GLADIATORS: A Thread

The gladiator: crude, loathsome, doomed, lost (importunes, obscaenus, damnatus, perditus) was a man utterly debased by fortune, a slave, a man without worth or dignity and almost without humanity.

The combat between gladiators was, in origin, a munus mortis, an offering paid to the manes (shades) of dead Roman chieftains. Adopted from Etruscan and Samnite funeral sacrifices, the first recorded games were given by the sons of Iunius Brutus in 264 BC.

Three pairs fought in this first munus. By 174 BC 74 men fought for three days in honour of the dead father of Titus Flamininus. Up to 300 pairs fought in the games offered by the warlords of the collapsing Republic, Pompey & Caesar.

The gladiator took a frightful oath, the sacramentum gladiatorium: he swore to endure being burned, bound, beaten and slain by the sword (uri, vinciri, verbarari, ferroque neccari patior).

The sacramentum was a sacred oath. It put one’s life on deposit with the gods of the underworld. If one broke it, one’s honour and life were forfeit; one literally became sacer (sacred) in the sense that you were the property of the gods and liable to execution as a piaculum.

It was a dreadful oath related to the “devotio” by which the general consecrated himself to a violent death at the hands of the enemy and gods of the underworld (dii inferi) usually to save his army.

Romans expectations of the brave gladiator were identical to those they showed towards sacrificial victims: led to the altar by a slack rope in order to show that there had been no force. Any sign of resistance was viewed as a bad omen.

True devotio cannot be pressured. It has to be a personal, self-imposed obligation. As when Marcus Curtius – in obedience to an oracle who demanded the Romans sacrifice their most precious resource – leapt armed & on horseback into a chasm tht opened in the forum (Livy, 7.6.4)

The idealised gladiator fulfilled the ideals of the soldier-philosopher. As Seneca notes “You must die erect and invincible. What different will it make if you gain a few more days or years? We are born into a world in which no quarter is given” (Epistulae 37.1-2).

“One salvation alone remains to us: to die with an unconquered neck (una salus… indomita cervice mori)” Lucan 9.379-80.

Walter Burkert noted there were two principal models for the scapegoat/pharmakos in antiquity: either the victim must be raised to a superhuman level to be honoured forever OR deemed subhuman & scoured forever. The Gladiator eschews this neat thinking.

The gladiator despite abandoning the military and political agon was the ultimate symbol of the society’s golden age: one of single combat and glory.

An age when the spolia opima, the spoils offered to the god by a Roman commander who slew his counterpart in single combat) remained feasible (Pliny, Panegyricus, 17).

Now we move onto odd psychological terrain. Gladiators were expected to be complicit in the entertainment of their violence/death. He colluded with the lanista (owner), editor (producer) and amatores (fans).

This extended from the cena libera (sacred banquet) of gladiators the night preceding the games, extended training regime, ritual beating of new recruits, & the pompa (parade).

Etiquette demanded that the fatal blow be suspended until the editor had decided the fallen gladiator’s fate. In the language of the arena, it was the editor/emperor/gov who was said to kill the fallen and not the victorious gladiator.

Few things sum up that collusion more than the famous greeting offered to Claudius by those about to slaughter one another in a mock sea battle, AD 52: “Hail, emperor, we who are about to die salute you! (“Have imperator, morituri te salutant!”)” in Suetonius’ Claudius (21.6).

High Theory: To fail at playing master to one’s life in civilisation was to be forced to master one’s death to the glory of a civilised master.

Livy tells us that the gladiatorial games introduced to the East by Antiochus IV Epiphanes d. 164 BC (after serving 14 years as a hostage in Rome) kindled a love of arms in many (41.20).

The practice of using the coaches (doctores) of the gladiators to instruct the legions began with the consul P. Rutilius (105 BC) according to Valerius Maximus (2.3.2).

If watching a gladiator win glory was a positive askesis for spectators, watching them cringe, tremble or run was a debilitating and shameful experience for them.

The absence of a connection or collusion transformed the miracle of power and death into a sordid charade; it crushed the dignity man could acquire in death and made it a naked homicide. Spectators were turned from imperious Mother Nature into grim little executioners.

Only the gladiator’s amor mortis (love of death) could rescue such a situation. In his cooperation he redeemed by himself and his audience.

The pathetic could be realigned and a certain pathos gained. To die without having one’s will conquered was not petulance, it was the only shred of dignity with which a Man with nothing could leave this life.

In 67 BC the law of Roscius Otho was passed which reserved the first 14 rows of the cavea for the knights. Prior to that time, everybody sat together apart from senators who had been segregated since 194 BC.

Acc to Dio, in 46 BC Roman knights (inc a son of a praetor) fought in single combat in Caesar’s games alongside captives and men condemned to death. A Roman senator petitioned unsuccessfully to be allowed to fight.

After Caesar’s death a Roman senator Quintus Vitellius appeared in the munus given by Octavian at the dedication of the temple of Caesar.

Dio claims Caligula put to death 26 knights, some for having consumed their patrimony, others for having engaged in gladiatorial combat.

Still, many of the nobility saw that there was more to be gained in the indomitable ways of the ideal gladiator than the potential scorn their actions might accrue. They learned to despise their own degradation.

“The foulest death is preferable to the fairest slavery” (praeferendam esse spuriccimam mortem sertituti mundissimae) Seneca in Epistulae 70.21.

The Roman arena was a great reckoning. NB unlike court where hypocrisy & duplicity crippled honour & virtue.

In the arena one could not feign valour and survive by cowardice.

Christians could praise their martyrs in the terms of the gladiators' heroism/unconqueredness/victorious-ways. Lactantius discussed the “The happy and unconquered patience” of the martyrs in Divinae institutions 6.17.

But Christians were also their most astute critics:

“Man is killed for the pleasure of man… it is elevated to an art…. To kill is glorious…"

Cyprian, Ad Donatum 7

“The crowd love whom they punish; they belittle whom they esteem; the art they glorify; the artist they debase.”

Tertullian, De spectaculis 22

I'll end positively though.

“One salvation alone remains to us: to die with an unconquered neck (una salus… indomita cervice mori)”

Lucan 9.379-80.

THE END