The Woman and the Gladiator on Television in the Twenty-First Century
NEW VOICES IN CLASSICAL RECEPTION STUDIES Conference Proceedings Volume Two REDIRECTING THE GAZE: THE WOMAN AND THE GLADIATOR ON TELEVISION IN THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY © Fiona Hobden, University of Liverpool and Amanda Potter, Open University INTRODUCTION Every woman loves a gladiator. This common knowledge underpins the first-century CE Roman poet Juvenal’s satirical portrait of Eppia, the runaway senator’s wife who abandoned her husband and family because she loved the ‘steel blade’, and whose life story should persuade Postumus away from the insanity of marriage, lest he find himself raising a gladiator’s son (Satire 6.80-113).1 And its broader truth is suggested in a boast made in graffiti at Pompeii that ‘Cresces the net-fighter is doctor to the night-time girls, the day-time girls, and all the others’ (CIL IV.4353).2 While there may be elements of fantasy in both proclamations, the satirist and seducer both trade on the allure of the gladiator to susceptible women. Sexual desire arises, moreover, in moments of viewing. Thus, for Ovid’s predatory lover, the games, where women ‘come to see and to themselves be seen’, offer a prime occasion to pursue an erotic advantage, as ‘Venus’s boy’ fights upon the forum sands (Ars Amatoria 1.97-9, 163-70). And it was the passing glimpse of a gladiator that led Faustina to conceive a passion that allegedly resulted in the birth of her gladiator-emperor son, Commodus (Historia Augusta, ‘Life of Marcus Aurelius’ 19.1-2). In the Roman imagination, visual encounters spark female desire; sexual encounters follow.
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