Roman Gladiators

History and Interpretation of Gladiatorial Games

The Romans believed that they inherited the practice of gladiatorial games from the Etruscans who used them as part of a funeral ritual (servants would duel to the death for the right to provide companionship to their owners in eternity). We don't have any evidence, however, that the Etruscans, in fact, did any such thing. Conversely, we do have evidence of gladiators in Campanian society, perhaps of Samnite origin. The early Christians interpreted the gladiatorial games as a type of human sacrifice. While it is true that gladiatorial games involved the attempted killing of one person by another, and that the Romans associated them with funeral rituals, in fact, the analogy by the Christians seems to have been more a brilliant rhetorical move in the service of a larger anti-pagan polemic than a fair description of how Romans themselves understood the games.

The first gladiatorial games were offered in Rome in 264 BCE by sons of Junius Brutus Pera in their father's honor after he had died. Gladiatorial combat became a very popular form of public spectacle very quickly in Rome. Those who offered games began to compete in terms of the numbers of matches offered. Whereas the sons of Brutus Pera offered three matches, a century later, Titus Flamininus offered 74 pairs in games in honor of his father that lasted over three days. Julius Caesar promised 320 matches in funeral games for his daughter, Julia, but the Senate passed legislation limiting the amount of money that could be spent on gladiatorial games to stop him. Thus, during the Republic, gladiatorial combat was associated in Rome with a) a death and b) elite competition. Such displays provided members of the elite with a vehicle by which to advertise the newest generation in a family which sought to rule Romans.

The funeral association is as important for our analysis as the association with competition within the elite. Not merely were the games linked to a specific person's death, but they were also very much about death (during the Republic they were only held around the time of the winter equinox; Augustus later permitted gladiatorial games at the spring equinox as well). Gladiators entered the arena with the intent to kill each other. Roman spectators thus observed men facing death, and attempting to overcome it. In a metaphorical sense as well, gladiators were socially dead - they were infamis under Roman law (typically slaves, prisoners of war and convicted criminals who had a much more restricted set of rights under Roman law than ordinary citizens). If they fought well enough, however, they might, with the crowd's support, win both their lives (crowds could and did urge the editores, the sponsors of the games, to spare a defeated gladiator before the kill) and their social identities (crowds urged emperors to free gladiators who were popular). Thus, gladiators, from a Roman's point of view (if not a Christian's) offered at least the opportunity to observe death defeated and transcended.

What gladiators did (indeed what they were trained to do) was kill and die well. These were tasks of extraordinary urgency for Romans. On the one hand, Romans (as most premodern societies and impoverished modern societies) faced daunting mortality rates. They did not have the opportunity to "grow into their deaths" as a matter of course (as moderns in materially successful societies do). A Roman at the age of 20 knew he would probably die before he was 30, and he wanted to meet death with honor and dignity. He could observe gladiators do it in the arena. Conversely, as members of a relentlessly militaristic culture, Romans valued the art of killing in a way we simply don't understand. Roman soldiers, moreover, enjoyed a much greater autonomy in their line of battle than Greeks did. In fact, the success of the Roman battle line often depended on the courage of individual soldiers in hand to hand combat. Thus the ability of an ordinary citizen to kill single handedly was a skill that the entire empire depended on to survive.

Gladiatorial games proved immediately and immensely popular within the Roman empire. There are reports, for example, of people in towns where prominent citizens died virtually extorting promises of gladiatorial games from the survivors. Eventually, the emperors had to regulate how much could be spent on gladiatorial performances to prevent members of the elite from bankrupting themselves. As Rome expanded, so did the performance of the games. We have evidence of gladiatorial performances in virtually every part of the Roman empire. The games themselves became a vehicle for the Romanization of the empire. On the one hand, Roman soldiers liked to observe gladidatorial matches. Thus, lanistae (owner/managers of gladiatorial troops) would follow the troops to new quarters and offer matches for entertainment. This could be a highly profitable enterprise and it was not unusual for members of the elite to invest in gladiatorial troupes. Cicero's friend, Atticus, for example, made back his investment in a troupe after two performances. The games themselves provided ways for Rome to demonstrate the power of their empire. The sheer cost of the producing games was stunning. Contests involving animals from distant provinces demonstrated in a material way how far Rome's dominance reached. Inhabitants of towns in lands conquered by the Romans built amphitheaters and sponsored competitions as a way of demonstrating their Romanness. Historians traditionally had a great deal of difficulty accepting that the Greeks, for example, enthusiastically embraced the games (cf. Japanese enthusiasm for baseball), but, in fact, the Greeks loved gladiators. The Greeks were not alone. Mosaics and wall paintings from North Africa and other parts of the empire routinely use depictions of gladiatorial combat for their themes.

There are a number of reasons why gladiatorial combat proved so enthralling for Romans. The arena was a liminal site where fundamental human conflicts were symbolically fought. The gladiator as outlaw confronted the forces of civilization and law. Contestants who specialized in the fighting of animals fought in the guise of bears, leopards and lions - wild and, to folks living then, daunting forces of nature. Finally, at issue in every gladiatorial contest, was the most basic question of life and death.

Format of gladiatorial games

The Romans, throughout the history of the Republic, drew a sharp distinction between gladiatorial contests and other forms of spectacular entertainment. Games that the state sponsored were called ludi, were held quite frequently, never involved armed single combat, were associated with the worship of a god and were paid for (at least in part) by the public treasury. Gladiatorial shows, which the Romans called munera, in contrast, were sponsored by private individuals, were held very infrequently, were associated with funeral rituals, and were paid for privately. The change in Roman government initiated by Augustus blurred some of these distinctions (e.g. funding). Augustus, in fact, was quick to take control of the infrastructure of the gladiatorial entertainment business (the Roman state, for example, owned the schools where gladiators trained).

In addition to the armed individual gladiatorial contests, other spectacles became associated with gladiatorial games. Venationes were usually held in the morning of game days (but could be offered on their own). Bestiarii, or combatants trained to fight animals, were pitted against wild animals from all over the empire (bullfights and rodeos are the modern heirs and/or equivalents). The slaughter of wildlife in these contests was astonishing. Hundreds of deaths in a day were routine. At the games held by Trajan when he became Emperor, 9,000 were killed. Today we are appalled by scale of wanton destruction. But to folks living 2,000 years ago, wild animals were as much enemies as marauding Germanic tribes. While there are occasional reports of audience sympathy for the plight of animals (elephants in particular seemed to have been troubling), Romans overwhelming sided with the human combatants. The venationes symbolized the ability of human society to protect itself from hostile forces of nature and remained popular throughout the history of the empire. The Christians, for example, never attempted to outlaw venationes while they worked strenuously to end gladiatorial combat.

After the venationes, a typical spectacle would include a lunch interlude during which humiliores (Romans of non-elite status - execution by sword was a privilege reserved for the elite) who had been convicted of capital crimes were executed. Typically, the convicted were killed by burning at the stake or crucifixtion (forms of capital punishment that the Romans appeared to have adopted from the Carthaginians) or ad bestias (in which the convict would be left alone in the arena with one or more wild - and hungry - animals). Romans had a somewhat contradictory attitude towards these executions. On the one hand, like the venationes, the executions were welcome examples of the power of society, law and order, to restrain and suppress forces that threatened it. Public executions were popular. On the other hand, writers of elite status, seem to suggest that gentlemen and women didn't indulge themselves too much in this spectacle. The decent thing to do was go get lunch. Some writers, for example, criticized the Emperor Claudius because he routinely stayed in the stadium and observed the executions. To ordinary Romans, however, Claudius' presence indicated that the Emperor took his responsibility for preserving law and order seriously. The people executed were, by definition, wicked and dangerous. Their deaths were something to rejoice in. During the Principate they become something to revel in. Under Nero, the practice arose of writing plays adapted from myths in which people died and assigning the role of a character who would die to a condemned man. The audience would watch the play, and the actual killing of the condemned man in character's role (an ancient variant on a snuff film).

It was at these lunch time spectacles that Romans executed Christians when local or national officials were in a persecuting mode. Public response to these executions could vary dramatically. On the one hand, Christians who refused to sacrifice to the Roman gods, flagrantly rejected the norms of the society in which they lived. There are plenty of examples of communities demanding that their leaders send Christians to the arena for public execution (cf. accounts of Jews demanding that Pilate order the execution of Jesus). On the other hand, the "crime" of Christianity was quite different than the crimes of others executed in the arena (murder, temple theft, etc.). Christian sources, at least, report that the dignity of Christians in facing a spectacle intended to degrade and humiliate them, often inspired respect among the crowds in the stadium.


After lunch, the gladiatorial contest were held. Originally, gladiators were identified with ethnic names (e.g., Thracian or Samnite) which indicated the kind of weaponry they used, not the actual ethnic identity. In fact, the evidence suggests gladiators fought hard to resist the pseudo-ethnic labeling (there's a famous example of a gladiator of Samnite origin who fought as a "Thracian") and took care on their tombstones to indicate their true ethnic identities.

Samnites (later called secutores) carried oblong shields and short swords and wore plumed helmets with visors. Thracians carried small round shields and curved daggers. Gladiators called retiarii ("net men") carried nets to trip and hold their opponents and tridents which they used to finish off a captured victim. A Retariius typically fought a "Gallic" gladiator (also called a murmillo) who wore a rectangular shield and a visored helmet decorated with a fish (murmillo) or a Samnite. The vary names and distinctive weaponry of the gladiators displayed a history of the peoples Rome had defeated as her empire expanded. Interestingly enough, as the empire expanded and gladiatorial combat grew popular in the provinces, Romans began to drop the ethnic identification of gladiators for terms that described their costume or style of fighting (e.g. Samnites became secutores).

Gladiatorial Demography

Romans "recruited" gladiators from a number of population sources over the course of their history. Captured soldiers were a popular source, particularly in the years of Rome's imperial expansions. Even when the geographical limits of the empire had been established, soldiers of rebellious provinces remained a fruitful source of gladiators. Titus and Vespasian were able to eliminate extraordinary numbers of rebellious Jews by organizing gladiatorial games after they "pacified" Judea. Roman courts could sentence individuals convicted of serious criminal offenses to gladiatorial schools. Similarly owners of recalcitrant and/or fugitive slaves could sell these slaves ad ludos (or condemn them to death in public executions). Under the empire, however, laws were passed requiring owners to establish some basis (e.g., criminal behavior) for such treatment of a slave.

Despite the fact (perhaps because of the fact) that gladiatorial combat was so marked by "outlaw" and servile combatants, free citizens could and did become gladiators. To do so, they had to take an oath in which they agreed that they would submit to a) being branded; b) being chained; c) being killed by an iron weapon; d) to pay for the food and drink they received with their blood; and d) to suffer things even if they did not wish to. To agree, voluntarily, to such conditions was a renunciation of all the social benefits of citizenship in the Roman world (libertas, the sanctity of the citizen's body, etc.). Thus, the free citizens who chose to enter the arena were viewed with grave suspicion by members of the Roman elite. However, there is evidence that a substantial proportion of the gladiatorial forces (perhaps as many as half) were originally of citizen status (who voluntarily entered the gladiatorial schools) by the end of the Republic.

The choice for some citizens can be explained by economic factors. Gladiators got three square meals a day, decent medical care, and if they were good, survived to freedom. They also had the opportunity to win purses that editores would frequently offer as bonus in competitions. If they survived they would win their freedom. And although they could never be citizens, their children could. For citizens of higher social status who had fallen on hard times (scholars always posit the example of a Roman who lost his fortune in the a lawsuit) or economically marginal citizens without a trade, career options were limited to the army (with a strict disciplinary system), teaching (for the literate who were willing to fight for fees) and the gladiatorial schools.

Another category of gladiator that should interest us is women. Women fought as gladiators. The author of an inscription from Pompeii boasts that he was the first editor in his town to bring women into the arena. The practice appears to have been widespread and did not end until specifically outlawed by the Emperor Septimius Severus in the early 3rd century, C.E. The female gladiator is perhaps the most marginal symbol available and there was no doubt some purient interest aroused by these spectacles. The presence of women in the arena, however, suggests that Romans looked upon the particular virtus [skill in killing and dying well] gladiators symbolized as something that existed almost before gender.

There were also citizens, particularly during the Principate, who fought as gladiators as a political statement. Under the Republic, the marginal social status of the gladiator reinforced Roman belief in the superior status of citizens. As Rome suffered civil war and then virtual monarchy, members of the elite would sometimes choose to fight in the arena as a way of demonstrating that the Augustan ideology of the "Republic Restored" was so much bunk. All citizens, they suggested, now were no better than slaves. Conversely, some Emperors, themselves became obsessed with arena. Caligula forced free born citizens to fight as gladiators. The Emperor Commodus is said to have fought as a gladiator in 1000 contests. These "bad" Emperors, who were themselves liminal figures, marking the line between divine and mortal, used the arena to demonstrate their authority and diminish that of the elite. Emperors who appeared as gladiators did what no citizen should dare to do. Emperors who compelled citizens to appear as gladiators demonstated that mere citizen status meant nothing when compared with imperial status.

Romans accepted and supported the Principate, however, because emperors implicitly promised to maintain the integrity of Rome's complex hierarchy of social status. "Good" emperors were sensitive to the complexity of their power relations with Romans across the penumbra of statuses within Roman society. A "good" emperor appeared at the games, and attended to the populace's expression of their will. A "good" Emperor supported the spectacles as a way of demonstrating the ability of Rome to protect its citizenry from internal threats to its law and order, and the historic ability of Rome to spread this protection across the Mediterranean basin and beyond. A "good" Emperor, thus enjoyed the games, but not too much.

How were they trained?

While the prospect of taking the gladiator's oath no doubt horrifies us, relative to the life Romans at the economic margin enjoyed, conditions in gladiatorial schools were not that bad. It is true that the conditions in the school where Spartacus trained were bad enough to spark the worst slave revolt in Roman history. However, this school was an anomaly. Owners and trainers conceived of gladiators as an investment. Skimping on the schools simply didn't make sense. Gladiators received a reasonable diet (a high protein/fat diet in training) and good (for the day) medical care. They formed enduring relationships with women that resulted in children, and if they survived to freedom, legally recognized marriages and families. Within the community of gladiators they, like all Romans, formed collegia and shared a cult worship of the god Hercules. In fact, in a bizarre way, the gladiatorial schools seem to have provided their inhabitants with a vital, united and committed community (admittedly predicated on the possibility that one might have to kill another). Gladiators were trained not merely how to fight well, but how to make an efficient killing blow and, if defeated, how to offer one's body for the most effective coup de grace. In cases where gladiators or bestarii were mortally wounded in the arena, the accepted practice seems to have been to remove them from public view before executing the killing blow. Typically gladiators fought a handful of matches a year, and would, if they survived, win there freedom after a number (which varied widely depending on time and place) their freedom. Even gladiators who lost a match could survive if the audience pleaded their case to the editor.

Despite their servile and "outlaw" legal and social status, gladiators often enjoyed great social prestige. Young Roman boys liked to hang out at gladiator schools and even take lessons there [parents hated this]. Roman matrons particularly enjoyed having affairs with gladiators [or at least Roman men often worried that they did]. The 'pop' celebrity of gladiators, like the 'pop' celebrity of athletes today, indicates the extraordinary importance of the battles they fought in the arena to the construction and maintaince of Romanitas.