The year is 80 AD. On the first day of the inaugural games of the Flavian Amphitheatre, also known as the Colosseum, two gladiators duelled for the pleasure of the Roman Empire and the Emperor, Titus Caesar. Priscus, a gladiator of Celtic origin, and Verus, a renowned gladiator from Vespasian’s rule, were the highlight of the opening day.
These fighters had been schooled at Rome’s finest gladiator schools and were at the peak of their physical ability. Sword clashed against shield as the pair duelled ferociously, each struggling to land the winning blow on the other. Eventually, exhausted and unable to continue the fight, Priscus and Verus fell to their knees.
The laws of gladiatorial combat dictated that a fight could not end until one raised a finger, the ad digitum, in surrender. According to the poet Martial, both fighters acknowledged defeat at the same time. Titus, like the roaring crowd, was impressed by the display of martial prowess.
He ignored the standard rules of declaring a victor, instead declaring both gladiators winners. In an unexpected move, Titus further awarded both Priscus and Verus with the rudis, a symbolic wooden sword, granting both men their freedoms. In this episode, we will explore the origins of gladiators and discuss various aspects of their lives – their daily activities, what they ate, and how they fought.
Origins of Gladiators By the opening of the Colosseum in Rome in the year 80 AD, gladiators and their predecessors had been a part of Roman society for over four centuries. The first accounts of gladiators are a contested topic by both ancient and modern historians alike. Nicolaus of Damascus, a Greek historian during the Augustan age, put their origin with the Etruscans around the third century BC.
The Etruscans were a coalition of city-states that occupied ancient Etruria, a region in northern Italy. Livy, a Roman historian and close friend of Augustus, instead placed the origin of gladiators with the Campanians after a victory over the Samnites during the first Samnite War in 343-341 BC. The Campanians, who originated from the region of Capua in southern Italy, invoked Rome’s help against the Samnites and their expansion.
The Samnites, from the region of Samnium, occupied the land between Capua and Rome and had the unfortunate fate of being one of Rome’s first great enemies. During the victory banquet, the Campanians ordered the fighting Gladiators to don Samnite armour out of contempt and hatred for their fallen foes. So arose the first gladiator class, the Samnite.
Modern records also indicate that Campania was the place of origin of the Gladiator, as it is here that the earliest known records of a gladiator school, the ludi, are found. This matches Livy’s records. Tomb frescoes from the city of Paestrum in Campania depict paired fighters in military garb in early versions of funerary rituals.
These rituals were likely inherited from Greek colonists as early as the eighth century BC, indicating a much older tradition. Livy placed the first gladiatorial games during the First Punic War when Rome battled Carthage for the island of Sicily. This exhibition match, which was the first organized and publicized game, was fought to the death between three pairs of fighters.
Over the next several centuries, gladiators would spread across the Republic, embedding themselves as an integral part of Roman society. Matches and games were used relentlessly by wealthy citizens and those with political ambition. Alongside banquets and races, gladiator games were an effective way to gain favour with the masses, garner votes, and increase their own personal coffers.
A superb example of the use of games for political maneuvering occurred in 65 BC when a young Julius Caesar was elected to the position of Aedile and held funerary games in honour of his father. Typically, when a citizen died, funerals and any commemorative events were held after a nine-day mourning period. Caesar’s games were held for his father twenty years after his death.
Caesar’s games were unprecedented in scale and expense, enlisting three hundred and twenty pairs of gladiators from his own schools, with more available if required. The senate, concerned about Caesar’s ambitions and popularity and wary of the recent revolt of Spartacus, imposed a limit on his festival. These games were put on despite Caesar’s enormous personal debt, which Plutarch puts at thirteen hundred talents [MOU4].
By the time of Augustus, who ruled from 27 BC to 14 AD, gladiatorial games were synonymous with imperial governance. His reforms decreed that gladiatorial games should be provided for all civic and religious festivals. By 27 BC, gladiatorial games were typically linked with beast shows and executions and had been steadily spreading throughout the Roman world.
Titus, emperor from 79-81 AD, opened the Colosseum in Rome in 80 AD [MOU5] with the ritual sacrifice of a reported nine thousand animals[MOU6] in addition to gladiatorial matches, hunting, races, and prisoner executions. Emperor Trajan’s victory in the Dacian wars, fought between 101 and 106 AD, was celebrated for one hundred twenty-three days with an estimated ten thousand gladiators and eleven thousand animals. Seventy years later, the cost of gladiators and festivals spiralled to such extremes that legislation introduced by Marcus Aurelius in 177 AD aimed to solve the issue but failed completely.
The decline of gladiatorial games was a slow death. The increasing military demands on the empire's borders weighed heavily on imperial coffers during the third and fourth centuries AD. This, in turn, saw a decline in obligatory games from the state, as they couldn’t afford to fund the games.
The final nail in the coffin for gladiatorial games was the emergence of Christianity and the Empire’s inevitable conversion. Tertullian, a Roman Christian author from the late second century AD, condemned the games as murder and urged Christians not to attend. [MOU7] This contributed heavily to the downward trend the games had already been experiencing.
Constantine the Great ruled from 306 to 337 AD and was the first emperor to convert to Christianity. He effectively outlawed the games through his reforms on the death penalty in 315 AD. No longer would convicted criminals be forced to fight to the death; instead, their punishments were carried out in the mines or slave labour camps throughout the Empire.
This can be viewed as a blanket ban on gladiators, though some exceptions were still allowed. Finally, after centuries of slowly dying, gladiator games and schools officially ended in 404 AD in the Western Roman Empire, as decreed by Emperor Honorius. [MOU8] Types of Gladiators Now that we have covered the history of gladiators, albeit briefly, let us move on to the different types of gladiators.
Throughout the almost thousand years that gladiators were active in Rome, there were many different fighting styles a gladiator could adopt. The naming of these types was originally derived from Rome’s enemies but changed as those lands were incorporated into the empire. The most famous Gladitorial archetypes were the Murmillo, the Retiarius, the Thraex, and the Hoplomachus.
The Murmillo, originally named Gallus after the warriors of Gaul, was a heavily armed fighter. They were equipped with a Gladius, Scutum shield, arm guard, and a large plumed helmet in the design of a fish. The Murmillo was often matched against the Hoplomachus or Thraex type gladiators but has been depicted against the Retiarius as well.
The Retiarius, or “net-man,” was a lightly armoured fighter. Equipped with a weighted fishing net, a trident, a dagger, and an armguard, the Retiarius was an agile and dangerous adversary. The Retiarius was typically matched against the Secutor or Murmillo in a contest that emphasized agility versus power.
Thraex, or “Thracian,” was another heavily armoured fighter, similar to the Murmillo and Secutor styles. They were equipped with a small rectangular shield and a short sword with a curved end in the style of the Dacian falx. They also came equipped with greaves, a large helmet, and protective loincloth.
The Thraex would often be paired against Murmillo in a matchup of similar equipment and skill. Lastly, the Hoplomachus, or “armoured fighter,” was a gladiator armed in the style of Greek Hoplites, from where their name originates. They came equipped with a spear, short sword, round concave shield, greaves, arm protection, and a heavy bronze helmet.
Hoplomachus would often be matched against Murmillo and Thraex but would also occasionally fight Retiarius and Secutor. These four main gladiator styles formed the bulk of matches in games. But their matchups also represented something more.
The Murmillo, who was armed like a Roman, had the greatest variety of opponents. The Hoplomachus, outfitted like a Greek hoplite, and Thraex, armed like Thracian warriors, were the most notable of the Murmillo’s adversaries. These particular matchups functioned as small re-enactments of Rome’s conflicts with Greece and Thrace, much to the delight of the crowd.
As the games became more popular and contests between gladiators grew in high demand, sub-classes within the gladiator schools became more prominent, adding to the already exciting world of gladiatorial combat. One of these sub-classes was the Dimachaerus, a gladiator who wielded two swords. Armoured in a variety of light to heavy armour, the Dimachaerus is poorly attested to in the historical record.
As such, the exact equipment and fighting style aren’t known in full, but it is believed that they were typically paired against the Samnite and Hoplomachus. The Samnite, named after the warriors of Samnium, was a heavily armoured fighter equipped with a gladius, scutum, arm guard, and plumed helmet. The Samnite gladiators were the first gladiator types recorded in history.
They fell out of fashion by the time of Augustus after Samnium officially became a part of the Roman Empire. The Samnite also gave rise to the Murmillo and Thraex gladiator types. The Secutor, or “pursuer,” was a heavily armed gladiator designed to counter the Retiarius.
Armed like a Murmillo and Thraex, the main difference of the Secutor was the helmet it wore. Two small eye holes were the only window he could view from to avoid the prongs of the trident sneaking through. The disadvantage, however, was that the Secutor could succumb easily to exhaustion or fainting due to breath constrictions, forcing them to try and gain victory quickly.
The last gladiator sub-class we will discuss today is the Cestus, or “striker,” The Cestus was, in essence, a boxer. Unarmoured save for the tight leather wrappings around their hands, they would often be paired against other Cestus-style fighters in an ancient boxing match. Life of a Gladiator.
(diet, routine, life). While it can be easy to become fascinated by the arms, armour and fighting style of the various gladiatorial subclasses, it must be remembered that the lives of these gladiators were less than pleasant. While gladiators were, in essence, minor celebrities, [MOU9] it should be remembered that all gladiators were slaves.
As such, their lives were difficult, brutal, and wrought with danger. Despite relatively low mortality rates in matches, the life expectancy of a gladiator was low. The conditions they lived in were terrible; their rooms often little more than cells.
The most humane service they received was a dedicated physician. It is through one of these physicians that we can gain some insight into the life of the average gladiator. Galenus, more commonly known as Galen of Pergamon, was a Roman and Greek physician during the second century AD.
Galen served as the physician for the gladiators of the High Priest of Asia. By the time of his posting in 157 AD, gladiators had become an exceptionally wealthy and profitable commodity, such that taking them under his care was not a simple job. During the Imperial games that were held each September, the number of Gladiators under Galen’s care could reach up to one hundred fighters.
Interestingly, only two gladiators died under his care in his first year in the post. Compared to sixteen under his predecessor. [MOU10] Galen describes the injuries largely to the shins and thighs, for which he invented new types of plasters to help seal the wounds.
He records him treating wounds with a wine-soaked cloth or removing parts of a lower abdomen that had escaped a wound. [MOU11] Despite gladiators being slaves, either condemned prisoners of war, criminals, or those in severe debt, they were considered professional athletes. As such, they needed a strict dieting regime to ensure they stayed fit and healthy.
Galen’s contribution was his introduction of a vegetarian-based diet, heavily based on barley and beans. This diet matches paleopathological studies conducted at an archaeological site of a gladiator school in Ephesus, dated to the same time as Galen’s tenure. [MOU12] In addition to a healthy diet, a vigorous training regime was undertaken by all new recruits.
These new recruits would usually be trained by retired gladiators in the multiple styles available to them but would often specialize as they worked their way through the program based on displays of prowess. This program began at the novice level and worked its way up to primus palus, or first stake, the highest rank achievable in a gladiator school. Murmillones, for example, required immense upper body strength to manage their equipment and were typically made up of the biggest and most powerful recruits.
Their counterparts, the lightly-armed Retiarii, drew recruits from the smaller recruits. Lethal weapons were prohibited in the gladiator schools. This was likely enforced to avoid the chance of rebellion and to reduce the possibility of death before a gladiator could earn their worth.
[MOU13] Gladiator living quarters were little more than cells reminiscent of a Roman military barracks. They surrounded the practice area and were compliant with the rigid hierarchies that governed the different types of slaves present. Those condemned to death were typically marked with a brand somewhere on the body, usually the face, and were kept away from the other gladiators.
Moreover, lightly armoured gladiators were kept away from the heavier armed gladiators. Juvenal describes this hierarchy according to type and status, “even the lowest scum of the arena observed this rule; even in prison, they're separate. ” One peculiar aspect of this division was the perception of armour on the status of a fighter.
The more skin exposed, the less status the gladiator possessed. This perception was followed both inside and outside of the arena by all in attendance. Emperor Claudius, who ruled from 41-54 AD, went so far as to have all Retiarii who lost their matches put to death so spectators could view their unarmoured faces in despair.
Retiarii lived in the worst barracks during this time, as their fighting style was another unwritten strike against them. Their trident-and-net combat was considered weak and un-roman compared to the heavier trading of blows from the Murmillo and Secutor. All gladiators had the opportunity to increase their status by taking on other fighting styles.
Many Retiarii would work to train as Samnites to escape the social shaming they experienced. Through popular culture, the Retiarii have become arguably the most popular and certainly the most well well-known. Once a gladiator completed his training, he would undertake the oath of loyalty, the Sacramentum.
This oath of loyalty was typically used by the legions to the Emperor [MOU14] but adapted for the gladiatorial schools. This, in essence, subjected the gladiators to harsher punishments for breaking the oath that would normally have been inappropriate for regular citizens. Despite being slaves, gladiators had the potential to become incredibly famous and wealthy [MOU15].
Their status did not restrict them from imperial stardom, stardom that could match that of the empire's professional athletes. Conclusion Gladiators and the gladiatorial games have long held a fascination among enthusiasts of Roman history. Ridley Scott’s Gladiator and the many iterations of Spartacus highlight this perfectly.
From their beginning, they were an integral part of Roman society, providing a seemingly endless source of entertainment and opportunity for ambitious businessmen or politicians. As Rome’s influence spread through the Mediterranean, so too did the excitement of the gladiatorial games, enveloping the Roman world in the clash of steel and the shedding of blood. From their humble beginnings to their eventual end, the iconic bloodsport of the ancient world is, for better or worse, imprinted into our cultural fabric to this day.
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