Most Gladiators Were Prisoners of War, Slaves Bought for the Purpose, Or Criminals Sentenced to Serve in the Schools (Damnati Ad Ludos)

“The Gladiator” Most gladiators were prisoners of war, slaves bought for the purpose, or criminals sentenced to serve in the schools (damnati ad ludos). At a time when three of every five persons did not survive until their twentieth birthday, the odds of a professional gladiator being killed in any particular bout, at least during the first century AD, were perhaps one in ten. But for the criminal who was to be publicly executed (damnati ad mortem) or for Christian martyrs who refused to renounce their faith and worship the gods, there was no hope of survival in the arena. Free men also volunteered to be gladiators (auctorati) and, by the end of the Republic, comprised half the number who fought. Often, they were social outcasts, freed slaves, discharged soldiers, or former gladiators who had been liberated on retirement but chose to return for a period of service. They signed on for a fee and swore a fearful oath of absolute submission to the lanista to be burned, flogged, beaten, or killed if so ordered. Originally, captured soldiers had been made to fight with their own weapons and in their particular style of combat. It was from these conscripted prisoners of war that the gladiators acquired their exotic appearance, a distinction being made between the weapons imagined to be used by defeated enemies and those of their Roman conquerors. Gladiatorial games originally had taken place in the Forum, where temporary stands were erected. The sponsorship of the games was prestigious and an expected part of what Juvenal calls bread and circuses (panem et circenses). A million people inhabited Rome under the Antonine emperors, a sizable portion of them, because of slavery, unemployed. For their amusement, there were baths, theaters, and circuses, including the Circus Maximus. Gladiatorial games were presented perhaps ten or twelve days each year and often coincided with the celebration of the Saturnalia. In Rome, no more than one hundred twenty pairs usually fought in any one munus, which were advertised in red letters by professional sign painters (scriptores) and proclaimed by heralds. Programs were made available; there was betting, and partisanship was strong, Caligula and Titus, for instance, favoring the Thracians, and Domitian the murmillones. The day before the event, a public banquet (coena libera) was given for the gladiators, some of whom gorged themselves at what might be their last meal, others eating in hopeful anticipation of the next day, and some with no appetite at all, terrified at the prospect of what was to come. With a diet that included the consumption of so much barley that Pliny refers to gladiators as hordearii ("barley eaters"), it must have been a welcome meal (Natural History, XVIII.72). The day of the games, the gladiators were ceremoniously led in and paraded around the arena (pompa) before presenting themselves at the emperor's podium, exclaiming Ave, imperator, morituri te salutant! (already condemned to die by the sword, this declaration was made by the condemned criminal rather than the professional gladiator). Preliminary events included bloodless, sometimes farcical, duels between paegniarii, who likely fought with wooden weapons. Those to be used by the gladiators were demonstrated to be sharp and lethal, lots were drawn, and the war trumpet sounded. Then the games began. Together with the sound of flutes and horns and a water organ, there were shouts of encouragement from the lanista, often enforced by whips or hot iron rods. When a man went down, cries of Habet, Hoc habet! (He's had it!), and shouts of Mitte! (Let him go!) or Iugula! (Kill him!) could be heard. If able, the wounded gladiator would lay down his shield and raise his index finger, usually of the left hand, to plea for mercy, either from his opponent or from the judge, who, wielding a long staff, then had to ensure there were no further blows. The crowd signified their approval by turning their thumbs (pollice verso). As patron of the games and the most conspicuous member there, it was the emperor who made the final decision, although it often was politic to heed the crowd. Indeed, he was expected to attend the amphitheater, where, in collective anonymity, the crowd could demonstrate its wishes. Martial writes in De Spectaculis (XXIX), that, when spectators pleaded for the lives of both men who had fought well, "Caesar himself obeyed his own law: that law was, when the prize was set up, to fight until the finger was raised (ad digitum)," i.e., until one had acknowledged defeat. It was this enactment of power and munificence before the citizens of Rome that served to legitimate and dramatize his imperial position. If the emperor was not in attendance, the producer (editor) of the games decided the fate of the victim. Even if defeated, a gladiator might be granted a reprieve (missus) if he fought well or, if neither fighter prevailed, both could be reprieved stans missus. But a gladiator also could be forced to fight again the same day, although that was considered bad form, and there were contests in which no reprieve was granted the loser (sine missione). Victors were awarded crowns or a palm branch and the prize money stipulated in their contracts, as well as any money awarded by the crowd, which was collected on a silver tray. The fallen were taken away through the Porta Libitinensis to the spoliarium, where they were stripped of their armor and weapons, which were returned to the gladiatorial troupe. Victors exited through another gate, the Porta Triumphalis, and those who had been defeated but spared departed through the Porta Sanavivaria. If a gladiator repeatedly survived the arena and lived long enough to retire, a symbolic wooden sword (rudis) was awarded as a token of discharge from service. The blood lust of the spectators, populus and emperors alike, the brutality of the combat, and the callous deaths of men and animals still disturb modern sensibilities. Certainly, Rome was cruel. Defeated enemies and criminals forfeited any right to a place within society, although they still might be saved (servare) from the death they deserved and be made slaves (servi). Because the life of the slave was forfeit, there was no question but that it could be claimed at any time. The paterfamilias of the family had absolute control over the lives of his slaves (and little less over those of his wife and children). In the army, decimation was the consequence of cowardice. The plague was ever present, as was the capricious whim of the emperor, who might seize a spectator from the crowd and have him thrown into the arena (Suetonius,Claudius, XXIV; Caligula, XXXV; Domitian, X; Dio, LIX.10). Beyond the city walls and the pomerium (a religious demarcation of the city's boundary), nature threatened. The gladiatorial shows were part of this culture of war, discipline, and death. The public execution of those who did not submit to Rome, betrayed their country, or were convicted of heinous crimes vividly demonstrated the consequences of those actions. In a society that was deeply stratified (including seating in the Colosseum), the usurpation of undeserved rights could be rectified only by public degradation and death. Having rejected civilized society, the criminal no longer could claim its protection from the forces of nature and so is given up to them: to the wild beast (ad bestias) or to consuming fire (ad flammas). In publicly witnessing such punishment, citizens were reassured that the proper social order has been restored and they, themselves, deterred from such actions. In this display, the games reaffirmed the moral and political order of things, and the death of criminals and wild animals, the real and symbolic re-establishment of a society under threat. In the arena, civilization triumphed over the wild and untamed, over the outlaw, the barbarian, the enemy. The gladiator demonstrated the power to overcome death and instilled in those who witnessed it the Roman virtues of courage and discipline. He who did not fight and die bravely dishonored the society that sought to redeem him. There was little sympathy, therefore, for the gladiator who valued his life too highly and flinched at the point of the sword. If not to have triumphed over his opponent, the defeated gladiator was expected, at least, to master the moment of his death. Not to do so reduced the gladiator to victim and the audience to onlookers at a sordid spectacle. If, in the morning venationes, there was the transition from life to death, so in the afternoon munera was the possibility of passing from death to renewed life. Earlier in the day, the threat outside society was overcome; in the afternoon, the threat of those who were no longer part of society. In their mutual defeat, the order of things was reasserted and death, itself, conquered. In witnessing how men faced the necessity of dying, in viewing the fate they feared, themselves, Romans confronted their own mortality and triumphed. In fighting courageously and skillfully, the gladiator might demonstrate sufficient valor to win salvation; in a death accepted without protest, he could acquire it as well. For the gladiator, the measure of his valor was a measure of the desperation of the circumstances in which it was acquired, and, paradoxically, if he could fight in contempt of life and glory, there was the possibility that he could regain them both. Indeed, Christian unease with the games was due not so much to their cruelty as to the fact that the gladiator could be saved by his own virtus. Grout, James. "Roman Gladiator." Encylopedia Romana. University of Chicago, 1997.

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