence of this the senate decreed that, whenever any public show was given anywhere, the first row of seats should be reserved for senators; and at Rome he would not allow the envoys of the free and allied nations to sit in the orchestra, since he was informed that even freedmen were sometimes appointed. He separated the soldiery from the people. He assigned special seats to the married men of the commons, to boys under age their own section and the adjoining one to their preceptors; and he decreed that no one wearing a dark cloak should sit in the middle of the house. He would not allow women to view even the gladiators except from the upper seats, though it had been the custom for men and women to sit together at such shows. Only the Vestal virgins were assigned a place to themselves, opposite the praetor's tribunal.[174]
These arrangements do not seem to have been strongly enforced.[119]
Death, disposal, and remembrance[edit]



 A flask depicting the final phase of the fight between a murmillo (winning) and a thraex.
The proximity of death defined the munus for all concerned. To die well, a gladiator should never ask for mercy, nor cry out.[175] A "good death" redeemed a defeated gladiator from the dishonourable weakness and passivity of defeat, and provided a noble example to those who watched:[176]

For death, when it stands near us, gives even to inexperienced men the courage not to seek to avoid the inevitable. So the gladiator, no matter how faint-hearted he has been throughout the fight, offers his throat to his opponent and directs the wavering blade to the vital spot. (Seneca. Epistles, 30.8)
Some mosaics show defeated gladiators kneeling in preparation for the moment of death. Seneca's "vital spot" seems to have meant the neck.[177] Gladiator remains from Ephesus confirm this.[178]
The body of a gladiator who had died well was placed on a couch of Libitina and removed from the arena with dignity. Once in the arena morgue, the corpse would have been stripped of armour, and probably had its throat cut to prove that dead was dead. The Christian author Tertullian, commenting on ludi meridiani in Roman Carthage during the peak era of the games, describes a more humiliating method of removal. One arena official, dressed as the "brother of Jove", Dis Pater (god of the underworld) strikes the corpse with a mallet. Another, dressed as Mercury, tests for life-signs with a heated "wand"; once confirmed as dead, the body is dragged from the arena.[179] Whether these victims were gladiators or noxii is unknown. Modern pathological examination confirms the probably fatal use of a mallet on some, but not all the gladiator skulls found in a gladiators' cemetery.[180] Kyle (1998) proposes that gladiators who disgraced themselves might have been subjected to the same indignities as noxii, denied the relative mercies of a quick death and dragged from the arena as carrion.[181] Whether the corpse of such a gladiator could be redeemed from further ignominy by friends or familia is not known.[182]
The average gladiator lifespan was short; few survived more than 10 matches or lived past the age of 30. One (Felix) is known to have lived to 45 and one retired gladiator lived to 90. George Ville calculated an average age at death at 27 for gladiators (based on headstone evidence), with mortality "among all who entered the arena" around the 1st century CE at 19/100. A rise in the risk of death for losers, from 1/5 to 1/4 between the early and later Imperial periods, seems to suggest missio was granted less often.[183] Marcus Junkelmann disputes Ville's calculation for average age at death; the majority would have received no headstone, and would have died early in their careers, at 18–25 years of age.[184] Historians Keith Hopkins and Mary Beard tentatively estimate a total of 400 arenas throughout the Roman Empire at its greatest extent, with a combined total of 8,000 deaths per annum from all causes, including execution, combat and accident.[185]
Death and disposal therefore perpetuated the divisions and judgements of society. In the pre-Christian era, the highest status funerals involved expensive, prolonged cremation ceremonies, sometimes complete with a munus offering. At the opposite extreme, the noxii (and possibly other damnati) could be thrown into rivers or dumped unburied.[186] This extended their damnatio beyond death into perpetual oblivion and their shade (manes) to restless wandering upon the earth as dreadful larvae or lemures.[187] All others – citizens, slaves or free – were usually buried beyond the town or city limits to avoid the ritual and physical pollution of their community. Gladiators were segregated in separate cemeteries. Even for those whose death had brought honourable release, the taint of infamia was perpetual.[188]
Memorials were a major expense, and testify only to those who prospered. Gladiators could subscribe to a union (collegia) which ensured proper burial, with compensation for wives and children. The gladiator's familia or one of its members (including lanistae, comrades, wives and children) sometimes paid.[189]
Tomb inscriptions from the Eastern Roman Empire include these brief examples:

"The familia set this up in memory of Saturnilos."
 "For Nikepharos, son of Synetos, Lakedaimonian, and for Narcissus the secutor. Titus Flavius Satyrus set up this monument in his memory from his own money."
 "For Hermes. Paitraeites with his cell-mates set this up in memory".[190]
The hand of Nemesis in a gladiator's death absolved him from ignominy. His virtus could thus be remembered in perpetuity, and he could be memorialised as a skilled fighter, one worth avenging:
"I, Victor, left-handed, lie here, but my homeland was in Thessalonica. Doom killed me, not the liar Pinnas. No longer let him boast. I had a fellow gladiator, Polyneikes, who killed Pinnas and avenged me. Claudius Thallus set up this memorial from what I left behind as a legacy."[191]
Gladiators in Roman life[edit]
Gladiators and the military[edit]

A man who knows how to conquer in war is a man who knows how to arrange a banquet and put on a show.[192]
Rome was essentially a landowning military aristocracy. From the early days of the Republic, ten years of military service were a citizen's duty and a prerequisite for election to public office. Devotio (willingness to sacrifice one’s life to the greater good) was central to the Roman military ideal, and was the core of the Roman military oath. It applied from highest to lowest alike in the chain of command.[193] As a soldier committed his life (voluntarily, at least in theory) to the greater cause of Rome's victory, he was not expected to survive defeat.[194]
The Punic Wars of the late 3rd century BCE – in particular the near-catastrophic defeat of Roman arms at Cannae – had long lasting effects on the Republic, its citizen armies, and the development of the gladiatorial munera. In the aftermath of Cannae, Scipio Africanus crucified Roman deserters and had non-Roman deserters thrown to the beasts.[195] The Senate refused to ransom Hannibal's Roman captives: instead, they made drastic preparations:

In obedience to the Books of Destiny, some strange and unusual sacrifices were made, human sacrifices amongst them. A Gaulish man and a Gaulish woman and a Greek man and a Greek woman were buried alive under the Forum Boarium...They were lowered into a stone vault, which had on a previous occasion also been polluted by human victims, a practice most repulsive to Roman feelings. When the gods were believed to be duly propitiated...Armour, weapons, and other things of the kind were ordered to be in readiness, and the ancient spoils gathered from the enemy were taken down from the temples and colonnades. The dearth of freemen necessitated a new kind of enlistment; 8,000 sturdy youths from amongst the slaves were armed at the public cost, after they had each been asked whether they were willing to serve or no. These soldiers were preferred, as there would be an opportunity of ransoming them when taken prisoners at a lower price.[196]



 Mosaic depicting a gladiators fight. The House of the Gladiators, Kourion, Cyprus.
The account notes, uncomfortably, the proximity of recent human sacrifice. While the Senate mustered their willing slaves, Hannibal offered his dishonoured Roman captives a chance for honourable death, in what Livy describes as something very like the Roman munus. The munus thus represented an essentially military, self-sacrificial ideal, taken to extreme fulfillment in the gladiator's oath.[173] By the devotio of a voluntary oath, a slave might achieve the quality of a Roman (Romanitas), become the embodiment of true virtus (manliness, or manly virtue), and paradoxically, be granted missio while remaining a slave.[130] The gladiator as a specialist fighter, and the ethos and organization of the gladiator schools, would inform the development of the Roman military as the most effective force of its time.[197] In 107 BCE, the Marian Reforms established the Roman army as a professional body. Two years later, following its defeat at Arausio:

...weapons training was given to soldiers by P. Rutilius, consul with C. Mallis. For he, following the example of no previous general, with teachers summoned from the gladiatorial training school of C. Aurelus Scaurus, implanted in the legions a more sophisticated method of avoiding and dealing a blow and mixed bravery with skill and skill back again with virtue so that skill became stronger by bravery's passion and passion became more wary with the knowledge of this art.[24]
The military were great aficionados of the games, and supervised the schools. Many schools and amphitheatres were sited at or near military barracks, and some provincial army units owned gladiator troupes.[198] As the Republic wore on, the term of military service increased from ten to the sixteen years formalised by Augustus in the Principate. It would rise to twenty, and later, to twenty five years. Roman military discipline was ferocious; severe enough to provoke mutiny, despite the consequences. A career as a volunteer gladiator may have seemed an attractive option for some.[199]
In the Year of the Four Emperors, Otho's troops at Bedriacum included 2000 gladiators. Opposite him on the field, Vitellius's army was swollen by levies of slaves, plebs and gladiators.[200] In 167 CE, troop depletions by plague and desertion may have prompted Marcus Aurelius to draft gladiators at his own expense.[201] During the Civil Wars that led to the Principate, Octavian (later Augustus) acquired the personal gladiator troop of his erstwhile opponent, Mark Antony. They had served their late master with exemplary loyalty but thereafter, they disappear from the record.[66]
Religion, ethics and sentiment[edit]
Roman writing as a whole demonstrates a deep ambivalence towards the gladiatoria munera. Even the most complex and sophisticated munera of the Imperial era evoked the ancient, ancestral dii manes of the underworld and were framed by the protective, lawful rites of sacrificium. Their popularity made their co-option by the state inevitable; Cicero acknowledged their sponsorship as a political imperative.[202] Despite the popular adulation of gladiators, they were set apart, despised; and despite Cicero's contempt for the mob, he shared their admiration: "Even when [gladiators] have been felled, let alone when they are standing and fighting, they never disgrace themselves. And suppose a gladiator has been brought to the ground, when do you ever see one twist his neck away after he has been ordered to extend it for the death blow?" His own death would later emulate this example.[203][204] Yet, Cicero could also refer to his popularist opponent Clodius, publicly and scathingly, as a bustuarius – literally, a "funeral-man", implying that Clodius has shown the moral temperament of the lowest sort of gladiator. Such finer distinctions aside, "gladiator" could be (and was) used as an insult throughout the Roman period.[205] Silius Italicus wrote, as the games approached their peak, that the degenerate Campanians had devised the very worst of precedents, which now threatened the moral fabric of Rome: "It was their custom to enliven their banquets with bloodshed and to combine with their feasting the horrid sight of armed men fighting; often the combatants fell dead above the very cups of the revelers, and the tables were stained with streams of blood. Thus demoralised was Capua."[206] Death might be rightly meted out as punishment, or met with equanimity in peace or war as a gift of fate, but if it was inflicted as a form of secular entertainment, with no underlying moral or religious purpose, it could only pollute and demean those who witnessed it.[207]



 Detail of the Gladiator Mosaic, 4th century CE.
The munus itself could be interpreted as pious necessity, but its increasing luxury corroded Roman virtue, and created an un-Roman appetite for profligacy and self-indulgence.[208] Caesar's 46 BCE ludi were hardly justified as munus after a 20 year interval since his father's death, in which case they were mere entertainment for political gain, a waste of lives, and of money, better doled out to needy army veterans.[209] Yet for Seneca, and for Marcus Aurelius – both professed Stoics – the degradation of gladiators in the munus highlighted their Stoic virtues: their unconditional obedience to their master and to fate, and equanimity in the face of death. Having "neither hope nor illusions", the gladiator could transcend his own debased nature, and disempower death itself by meeting it face to face. Courage, dignity, altruism and loyalty were morally redemptive; Lucian idealised this principle in his story of Sisinnes, who voluntarily fought as a gladiator, earned 10,000 drachmas and used it to buy freedom for his friend, Toxaris.[210] Seneca had a lower opinion of the mob's un-Stoical appetite for ludi meridiani: "Man [is]...now slaughtered for jest and sport; and those whom it used to be unholy to train for the purpose of inflicting and enduring wounds are thrust forth exposed and defenceless."[173]
These accounts seek a higher moral meaning from the munus, but Ovid's very detailed (though satirical) instructions for seduction in the amphitheatre suggest that the spectacles could generate a potent and dangerously sexual atmosphere.[119] Augustan seating prescriptions placed women – excepting the Vestals, who were legally inviolate – as far as possible from the action of the arena floor; or tried to. There remained the thrilling possibility of clandestine sexual transgression by high-caste spectators and their heroes of the arena. Such assignations were a source for gossip and satire but some became unforgivably public:[211]

What was the youthful charm that so fired Eppia? What hooked her? What did she see in him to make her put up with being called "the gladiator's moll"? Her poppet, her Sergius, was no chicken, with a dud arm that prompted hope of early retirement. Besides his face looked a proper mess, helmet-scarred, a great wart on his nose, an unpleasant discharge always trickling from one eye. But he was a gladiator. That word makes the whole breed seem handsome, and made her prefer him to her children and country, her sister, her husband. Steel is what they fall in love with.[212]
Eppia – a senator's wife – and her Sergius eloped to Egypt, where he deserted her. Most gladiators would have aimed lower. Two wall graffiti in Pompeii describe Celadus the Thraex as "the sigh of the girls" and "the glory of the girls" – which may or may not have been Celadus' own wishful thinking.[213]
In the later Imperial era, Servius Maurus Honoratus uses the same disparaging term as Cicero – bustuarius – for gladiators.[214] Tertullian used it somewhat differently – all victims of the arena were sacrificial in his eyes – and expressed the paradox of the arenarii as a class, from a Christian viewpoint:

On the one and the same account they glorify them and they degrade and diminish them; yes, further, they openly condemn them to disgrace and civil degradation; they keep them religiously excluded from council chamber, rostrum, senate, knighthood, and every other kind of office and a good many distinctions. The perversity of it! They love whom they lower; they despise whom they approve; the art they glorify, the artist they disgrace.[215]
Very little evidence survives for the religious beliefs of gladiators as a class, or their expectations of an afterlife. Modern scholarship offers little support for the once-prevalent notion that gladiators, along with venatores and bestiarii were personally or professionally dedicated to the cult of Nemesis. Rather, she seems to have been associated with Imperial power, and thus with the arena as a place of Imperial justice and retribution. One gladiator's tomb dedication clearly states that her decisions are not to be trusted.[216]
Gladiators in Roman art and culture[edit]

In this new Play, I attempted to follow the old custom of mine, of making a fresh trial; I brought it on again. In the first Act I pleased; when in the meantime a rumor spread that gladiators were about to be exhibited; the populace flock together, make a tumult, clamor aloud, and fight for their places: meantime, I was unable to maintain my place.[217]



 Part of the Gladiator Mosaic, displayed at the Galleria Borghese. It dates from approximately 320 CE. The Ø symbol (possibly Greek theta, for thanatos) marks a gladiator killed in combat.
Images of gladiators could be found throughout the Republic and Empire, among all classes. Walls in the 2nd century BCE "Italian Agora" at Delos were decorated with paintings of gladiators. Mosaics dating from the 2nd through 4th centuries CE have been invaluable in the reconstruction of combat and its rules, gladiator types and the development of the munus. Throughout the Roman world, ceramics, lamps, gems and jewellery, mosaics, reliefs, wall paintings and statuary offer evidence, sometimes the best evidence, of the clothing, props, equipment, names, events, prevalence and rules of gladiatorial combat. Earlier periods provide only occasional, perhaps exceptional examples.[86][218] The Gladiator Mosaic in the Galleria Borghese displays several gladiator types, and the Bignor Roman Villa mosaic from Provincial Britain shows Cupids as gladiators. Souvenir ceramics were produced depicting named gladiators in combat; similar images of higher quality, were available on more expensive articles in high quality ceramic, glass or silver.
Pliny the Elder gives vivid examples of the popularity of gladiator portraiture in Antium and an artistic treat laid on by an adoptive aristocrat for the solidly plebeian citizens of the Roman Aventine:

When a freedman of Nero was giving a gladiatorial show at Antium, the public porticoes were covered with paintings, so we are told, containing life-like portraits of all the gladiators and assistants. This portraiture of gladiators has been the highest interest in art for many centuries now, but it was Gaius Terentius who began the practice of having pictures made of gladiatorial shows and exhibited in public; in honour of his grandfather who had adopted him he provided thirty pairs of Gladiators in the Forum for three consecutive days, and exhibited a picture of the matches in the Grove of Diana.[219]
Modern reconstructions[edit]
Further information: Roman-era historical reenactment, Combat reenactment, and Historical European martial arts#Antiquity



Gladiator show fight in Trier in 2005.



Nimes, 2005.



Carnuntum, Austria, 2007.


File:Villa-borg-2011-gladiatoren1.ogg

Video of a show fight at the Roman Villa Borg, Germany, in 2011 (Retarius vs. Secutor, Thraex vs. Murmillo).

See also[edit]

Portal icon Classical Civilisation portal
 Wikimedia Commons has media related to Gladiator games reenactments.
Gladiatrix
List of Roman amphitheatres
List of Roman gladiator types
Military of ancient Rome
Slavery in ancient Rome
Sword and Sandal
Aztec gladiatorial sacrifice
References[edit]
Citations[edit]
1.Jump up ^ Welch 2007, p. 17; Kyle 1998, p. 82.
2.Jump up ^ Welch 2007, pp. 16–17. Nicolaus cites Posidonius's support for a Celtic origin and Hermippus' for a Mantinean (therefore Greek) origin.
3.Jump up ^ Futrell 2006, pp. 4–7. Futrell is citing Livy, 9.40.17.
4.Jump up ^ Futrell 2006, pp. 14–15.
5.Jump up ^ Welch 2007, p. 11.
6.Jump up ^ Welch 2007, p. 18; Futrell 2006, pp. 3–5.
7.Jump up ^ Futrell 2006, p. 4; Potter & Mattingly 1999, p. 226.
8.Jump up ^ Potter & Mattingly 1999, p. 226. Paestum was colonized by Rome in 273 BCE.
9.Jump up ^ Welch 2007, pp. 15, 18.
10.Jump up ^ Welch 2007, pp. 18–19. Livy's account (summary 16) places beast-hunts and gladiatorial munera within this single munus; see munus entry at Wiktionary.
11.Jump up ^ Welch 2007, p. 19. Welch is citing Ausanius: Seneca simply says they were "war captives".
12.Jump up ^ Wiedemann 1992, p. 33; Kyle 1998, p. 2; Kyle 2007, p. 273. Evidence of "Samnite" as an insult in earlier writings fades as Samnium is absorbed into the Republic.
13.Jump up ^ Quoted in Futrell 2006, pp. 4–5.
14.Jump up ^ Kyle 1998, p. 67 (Note #84). Livy's published works are often embellished with illustrative rhetorical detail.
15.Jump up ^ The velutes and later, the provocatores were exceptions, but as "historicised" rather than contemporary Roman types. See Gladiator types.
16.Jump up ^ Kyle 1998, pp. 80–81.
17.Jump up ^ Welch 2007, p. 21. Welch is citing Livy, 23.30.15. The Aemilii Lepidii were one of the most important families in Rome at the time, and probably owned a gladiator school (ludus).
18.^ Jump up to: a b Futrell 2006, pp. 8–9.
19.Jump up ^ Futrell 2006, p. 30.
20.Jump up ^ Livy, 39.46.2.
21.Jump up ^ Silius Italicus quoted in Futrell 2006, pp. 4–5.
22.Jump up ^ Welch 2007, p. 21.
23.Jump up ^ Livy, Annal for the Year 174 BCE (cited in Welch 2007, p. 21).
24.^ Jump up to: a b Wiedemann 1992, pp. 6–7. Wiedemann is citing Valerius Maximus, 2.3.2.
25.Jump up ^ Lintott 2004, p. 183.
26.Jump up ^ The "games" and "schools" were both ludi (s.ludus).
27.Jump up ^ Mouritsen 2001, p. 97; Coleman 1990, p. 50.
28.Jump up ^ Kyle 2007, p. 287; Mouritsen 2001, pp. 32, 109–111. Approximately 12% of Rome's adult male population could actually vote.
29.Jump up ^ Kyle 2007, p. 285.
30.Jump up ^ Kyle 2007, p. 287. Caesar brought his Capua-based gladiators to Rome.
31.Jump up ^ Futrell 2006, p. 24. Gladiator gangs were used by Caesar and others to overawe and "persuade".
32.Jump up ^ Mouritsen 2001, p. 61. Gladiators could be enrolled into noble households; some household slaves may have been raised and trained for this.
33.Jump up ^ Mouritsen 2001, p. 97. For more details see Plutarch's Julius Caesar, 5.4.
34.Jump up ^ Kyle 2007, pp. 285–287. See also Pliny's Historia Naturalis, 33.16.53.
35.Jump up ^ Kyle 2007, pp. 280, 287.
36.Jump up ^ Wiedemann 1992, pp. 8–10.
37.Jump up ^ Welch 2007, p. 21. Antiochus IV Epiphanes of Greece was keen to upstage his Roman allies, but to save costs, all his gladiators were local volunteers.
38.Jump up ^ Kyle 2007, p. 280. Kyle is citing Cicero's Lex Tullia Ambitu.
39.Jump up ^ Richlin 1992, Shelby Brown, "Death as Decoration: Scenes of the Arena on Roman Domestic Mosaics", p. 184.
40.Jump up ^ Wiedemann 1992, p. 45. Wiedemann is citing Cassius Dio, 54.2.3–4.
41.Jump up ^ Prices in denarii cited in "Venationes," Encyclopaedia Romana.
42.Jump up ^ US $ equivalents are very approximate, linked to US$ value in 2000 CE. Roman prices of wheat, wine and meat imply the as (211 BCE-301 CE) and nummus (301 CE – 475 CE) as equivalent to the US dollar in purchasing power, and by conversion, the denarius at around $10 in 200 BCE, $20 at the height of the munera, and $25 in 300 CE (Source).
43.Jump up ^ Auguet 1994, p. 30. Augustus's games each involved an average 625 gladiator pairs.
44.Jump up ^ Richlin 1992, Shelby Brown, "Death as Decoration: Scenes of the Arena on Roman Domestic Mosaics", p. 181. Brown is citing Dio Cassius, 68.15.
45.Jump up ^ Futrell 2006, p. 48.
46.Jump up ^ Mattern 2002, pp. 130–131.
47.Jump up ^ Auguet 1994, pp. 30, 32.
48.Jump up ^ Tertullian. De Spectaculis, 22.
49.Jump up ^ Saint Augustine, Confessions, 6.8.
50.Jump up ^ Constantine, 9.18.1 and 15.12.1 (see also Edwards 2007, p. 215).
51.Jump up ^ Carter 2004, p. 43.
52.Jump up ^ See Tertullian's Apologetics, 49.4 for Tertullian's condemnation of officials who sought their own "glory" by sponsoring the martyrdom of Christians.
53.Jump up ^ Kyle 1998, p. 78. Compared to "pagan" noxii, Christian deaths in the arena would have been few.
54.Jump up ^ Codex Theodosianus, 9.40.8 and 15.9.1; Symacchus. Relatio, 8.3.
55.Jump up ^ Codex Theodosianus, 2.8.19 and 2.8.22.
56.Jump up ^ Telemachus had personally stepped in to prevent the munus. See Theoderet's Historia Ecclesiastica, 5.26.
57.Jump up ^ Codex Justinianus, 3.12.9.
58.Jump up ^ Alison E. Cooley and MGL Cooley, Pompeii, A Sourcebook, Routledge, 2004, p. 218.
59.Jump up ^ Wiedemann 1992, pp. 11–12.
60.Jump up ^ Josephus. The Jewish War, 6.418, 7.37–40; Kyle 1998, p. 93. noxii were the most obnoxious of criminal categories in Roman law.
61.Jump up ^ Futrell 2006, pp. 120–125.
62.Jump up ^ Ludus meant both a game and a school — see entries 1 to 2.C, at Lewis and Short (Perseus Project).
63.Jump up ^ Futrell 2006, p. 124. See also Cassius Dio's accusation of entrapment by informers to provide "arena slaves" under Claudius; Futrell 2006, p. 103. "the best gladiators", Futrell citing Petronius's Satyricon, 45.
64.Jump up ^ Suetonius. Lives, "Tiberius", 7.
65.Jump up ^ Suetonius. Lives, "Nero", 30.
66.^ Jump up to: a b Futrell 2006, p. 129. Futrell is citing Cassius Dio.
67.^ Jump up to: a b Futrell 2006, pp. 153–156.
68.Jump up ^ Wiedemann 1992, p. 112; Jacobelli 2003, p. 17, citing Cassius Dio, 62.3.1.
69.Jump up ^ Jacobelli 2003, p. 17, citing Juvenal's Saturae, 1.22–1.23.
70.Jump up ^ Jacobelli 2003, p. 18, citing Petronius's Satyricon, 45.7.
71.Jump up ^ Jacobelli 2003, p. 18, citing Dio Cassius 67.8.4, Suetonius's Domitianus 4.2, and Statius's Silvae 1.8.51–1.8.56.
72.^ Jump up to: a b Jacobelli 2003, p. 18; Potter 2010, p. 408.
73.Jump up ^ Potter 2010, p. 408.
74.Jump up ^ Potter 2010, p. 407.
75.Jump up ^ Jacobelli 2003, p. 18, citing Dio Cassius 75.16.
76.Jump up ^ Potter 2010, p. 407, citing Dio Cassius 75.16.1.
77.Jump up ^ Barton 1993, p. 66.
78.Jump up ^ Fox 2006, p. 576. Fox is citing Pliny.
79.Jump up ^ Futrell 2006, p. 158.
80.Jump up ^ Gibbon & Womersley 2000, p. 118.
81.Jump up ^ Cassius Dio. Commodus, 73 (Epitome). Commodus was posthumously declared a public enemy but later deified.
82.^ Jump up to: a b Kyle 1998, p. 80.
83.^ Jump up to: a b Futrell 2006, p. 43.
84.Jump up ^ Wiedemann 1992, pp. 440–446.
85.Jump up ^ Mattern 2002, p. 2. Such accounts were mostly written by members of Rome's elite to illustrate a moral point, or to celebrate the exceptional.
86.^ Jump up to: a b Richlin 1992, Shelby Brown, "Death As Decoration: Scenes of the Arena on Roman Domestic Mosaics", p. 181.
87.Jump up ^ Futrell 2006, pp. 85, 101, 110. Based on fragmentary Pompeian remains and citing of Pliny's Historia Naturalis, 19.23–25.
88.Jump up ^ Coleman, Kathleen (17 February 2011). "Gladiators: Heroes of the Roman Amphitheatre". BBC. Retrieved 4 March 2011.
89.Jump up ^ Plutarch. Moral Essays, 1099B (fully cited in Futrell 2006, pp. 86–87): "Even among the gladiators, I see those who...find greater pleasure in freeing their slaves, and commending their wives to their friends, than in satisfying their appetites."
90.^ Jump up to: a b Potter & Mattingly 1999, p. 313.
91.Jump up ^ Futrell 2006, p. 86. Gladiatorial banquet on mosaic, El Djem.
92.Jump up ^ Welch 2007, p. 23; Futrell 2006, p. 84.
93.Jump up ^ Futrell 2006, p. 85. See pompa circensis for the similar procession before games were held in the circus.
94.Jump up ^ Futrell 2006, p. 88.
95.Jump up ^ Futrell 2006, p. 91.
96.Jump up ^ Futrell 2006, pp. 94–95. Futrell is citing Seneca's On Providence, 3.4.
97.Jump up ^ Wisdom & McBride 2001, p. 18. Author's drawing.
98.Jump up ^ Carter 2004, pp. 43, 46–49. In the Eastern provinces of the later Imperium, the state archiereis combined the roles of editor, Imperial cult priest and lanista, giving gladiatoria munera in which the use of sharp weapons seems an exceptional honour.
99.Jump up ^ Marcus Aurelius encouraged the use of blunted weapons: see Cassius Dio's Roman History, 71.29.4.
100.Jump up ^ Futrell 2006, pp. 99–100; Wiedemann 1992, p. 14.
101.Jump up ^ Fagan, pp. 225 - 226, and footnotes.
102.Jump up ^ Wiedemann 1992, pp. 15–16.
103.Jump up ^ Wiedemann 1992, p. 15. Wiedemann is citing Kraus and von Matt's Pompei and Herculaneum, New York, 1975, Fig. 53.
104.Jump up ^ Futrell 2006, p. 141.
105.Jump up ^ Compensation could be "some fifty times higher than the lease price" of the gladiator; see M. J. Carter, "Gladiatorial Combat: The Rules of Engagement", The Classical Journal, Vol. 102, No. 2 (Dec. – Jan., 2006/2007), p. 101.
106.Jump up ^ Futrell 2006, pp. 144–145. Futrell is citing Suetonius's Lives, "Augustus", 45, "Caligula", 30, "Claudius", 34.
107.Jump up ^ Fagan, Garrett (2011). The Lure of the Arena: Social Psychology and the Crowd at the Roman Games. Pp. 217 - 218, 273, 277: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 9780521196161. Fagan speculates that Nero was perversely defying the crowd's expectations, or perhaps trying to please a different kind of crowd.
108.Jump up ^ Futrell 2006, p. 101.
109.Jump up ^ Even more rarely, perhaps uniquely, a stalemate ended in the killing of one gladiator by the editor himself; Futrell 2006, p. 102 (The evidence is on a stylised mosaic from Symmachus; spectators praise the editor for "doing the right thing").
110.Jump up ^ Futrell 2006, p. 101. Based on mosaics and a Pompeian tomb relief.
111.Jump up ^ Futrell 2006, p. 145.
112.Jump up ^ Futrell 2006, p. 85. This is evidenced on a roughly inscribed libellus.
113.Jump up ^ Potter & Mattingly 1999, p. 313 lightly armed and armoured fighters would tire less rapidly than their heavily armed opponents.
114.Jump up ^ Kyle 2007, pp. 313–314.
115.Jump up ^ Martial. Liber de Spectaculis, 29.
116.Jump up ^ Kyle 2007, p. 112. Kyle is citing Robert.
117.Jump up ^ Examples are in Martial's Epigrams 14, 213 and Suetonius's Caligula.
118.Jump up ^ Also scutarii or secutoriani.
119.^ Jump up to: a b c Futrell 2006, p. 105.
120.Jump up ^ Kyle 1998, p. 111.
121.Jump up ^ Suetonius. Lives, "Caligula", 30.3.
122.Jump up ^ Futrell 2006, pp. 107–108. See also Tacitus's Annals, 14.17.
123.Jump up ^ Kyle 2007, p. 238.
124.Jump up ^ Futrell 2006, pp. 85, 149; Auguet 1994, p. 31.
125.Jump up ^ Ulpian. Edict, Book 6; Futrell 2006, pp. 137–138. Futrell is citing Digest, 3.1.1.6.
126.Jump up ^ Cicero. Letters, 10.
127.Jump up ^ Kyle 2007, pp. 285–287, 312. This had probably began under Augustus.
128.Jump up ^ Futrell 2006, p. 103. Futrell is citing Petronius's Satyricon, 45.133.
129.Jump up ^ Futrell 2006, p. 133. See also Tiberius's inducement to re-enlist.
130.^ Jump up to: a b Petronius. Satyricon, 117: "He vows to endure to be burned, to be bound, to be beaten, and to be killed by the sword."
131.Jump up ^ Futrell 2006, p. 138.
132.Jump up ^ palus: named after the training poles, 6 Roman feet high, erected in the training arena.
133.Jump up ^ Futrell 2006, p. 137. Futrell is citing Quintilian's Oratorical Institute, 5.13.54; Futrell 2006, p. 140. Futrell is citing Cicero's Tuscullan Disputations, 2.17; Futrell 2006, p. 139. Futrell is citing Epictetus's Discourse, 3.15.
134.Jump up ^ Jones 1987, pp. 139–155. Facial stigmata represented extreme social degradation.
135.Jump up ^ Futrell 2006, p. 142. Futrell is citing Juvenal's Satire, 6 [Oxford Fragment 7.13], in the translation of Peter Green.
136.Jump up ^ Welch 2007, p. 17. The burning alive of a soldier who refused to become an auctoratus at a Spanish school in 43 BCE is exceptional only because he was a citizen, technically exempt from such compulsion and penalty.
137.Jump up ^ Futrell 2006, pp. 148–149.
138.Jump up ^ Curry 2008. Gladiators were sometimes called hordearii ("eaters of barley)". Romans considered barley inferior to wheat — a punishment for legionaries replaced their wheat ration with it — but it was thought to strengthen the body and lay on subcutaneous fat.
139.Jump up ^ Follain, John (15 December 2002). "The dying game: How did the gladiators really live?". Times Online. Retrieved 24 March 2009.
140.Jump up ^ Futrell 2006, pp. 141–142; Carter 2004, pp. 41–68.
141.Jump up ^ Borkowski & du Plessis 2005, p. 80.
142.Jump up ^ Borkowski & du Plessis 2005. Manumission was seldom absolute. Terms of release were negotiated between master and slave; Digests 28.3.6.5–6 and 48.19.8.11–12.
143.Jump up ^ Futrell 2006, p. 123. Futrell is citing Ulpian's 8th book of Proconsular Functions, CMRL, 11.7.
144.Jump up ^ Richlin 1992, Shelby Brown, "Death as Decoration: Scenes of the Arena on Roman Domestic Mosaics", p. 185.
145.Jump up ^ Borkowski & du Plessis 2005, Preface, p. 81.
146.Jump up ^ Coleman 1990, p. 46.
147.Jump up ^ Wiedemann 1992, pp. 40–46.
148.Jump up ^ Apuleius. Metamorphoses, 4.13; Coleman 1990, p. 71; Richlin 1992, Shelby Brown, "Death as Decoration: Scenes of the Arena on Roman Domestic Mosaics", p. 185.
149.Jump up ^ Kyle 1998, p. 94. Survival and "promotion" would have been extremely rare for damnati – and unheard of for noxii – notwithstanding Aulus Gellius's tale of Androcles.
150.Jump up ^ Futrell 2006, p. 157.
151.Jump up ^ Smith, William. A Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities. London: John Murray, 1875, "Roman Law – Infamia".
152.Jump up ^ Futrell 2006, p. 131. Futrell is citing Tertullian's De Speculates, 22.
153.Jump up ^ Futrell 2006, pp. 86–87. Futrell is citing Plutarch's Moral Essays, 1099B.
154.Jump up ^ Carter 2004, pp. 52–56.
155.Jump up ^ Richlin 1992, Shelby Brown, "Death as Decoration: Scenes of the Arena on Roman Domestic Mosaics", p. 186.
156.Jump up ^ D.38.1.38 pr in Borkowski & du Plessis 2005, p. 95.
157.Jump up ^ Barton 1993, p. 25. Barton is citing Cassius Dio, 43.23.4–5; Suetonius, in Caesar 39.1, adds the two Senators.
158.Jump up ^ Kyle 1998, pp. 115–116 (Note #102). Futrell 2006, pp. 153, 156. Under Caligula, participation by men and women of senatorial rank may have been encouraged, and sometimes enforced; Cassius Dio, 59.10, 13–14 and Tacitus, Caligula, 15.32.
159.Jump up ^ Barton 1993, p. 25. Barton is citing Cassius Dio, 56.25.7.
160.Jump up ^ David Potter (trans.), "The Senatus Consultum from Larinium".
161.Jump up ^ Futrell 2006, p. 153. Futrell is citing Cassius Dio, 62.17.3; see Cassius Dio, 59.10.13–14 and Tacitus's Caligula, 15.32 for Caligula's extraordinary behaviour as editor; Valentinian/Theodosius, 15.9.1; Symacchus, Relatio, 8.3.
162.Jump up ^ Barton 1993, p. 26. Barton is citing Juvenal, 8.199ff.
163.Jump up ^ Plutarch. Caius Gracchus, 12.3–4.
164.Jump up ^ Some Roman writers interpret the earliest attempts to provide permanent venues as populist political graft, rightly blocked by the Senate as morally objectionable; too-frequent, excessively "luxurious" munera would corrode traditional Roman values. The provision of permanent seating was thought a particularly objectionable luxury. See Appian, The Civil Wars, 128; Livy, Perochiae, 48.
165.Jump up ^ Mouritsen 2001, p. 82.
166.Jump up ^ Futrell 2006, p. 136. Futrell is citing Martial's Epigrams, 5.24.
167.Jump up ^ Welch 2007, p. 197. Welch is citing CIL, X.852.
168.Jump up ^ Potter & Mattingly 1999, p. 226. Potter and Mattingly are citing Pliny the Elder, 36.117.
169.Jump up ^ Potter & Mattingly 1999, p. 226 (see also Pliny's Natural History, 36.113–5). The amphitheatre was commissioned by T. Statilius Taurus. According to Pliny, its three storeys were marble-clad, housed 3,000 bronze statues and seated 80,000 spectators. It was probably wooden-framed in part.
170.Jump up ^ Mattern 2002, pp. 151–152.
171.Jump up ^ Richlin 1992, Shelby Brown, "Death As Decoration: Scenes of the Arena on Roman Domestic Mosaics", pp. 184–185. Even emperors who disliked munera were thus obliged to attend them.
172.Jump up ^ Futrell 2006, pp. 37–42, 105.
173.^ Jump up to: a b c Kyle 1998, p. 3.
174.Jump up ^ Suetonius. Lives, "Augustus", 44.
175.Jump up ^ Futrell 2006, p. 140. Futrell is citing Cicero's Tuscullan Disputations, 2.17.
176.Jump up ^ Wiedemann 1992, pp. 38–39.
177.Jump up ^ Edwards 2007, pp. 66–67.
178.Jump up ^ Curry 2008. Marks on the bones of several gladiators suggest a sword thrust into the base of the throat and down towards the heart.
179.Jump up ^ By Tertullian's time, Mercury's identification with Hermes psychopompos (who led souls to the underworld) was well established. Tertullian describes these events as examples of hollow impiety; Rome's false deities are acceptably impersonated by low and murderous persons for the purposes of human sacrifice and evil entertainment. See Kyle 1998, pp. 155–168.
180.Jump up ^ Grossschmidt & Kanz 2006, pp. 207–216.
181.Jump up ^ Kyle 1998, pp. 155–168. Dis Pater and Jupiter Latiaris rituals in Tertullian's Ad Nationes, 1.10.47.
182.Jump up ^ Tertullian describes the offering of a fallen gladiator's blood to Jupiter Latiaris by an officiating priest – a travesty of the offering of the blood of martyrs – but places this within a munus (or a festival) dedicated to Jupiter Latiaris. Tertullian may have mistaken or reinterpreted what he saw: no such practice is otherwise recorded.
183.Jump up ^ Futrell 2006, p. 144. Futrell is citing George Ville.
184.Jump up ^ Junkelmann 2000, p. 145.
185.Jump up ^ Hopkins & Beard 2005, pp. 92–94.
186.Jump up ^ Kyle 1998, p. 14 (including note #74). Kyle contextualises Juvenal's panem et circenses – bread and games as a sop to the politically apathetic plebs (Satires, 4.10)  – within an account of the death and damnatio of Sejanus, whose body was torn to pieces by the crowd and left unburied.
187.Jump up ^ Suetonius. Lives, "Tiberius", 75. Suetonius has the populace wish Tiberius's body to be thrown in the Tiber, or left unburied, or "dragged with the hook", as a form of posthumous damnatio.
188.Jump up ^ Kyle 1998, pp. 128–159.
189.Jump up ^ Futrell 2006, pp. 133, 149–153. The single name form on a gladiator memorial probably indicates a slave, two a freedman or discharged auctoratus and the very rare "tria nomina" a freedman or a full Roman citizen. See also vroma.org on Roman names.
190.Jump up ^ Futrell 2006, p. 149. Futrell is citing Robert, #12, #24, and #109.
191.Jump up ^ Futrell 2006, p. 149. Futrell is citing Robert, #34.
192.Jump up ^ Livy, 45.32–3.
193.Jump up ^ Kyle 1998, p. 81. It was notably fulfilled and celebrated in the battlefield devotio of two consular Decii; firstly by the father and later by his son.
194.Jump up ^ Edwards 2007, pp. 19–45; Livy, 22.51.5–8, has wounded Romans at Cannae stretch out their necks for the death blow by comrades: cf Cicero's death in Seneca's Suasoriae, 6.17.
195.Jump up ^ Welch 2007, p. 17.
196.Jump up ^ Livy, 22.55–57.
197.Jump up ^ Barton 1993, p. 15; Kyle 2007, p. 274.
198.Jump up ^ Wiedemann 1992, p. 45.
199.Jump up ^ Mattern 2002, pp. 126–128. Mattern is citing Tacitus's Annals, 1.17.
200.Jump up ^ Mattern 2002, p. 87. Mattern is citing Cassius Dio, 72, 73.2.3.
201.Jump up ^ Mattern 2002, p. 87.
202.Jump up ^ Futrell 2006, p. 16. Futrell is citing Cicero's Letters to Friends, 2.3.
203.Jump up ^ Cicero's admiration: Tusculan Disputations, 2.41.
204.Jump up ^ Barton 1993, p. 39. Barton is citing Seneca's Suasoriae, 6.17 for Cicero's death.
205.Jump up ^ Kyle 2007, p. 273. For bustuarius, with reference to Clodius's alleged impious disturbance at the funeral of Marius, see Cicero's In Pisonem (Against Piso). See Bagnani 1956, p. 26, for the bustuarius as a lower class of gladiator than one employed in the public munus. Cicero's unflattering references to Marcus Antonius as gladiator is in his 2nd Phillipic.
206.Jump up ^ Silius Italicus, 11.51 (cited in Welch 2007, p. 3).
207.Jump up ^ Richlin 1992, Shelby Brown, "Death As Decoration: Scenes of the Arena on Roman Domestic Mosaics", p. 185. Tacitus, in Annals 15.44, describes public reactions against Nero's punishment of Christians, because the emperor's actions were based on a personal appetite for cruelty, rather than recognition of the public good.
208.Jump up ^ Futrell 2006, p. 4. Roman commentators associated munera with Capua's proverbial luxury and excess.
209.Jump up ^ Cassius Dio, 43.24.
210.Jump up ^ Barton 1993, p. 16; Futrell 2006, p. 154. Futrell is citing Lucian's Toxaris, 58–59.
211.Jump up ^ Kyle 1998, p. 85. This should be considered scandalous and noteworthy, rather than common.
212.Jump up ^ Juvenal. Satires, 6.102ff.
213.Jump up ^ Futrell 2006, p. 146. Futrell is citing Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum, 4.4342 and 4.4345.
214.Jump up ^ Servius. Commentary on the "Aeneid" of Vergil, 10.519.
215.Jump up ^ Tertullian. De Spectaculis, 22; Kyle 1998, p. 80. Bustuarius is found in Tertullian's De Spectaculis, 11.
216.Jump up ^ Nemesis, her devotees and her place in the Roman world are fully discussed, with examples, in Hornum, Michael B., Nemesis, the Roman state and the games, Brill, 1993.
217.Jump up ^ Terence. Hecyra, Prologue II.
218.Jump up ^ Welch 2007, p. 2.
219.Jump up ^ Pliny. Natural History, 30.32 (cited in Welch 2007, p. 21.
Sources[edit]
Auguet, Roland (1994). Cruelty and Civilization: The Roman Games. New York, New York: Routledge. ISBN 0-415-10452-1.
Bagnani, Gilbert (January 1956). "Encolpius Gladiator Obscenus". Classical Philology 51 (1): 24–27.
Barton, Carlin A. (1993). The Sorrows of the Ancient Romans: The Gladiator and the Monster. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press. ISBN 0-691-05696-X.
Borkowski, J. Andrew; du Plessis, Paul J. (2005). Textbook on Roman Law. Oxford, United Kingdom: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-927607-2.
Carter, Michael (2004). "Archiereis and Asiarchs: A Gladiatorial Perspective". Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies 44: 41–68.
Coleman, K. M. (1990). "Fatal Charades: Roman Executions Staged as Mythological Enactments". The Journal of Roman Studies 80: 44–73.
Curry, Andrew (November–December 2008). "The Gladiator Diet". Archaeology 61 (6). Retrieved 21 March 2009.
Edwards, Catherine (2007). Death in Ancient Rome. New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press. ISBN 0-300-11208-4.
Everitt, Anthony (2001). Cicero: The Life and Times of Rome's Greatest Politician. New York: Random House. ISBN 0-375-50746-9.
Fagan, Garrat G., The Lure of the Arena: Social Psychology and the Crowd at the Roman Games, Cambridge University Press, 2011.
Fox, Robin Lane (2006). The Classical World: An Epic History from Homer to Hadrian. New York: Basic Books. ISBN 0-465-02496-3.
Futrell, Alison (2006). A Sourcebook on the Roman Games. Oxford, United Kingdom: Blackwell Publishing. ISBN 1-4051-1568-8.
Gibbon, Edward; Womersley, David (2000). The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. New York, New York: Penguin. ISBN 0-14-043764-9.
Grant, Michael (2000). Gladiators. London, United Kingdom: Penguin Books. ISBN 0-14-029934-3.
Grossschmidt, K.; Kanz, Fabian (July 2006). "Head Injuries of Roman Gladiators". Forensic Science International (Vienna, Austria: Center of Anatomy and Cell-biology, Medical University of Vienna and Austrian Archaeological Institute) 160 (2–3): 207–216. doi:10.1016/j.forsciint.2005.10.010. PMID 16289900.
Hopkins, Keith; Beard, Mary (2005). The Colosseum. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. ISBN 0-674-01895-8.
Jacobelli, Luciana (2003). Gladiators at Pompeii. Los Angeles, California: Getty Publications. ISBN 0-89236-731-8.
Jones, C. P. (1987). ""Stigma": Tattooing and Branding in Graeco-Roman Antiquity". Journal of Roman Studies 77: 139–155.
Junkelmann, Marcus (2000). Das Spiel mit dem Tod: So Kämpften Roms Gladiatoren. Mainz, Germany: Verlag Philipp von Zabern. ISBN 3-8053-2563-0.
Köhne, Eckart; Ewigleben, Cornelia; Jackson, Ralph (2000). Gladiators and Caesars: The Power of Spectacle in Ancient Rome. Berkeley and Los Angeles, California: University of California Press. ISBN 0-520-22798-0.
Kyle, Donald G. (1998). Spectacles of Death in Ancient Rome. London, United Kingdom: Routledge. ISBN 0-415-09678-2.
Kyle, Donald G. (2007). Sport and Spectacle in the Ancient World. Oxford, United Kingdom: Blackwell Publishing. ISBN 0-631-22970-1.
Lintott, Andrew (2004). The Constitution of the Roman Republic. Oxford, United Kingdom: Clarendon Press. ISBN 0-19-926108-3.
Mattern, Susan P. (2002). Rome and the Enemy: Imperial Strategy in the Principate. Berkeley, California: University of California Press. ISBN 0-520-23683-1.
Millar, Fergus (1998). The Crowd in Rome in the Late Republic. Ann Arbor, Michigan: University of Michigan Press. ISBN 0-472-10892-1.
Mouritsen, Henrik (2001). Plebs and Politics in the Late Roman Republic. Cambridge, United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-79100-6.
Potter, David Stone (2010). A Companion to the Roman Empire. West Sussex, United Kingdom: Blackwell Publishing Limited (John Wiley and Sons). ISBN 1-4051-9918-0.
Potter, David Stone; Mattingly, D. J. (1999). Life, Death, and Entertainment in the Roman Empire. Ann Arbor, Michigan: University of Michigan Press. ISBN 0-472-10924-3.
Richlin, Amy (1992). "Death As Decoration: Scenes of the Arena on Roman Domestic Mosaics (Shelby Brown, pp. 180–211)". Pornography and Representation in Greece and Rome. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-506723-1.
Welch, Katherine E. (2007). The Roman Amphitheatre: From Its Origins to the Colosseum. Cambridge, United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-80944-4.
Wiedemann, Thomas (1992). Emperors and Gladiators. London, United Kingdom: Routledge. ISBN 0-415-12164-7.
Wisdom, Stephen; McBride, Angus (2001). Gladiators: 100 BC – AD 200. Oxford, United Kingdom: Osprey Publishing. ISBN 1-84176-299-7.
External links[edit]
 Wikimedia Commons has media related to Gladiator.
"Britannia Gladiators".
"Gladiators". Archaeology. Archaeological Institute of America. 2007. Retrieved 7 March 2011.
Grout, James (1997–2011). "The Roman Gladiator". Encyclopædia Romana – Notae: Essays on the History and Culture of Rome. Retrieved 7 March 2011.
Kupper, Monika; Jones, Huw (2 May 2007). Gladiator bones found in Turkey "Gladiators' graveyard discovered". BBC. Retrieved 7 March 2011.
    
 
There were many different types of gladiator in ancient Rome. Some of the first gladiators had been prisoners-of-war, and so some of the earliest types of gladiators, Gauls, Samnites, and Thraeces (Thracians) used their native weapons and armor. Different gladiators specialized in different weapons, and it was usual to pair off combatants with widely different, but more or less equivalent, equipment. As a rule gladiators only fought others from within the same school or troupe but sometimes specific gladiators could be requested to fight one from another troupe.
Forensic studies[1][2] have shown that as a rule gladiators fought to strict rules and barefooted.[3]
Elite gladiators wore specially made armour for the pre-game parade (Pompa). Julius Caesar's gladiators wore solid silver armour, Domitian's wore solid gold and Nero's wore armour decorated with carved amber. Peacock feathers were used for plumes while tunics and loincloths had patterns in gold thread. The gladiators changed into their combat armour for the actual fights although even the simplest were elaborately decorated. Reliefs and mosaics often show gladiators with various numbers of tassles hanging from one arm or leg. The reason for their use is unknown and historians speculate that they may have served as a "scorecard", indicating the number of fights a gladiator had won.[4]
During combat, musicians performed accompaniment that altered tempo to match that of the combat. Typical instruments were a long straight trumpet (tuba), a large curved brass instrument called the lituus, and a water organ (organum). During the Imperial period, the games might be preceded by the form of musical-comedy variety show known as mimus, with the performers sometimes costumed as animals. An image from Pompeii shows two figures labeled "flute playing bear" (Ursus tibicen) and "horn-blowing chicken" (Pullus cornicen), who may have been part of such a mimus.[5]


Gladiator types and associated personnel[edit]
The following list includes gladiators as typed by fighting style and equipment, general terms for gladiators, fighters associated with gladiatorial spectacles who were not strictly gladiatores, and personnel associated with training or presentation.
Andabata[edit]
The andabata fought blind and with his arms tied up, as he wore a helmet that deprived him of vision.[6] Cicero makes a joking reference to the andabata in a letter he wrote to his friend Trebatius Testa, who was stationed in Gaul. The passage associates the andabata loosely with essedarii, chariot fighters.[7] The Oxford Latin Dictionary regards the word as of dubious origin. Some have argued that it is a Latin borrowing from Gaulish.[8]
Arbelas[edit]
The arbelas is mentioned in only one source, a list of gladiators of the lanista C. Salvius Capito in the 1st century BC. The name arbelas comes from the arbelai, a crescent shaped knife that shoemakers used to cut leather. There are six known images that show a crescent shaped knife and they are only fighting against retiarii or against each other.[9] It may be the same as the scissor.
Bestiarius[edit]
The bestiarius was a beast-fighter. See also Damnatio ad bestias.
Bustuarius[edit]



 Detail from the Gladiator Mosaic (ca. 320 AD): the Ø symbol marks a gladiator killed in combat
The bustuarius was literally a "tomb fighter," from bustum, "tomb". The term points toward the association of gladiatorial combat with funeral games (munera), rather than a particular fighting style. Servius notes that it had once been "the custom to put captives to death at the graves of strong men, which later seemed a bit cruel, so it was decided to have gladiators fight at the tombs."[10]
Cestus[edit]
The cestus was a fist-fighter or boxer who wore the cestus, a brutal forerunner of the boxing glove.[citation needed]
Crupellarii[edit]
The Roman historian Tacitus describes "crupellarii" as a Gaulish contingent of trainee, slave gladiators equipped "after the national fashion" of Gallia Lugdunensis under Julius Sacrovir, during the Aeduian revolt of AD 21 against Rome. Tacitus has them "encased in the continuous shell of iron usual in the country", labouring under its weight, unable to fight effectively, rapidly tiring and soon dispatched by regular Roman troops. The description is problematic. Most Roman sources assert that "national fashion" in Gaul held body-armour in contempt. Tacitus' source could refer to a heavily armoured Roman "Gallus" type, which by Tacitus' own time had been developed and renamed as the Murmillo.[11]
Dimachaerus[edit]
The dimachaerus (Greek διμάχαιρος, "bearing two knives") used two swords, one in each hand.[12]
Editor[edit]
The sponsor who financed gladiatorial spectacles was the editor, "producer."[13]
Equites[edit]
Eques, plural equites, was the regular Latin word for a horseman or cavalryman. In early depictions, these lightly-armed gladiators wear scale armour, a medium-sized round cavalry shield (parma equestris), and a brimmed helmet without a crest, but with two decorative feathers. In Imperial times, they sport a manica on their right arm and sleeveless, belted tunics, in contrast to other gladiators who usually fought bare-chested, and no greaves. At the time of Isidore of Seville, the equites rode white horses and opened a day's program of fights (Origines 18.53ff.). They started on horseback, but after they had thrown their lance (hasta), they dismounted and continued to fight on foot with their short sword (gladius). Generally, equites only fought other equites.[14]
Essedarius[edit]
The essedarius (from the Latin word for a Celtic war-chariot, essedum) was likely first brought to Rome from Britain by Julius Caesar. Essedarii appear as arena-fighters in many inscriptions after the 1st century AD. No pictorial representations exist.[12]
Hoplomachus[edit]
The Hoplomachus (Greek "armed fighter") wore quilted, trouser-like leg wrappings, loincloth, a belt, a pair of long shin-guards or greaves, an arm guard (manica) on the sword-arm, and a brimmed helmet that could be adorned with a plume of feathers on top and a single feather on each side. He was equipped with a gladius and a very small, round shield. He also carried a spear, which the gladiator would have to cast before closing for hand-to-hand combat. The hoplomachi were paired against the Myrmillones or Thraeces. They may have developed out of the earlier '"Samnite" type after it became impolitic to use the names of now-allied peoples.[14]
Gladiatrix[edit]
Main article: Gladiatrix
A female gladiator of any type.
Lanista[edit]
The lanista was an owner-trainer of a troop of gladiators. He traded in slave gladiators, and rented those he owned out to a producer (editor) who was organizing games. The profession was often remunerative, but socially the lanista was on a par with a pimp (leno) as a "vendor of human flesh."[15]
Laquearius[edit]
The laquearius seems to have been a kind of retiarius who tried to catch his adversaries with a lasso (laqueus) instead of a net. He was equipped also with a dagger for use once he snared his opponent.[12]
Lorarius[edit]
The lorarius (from lorum, "leather thong, whip,") was an attendant who whipped reluctant combatants or animals into fighting.[16]

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 From left, a disarmed and surrendering retiarius and his secutor opponent, a thraex and murmillo, a hoplhus and murmillo (who is signalling his surrender), and the referee (Zliten mosaic, 200 AD)
Murmillo[edit]
The murmillo (plural murmillones) or myrmillo wore a helmet with a stylised fish on the crest (the mormylos or sea fish), as well as an arm guard (manica), a loincloth and belt, a gaiter on his right leg, thick wrappings covering the tops of his feet, and a very short greave with an indentation for the padding at the top of the feet. They are heavily armoured gladiators: the murmillo carried a gladius (64–81 cm long) and a tall, oblong shield in the legionary style. Murmillones were typically paired with Thraecis, but occasionally with the similar hoplomachi.[17]
Paegniarius[edit]
The paegniarius did not engage in serious combat with lethal weapons, but was rather an entertainer who performed "burlesque duels" during breaks. He had neither a helmet nor a shield, but wore protective wrappings on his lower legs and head.[18] He might thus enjoy a long life: an epitaph for a paegniarius named Secundus boasted that he had lived 99 years, 8 months, and 18 days.[19]
Provocator[edit]
In the late Republican and early Imperial era, the armament of a provocator ("challenger") mirrored legionary armature. In the later Imperial period, their armament ceased to reflect its military origins, and changes in armament followed changes in arena fashion only. Provocatores have been shown wearing a loincloth, a belt, a long greave on the left leg, a manica on the lower right arm, and a visored helmet without brim or crest, but with a feather on each side. They were the only gladiators protected by a breastplate (cardiophylax) which is usually rectangular, later often crescent-shaped. They fought with a tall, rectangular shield and the gladius. They were paired only against other provocatores.[20]
Retiarius[edit]
The retiarius ("net fighter") developed in the early Augustan period. He carried a trident, a dagger, and a net. The retiarius wore a loincloth held in place by a wide belt and a larger arm guard (manica) extending to the shoulder and left side of the chest. He fought without the protection of a helmet. Occasionally a metal shoulder shield (galerus) was added to protect the neck and lower face. A tombstone found in Romania shows a retiarius holding a dagger with four spikes (each at the corner of a square guard) instead of the usual bladed dagger. This was previously thought to be an artistic invention or perhaps a ceremonial weapon, but a recent discovery of a gladiator graveyard found that several of the remains had four odd-looking marks that form the outline of a square on their bones which is consistent with the use of such a weapon.[citation needed] A variation to the normal combat was a retiarius facing two secutores at the same time. The retiarus stood on a bridge or raised platform with stairs and had a pile of fist-sized stones to throw at his adversaries. While the retarius tried to keep them at bay, the secutores tried to scale the structure to attack him. The platform, called a pons (bridge), may have been constructed over water.[21] Retiarii usually fought Secutores but sometimes fought Myrmillones.[22] There was an effeminate class of gladiator who fought as a retiarius tunicatus. They wore tunics to distinguish them from the usual retiarius, and were looked on as a social class even lower than infamia.[23][24]
Rudiarius[edit]
A gladiator who had earned his freedom received a wooden sword (a rudis) or perhaps a wooden rod (a rudem, which was a "slender stick" used as a practice staff/sword). A wooden sword is widely assumed, however, Cicero in a letter speaks of a gladiator being awarded a rod in a context that suggests the latter: Tam bonus gladiator, rudem tam cito accepisti? (Being so good a gladiator, have you so quickly accepted the rod?) If he chose to remain a gladiator, he was called a rudiarius. These were very popular with the public as they were experienced. Not all rudiarii continued to fight; there was a hierarchy of rudiarii that included trainers, helpers, referees, and fighters.[25][26]
Rudis[edit]
An arena referee or his assistants, named after the wooden staff (rudis) used to direct or separate combatants. A senior referee or trainer was known as a summa (high) rudis.[citation needed]
Sagittarius[edit]
The sagittarius was a mounted archer, armed with a reflex bow capable of propelling an arrow a great distance.
Samnite[edit]
The Samnite was an early type of heavily armed fighter that disappeared in the early imperial period. The Samnites were a powerful league of Italic tribes in Campania with whom the Romans fought three major wars between 326 and 291 BC. A "Samnite" gladiator was armed with a long rectangular shield (scutum), a plumed helmet, a short sword, and probably a greave on his left leg. It was frequently said that Samnites were the lucky ones since they got large shields and good swords.[27]
Scissor[edit]
The scissor (plural scissores) used a special short sword with two blades that looked like a pair of open scissors without a hinge. It is speculated[by whom?] that they attempted to trap their opponents' weapons between the twin blades in order to disarm them.[citation needed] German historian and experimental archeologist Marcus Junkelmann has propagated an idea, based on an unlabeled, unclear image that he decided might be a scissor, that this type of gladiator fought using a weapon consisting of a hardened steel tube that encased the gladiator's entire forearm, with the hand end capped off and a semicircular blade attached to it.[28]
Secutor[edit]
The secutor ("pursuer") developed to fight the retiarius. As a variant of the myrmillo, he wore the same armour and weapons, including the tall rectangular shield and the gladius. The helmet of the secutor, however, covered the entire face with the exception of two small eye-holes in order to protect his face from the thin prongs of the trident of his opponent. The helmet was also round and smooth so that the retiarius net could not get a grip on it.[29]
Tertiarius[edit]
In some games three men were matched against each other. The first two would fight, with the winner then fighting the third man, called the tertiarius ("third man"). Tertiarii would also act as substitutes if an advertised gladiator was unable to fight.[citation needed]
Thraex[edit]
The Thraex (plural Thraeces, "Thracians") wore the same protective armour as the hoplomachi with a broad-rimmed helmet that enclosed the entire head, distinguished by a stylized griffin on the protome or front of the crest (the griffin was the companion of the avenging goddess Nemesis), a small round or square-shaped shield (parmula), and two thigh-length greaves. His weapon was the Thracian curved sword (sica or falx, c. 34 cm or 13 in long). They were introduced as replacements for the Gauls after Gaul made peace with Rome. They commonly fought Myrmillones or Hoplomachi.[30]



 Two venatores fighting a tiger (5th century CE mosaic in the Great Palace of Constantinople)
Velites[edit]
See also: Velites
The velites ("skirmishers") fought on foot, each holding a spear with an attached thong for throwing. Named for the early and similarly armed Republican army units of the same name.[citation needed]
Venator[edit]
Main article: Venatio
The venator "("hunter") specialized in wild animal hunts instead of fighting them as the bestiarii did. As well as hunting they also performed tricks with animals such as putting an arm in a lion's mouth, riding a camel while leading lions on a leash, and making an elephant walk a tightrope.[31] Technically they were not gladiators.

References[edit]
1.Jump up ^ Gladiators fought by the book New Scientist February 23, 2006
2.Jump up ^ Head injuries of Roman gladiators Forensic Science International Volume 160, Issue 2, Pages 207-216 July 13, 2006
3.Jump up ^ Roman gladiators were fat vegetarians ABC Science April 5, 2004
4.Jump up ^ Stephen Wisdom Gladiators 100 BC-AD 200 Osprey Publishing, 2001 Pg 28 - 29 ISBN 978-1-84176-299-9
5.Jump up ^ Stephen Wisdom, Angus McBride, Gladiators: 100 BC - AD 200, Oxford, United Kingdom, Osprey. Author's sketch and note, p. 18.
6.Jump up ^ André Piganiol, “La trinci gauloises,” in Recherches sur les jeux romains: Notes d’archéologie et d’histoire religieuse (Publications de la faculté des lettres de l’université de Strasbourg 13 (1923).
7.Jump up ^ Cicero, Ad familiares 7.10.2 (=95), as cited by Piganiol, “Les trinci gauloises."
8.Jump up ^ Xavier Delamarre, entry on andabata, Dictionnaire de la langue gauloise (Éditions Errance, 2003), p. 46.
9.Jump up ^ Types of Gladiators Imperatorivs Lvdvs Gladiatore, a living history group
10.Jump up ^ Alison Futrell, Blood in the Arena: The Spectacle of Roman Power (University of Texas Press, 1997), p. 34.
11.Jump up ^ Book III, 43, 46 in The Annals of Tacitus, Loeb, 1931 For possible misidentification, see note 8: "Since the Gauls despised body-armour, the phrase must refer only to the conventional equipment of the "Gallus" (murmillo)"
12.^ Jump up to: a b c Marcus Junkelmann, 'Familia Gladiatoria: "The Heroes of the Amphitheatre"' in The Power of Spectacle in Ancient Rome: Gladiators and Caesars, ed. by Eckart Köhne and Cornelia Ewigleben (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 2000), p. 63
13.Jump up ^ Luciana Jacobelli, Gladiators at Pompeii (Getty Publications, 2003), p. 19.
14.Jump up ^ Junkelmann 2000, pp. 37 and 47-48
15.Jump up ^ Jacobelli, Gladiators at Pompeii, p. 19.
16.Jump up ^ Lawrence Keppie, "A Centurion of Legio Martia at Padova?" Journal of Roman Military Equipment Studies 2 (1991), as reprinted in Legions and Veterans: Roman Army Papers 1971–2000 (Steiner, 2000), p. 68.
17.Jump up ^ Junkelmann 2000, pp. 48-51
18.Jump up ^ Marcus Junkelmann, "Familia Gladiatoria: The Heroes of the Amphitheatre," in Gladiators and Caesars: The Power of Spectacle in Ancient Rome (University of California Press, 2000), p. 63.
19.Jump up ^ Thomas E. J. Wiedemann, Emperors and Gladiators (Routledge, 1992, 1995), p. 121.
20.Jump up ^ Junkelmann 2000, pp. 37 and 57-59
21.Jump up ^ Junkelmann 60–61.
22.Jump up ^ Junkelmann 2000, pp. 59-61
23.Jump up ^ F. R. D. Goodyear The Classical Papers of A. E. Housman:, Volume 2; Volumes 1897-1914 Cambridge University Press 2004 ISBN 9780521606967 Pg 621 - 622
24.Jump up ^ "The Retiarius Tunicatus of Suetonius, Juvenal, and Petronius" (1989) by Steven M. Cerutti and L. Richardson, Jr. The American Journal of Philology, 110, P589-594
25.Jump up ^ James Rouse The beauties and antiquities of the county of Sussex, 149 lithogr. views accompanied by historical and explanatory notices Oxford University 1825 Pg 284 - 285
26.Jump up ^ The Language of the Arena Archaeological Institute of America
27.Jump up ^ Junkelmann 2000, p. 37
28.Jump up ^ * Marcus Junkelmann, Das Spiel mit dem Tod. So kämpften Roms Gladiatoren. Mainz am Rhein, 2000, ISBN 3-8053-2563-0.
29.Jump up ^ Junkelmann 2000, pp. 40-41 and 61-63
30.Jump up ^ Junkelmann 2000, pp. 51-57
31.Jump up ^ Seneca, Ep. 85.41.
External links[edit]
Gladiator graveyard in York England
 

Categories: Gladiator types


Categories: Ancient Roman culture
Obsolete occupations
Gladiatorial combat
Gladiator types
Sports occupations and roles
Violence in sports
Roman gladiators