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GLADIATORS

Kurion gladiator mosaic

Andrew Curry wrote in National Geographic: For nearly 600 years, Romans thrilled to gladiatorial fights. They were a favorite subject of Roman artists, re-created in mosaics, frescoes, marble reliefs, glassware, clay trinkets, and bronze ornaments found across the Roman world. Nearly every sizable city and town had an arena of its own, with about 300 documented from Britain to the deserts of Jordan. [Source: Andrew Curry, National Geographic, July 20, 2021]

Gladiators were armed combatants who entertained audiences in the Roman Republic and Roman Empire in violent fights with other gladiators, wild animals, and condemned criminals. Some gladiators were volunteers who risked their lives and their legal and social standing by appearing in the arena, or were criminals that might get their sentences reduced for participating. Most were slaves, schooled under harsh conditions, socially marginalized, and segregated even in death. The word gladiator is derived from Latin “gladiator” meaning "swordsman", from gladius, "sword". [Source Wikipedia]

Gladiators abided by Rome's martial ethics in which fighting or dying admirably was acclaimed. Some gladiators were very famouse. They were celebrated in high and low art, and their value as entertainers is depicted on a variety found throughout the Roman world. Contrary to myth battles between gladiators weren't always to the death. Sometimes referees stepped in if someone was seriously injured and, in rare cases, both gladiators were allowed to leave if they were deemed particularly brave. Other times, the fate of a defeated but living gladiator was left up to the crowd and emperor. Unfortunately, few gladiators made it to the age of 30. [Source: BuzzFeed, September 20, 2023]

Tolga İldun wrote in Archaeology magazine: A common misconception is that all gladiators were slaves forced to fight and die in the arena. “The majority of gladiators across the empire were indeed slaves who were selected and trained,” says archaeologist Şükrü Özüdoğru of Mehmet Akif Ersoy University. Yet, during his excavations in Cibyra, Özüdoğru hasn’t found any direct evidence of enslavement. “There’s no data showing that this person was a slave of this person, bought or sold at a certain price, or that they originated from a specific background,” he says. Özüdoğru adds that there is also no direct evidence of enslavement of gladiators in other cities across Anatolia. “This suggests a more humanistic approach than we see elsewhere,” he says. [Source Tolga İldun, Archaeology magazine, November-December, 2024 archaeology.org ]

Book: "Gladiators and Spectacle in Ancient Rome" by Professor Roger Dunkle, of Brooklyn College (Pearson, 2008)

How Romans Viewed Gladiators

Andrew Curry wrote in National Geographic: Gladiators ranked at the bottom of ancient Rome’s rigidly hierarchical society, along with sex workers and actors. By law, gladiators were considered property, not people.They could be killed at the whim of whoever was paying for their fight. “That’s fundamental to understanding how the Romans could sit in the stands and watch this happening,” says Harvard University classicist Kathleen Coleman. [Source: Andrew Curry, National Geographic, July 20, 2021]

Nero

Professor Kathleen Coleman of Harvard University wrote for the BBC: “Today, the idea of gladiators fighting to the death, and of an amphitheatre where this could take place watched by an enthusiastic audience, epitomises the depths to which the Roman Empire was capable of sinking. Yet, to the Romans themselves, the institution of the arena was one of the defining features of their civilisation. Hardly any contemporary voices questioned the morality of staging gladiatorial combat. And the gladiators' own epitaphs mention their profession without shame, apology, or resentment. [Source: Professor Kathleen Coleman, BBC, February 17, 2011. Coleman is a professor of Latin and was a historical consultant on Ridley Scott's 2000 'Gladiator' |::|]

“The Romans believed that the first gladiators were slaves who were made to fight to the death at the funeral of a distinguished aristocrat in 264 B.C. This spectacle was arranged by the heirs of the deceased to honour his memory. Gradually gladiatorial spectacle became separated from the funerary context, and was staged by the wealthy as a means of displaying their power and influence within the local community. Advertisements for gladiatorial displays have survived at Pompeii, painted by professional sign-writers on house-fronts, or on the walls of tombs clustered outside the city-gates. The number of gladiators to be displayed was a key attraction: the larger the figure, the more generous the sponsor was perceived to be, and the more glamorous the spectacle.” |::|

History of Gladiators

The origin of gladiatorial combat is still debated by scholars. There is evidence of it in funeral rites during the Punic Wars of the 3rd century B.C. After that they became a common feature of political and social life in the Roman world. The gladiator games lasted for nearly a thousand years, reaching their peak between the 1st century B.C. and the A.D. 2nd century. Christians frowned up the games because they involved pagan rituals. The popularity of gladatorial contests declined in the fifth century.

Combats of gladiators formed part of the funeral rites of the Etruscans, and in Campania they were offered as entertainment to guests at feasts. The Romans adopted the custom from their neighbors. The first recorded gladiatorial contest in Rome took place in 264 B.C. following the death of the aristocrat and consul Junius Brutus Pera. His sons organized the public event as part of their father’s funeral rites. There were fights between three pairs of gladiators at the Forum Boarium, Rome’s ancient cattle market. The A.D. first-century historian Plutarch described games held by Julius Caesar in 65 B.C. For centuries after that they continued to be a favorite amusement in Italy and the provinces, until Honorius made them illegal in 404 A.D.

In early times the combatants were prisoners of war who fought with their own arms and equipment for the entertainment of their conquerors, and later, when men were recruited in other ways, the arms of the early enemies of Rome were in a great measure retained as belonging especially to this sport. Gladiators received a careful training in schools kept for the purpose. They were divided into several classes, according to their weapons and manner of fighting, and were called by the name of the peoples whose arms they had adopted. They usually fought in pairs, each from a different class, though occasionally a number engaged in a mêlée.

The most important class was the Samnites, who wore a helmet, one greave, a guard on the right arm, and fought with sword and shield. The Thracian was distinguished by a dagger which was curved or bent at right angles. He wore two greaves with leather coverings for the thighs, and an arm-guard, and carried a little shield. The hoplomachus seems to have been a variety of Samnite who had a large shield, and was generally paired with the Thracian Another class was the retiarius (net-thrower), equipped with a dagger, a trident, and a large net in which he tried to envelop his adversary, the secutor (follower), who was armed like a Samnite.

Early Gladiator Shows in Ancient Rome

As early as 160 B.C. the public deserted the theater where the Hecyra of Terence was being performed, for gladiatorial combats. By the first century B.C. the populace had grown so greedy for these sights that candidates sought to win votes by inviting the people to witness spectacular scenes of carnage. In order to put an end to corrupt practices the Senate in 63 B.C. passed a law disqualifying for election any magistrate who had financed such shows for the two years preceding the voting. It was natural that aspirants for the imperial throne should play on the people's passion to promote their own ambitious aims. Pompey even sated his fellow-citizens with combats; Caesar freshened their attraction by the luxury with which he surrounded them. Finally the emperors, deliberately pandering to the murderous lust of the crowds, found in gladiatorial games the most sure, if also the most sinister, of their instruments of power. [Source: “Daily Life in Ancient Rome: the People and the City at the Height the Empire” by Jerome Carcopino, Director of the Ecole Franchise De Rome Member of the Institute of France, Routledge 1936]

gladiator graffiti from Pompeii

Augustus was the first. Outside the city itself, he adhered to the posthumous Ikws of Julius Caesar and continued to limit the municipal magistrates to offering one annual munus Within the city, he ordered the praetors to give annually two munera (events sponsored by the government) limited to 120 gladiators. In 27 A.D., Tiberius forbade any private person with a fortune less than an "equestrian capital" of 400,000 sesterces to give a munus. Claudius transferred the duty of providing the public gladiatorial shows from the praetors to the more numerous quaestors, at the same time again limiting them to 120 gladiators per spectacle.

This restriction aimed less at curbing the passion of his subjects than at enhancing the prestige of their sovereign. For while thus regulating the giving of the public munera, Augustus recognized no limit save his own caprice to the number of "extraordinary" munera, which he offered the people three times in his own name and five times in the names of his sons and grandsons. By the incomparable splendour of these private gladiatorial spectacles, he practically monopolized the right to provide "extraordinary" munera, which was accomplished later by the formal prohibitions of the Flavians. Thus the decrees of Augustus made the munera the imperial show par excellence, as official and obligatory as the ludi of the theater and the circus. At the same time the empire provided grandiose buildings specially suited to their purpose. The design of these buildings, improvised more or less by chance, and repeated in hundreds of examples, seems to us today a new and mighty creation of Roman architecture the amphitheater.

Popularity of Gladiator Shows

Professor Kathleen Coleman of Harvard University wrote for the BBC: “Gladiatorial displays were red-letter days in communities throughout the empire. The whole spectrum of local society was represented, seated strictly according to status. The combatants paraded beforehand, fully armed. Exotic animals might be displayed and hunted in the early part of the programme, and prisoners might be executed, by exposure to the beasts. [Source: Professor Kathleen Coleman, BBC, February 17, 2011]

Andrew Curry wrote in National Geographic History: Brave performances in the arena could transform gladiators into popular heroes and even earn prisoners their freedom. The contradiction the gladiators represented—people of lower status and possibly enslaved, yet popular performers—may have contributed to the adulation from fans: Watching and getting up close to them offered rulebound Romans a thrill of the forbidden. “They were like sexy rock stars,” says art historian Katherine Welch. Roman writers rolled their eyes at wealthy women who swooned over gladiators, but the attraction seems to have been more or less universal. Take Celadus the Thracian—a promising newcomer to Pompeii with three wins under his helmet who was “the sigh of the girls,” according to an admiring graffito; or his trident-wielding compatriot Crescens, “netter of girls by night.” [Source Andrew Curry, National Geographic History, June 22, 2022]

At the first exhibition in honor of Brutus Pera, only three pairs of gladiators were shown, but in the three that followed, the number of pairs rose in order to twenty-two, twenty-five, and sixty. By the time of Sulla, politicians had found in the munera the most effective means to win the favor of the people, and vied with one another in the frequency of the shows and the number of the combatants. [Source: “The Private Life of the Romans” by Harold Whetstone Johnston, Revised by Mary Johnston, Scott, Foresman and Company (1903, 1932) |+|]

Besides this, the politicians made these shows serve as a pretext for surrounding themselves with bands of professional fighters; these fighters were called gladiators whether they were destined for the arena or not. With these they started riots in the streets, broke up public meetings, over-awed the courts, and even directed or prevented the elections. Caesar’s preparations for an exhibition when he was canvasing for the aedileship (65 B.C.) caused such general fear that the senate passed a law limiting the number of gladiators which a private citizen might employ, and he was allowed to exhibit only 320 pairs. The bands of Clodius and Milo made the city a slaughterhouse in 54 B.C., and order was not restored until late in the following year when Pompey as “sole consul” put an end to the battle of the bludgeons with the swords of his soldiers. |+|

During the Empire the number of gladiators exhibited almost surpasses belief. Augustus gave eight munera, in which no less than ten thousand men fought, but these were distributed through the whole period of his reign. Trajan exhibited as many in four months only of the year 107 A.D., in celebration of his conquest of the Dacians. The first Gordian, emperor in 238 A.D., gave munera monthly in the year of his aedileship, the number of pairs running from 150 to 500. These exhibitions did not cease until the fifth century of our era.” |+|

Gladiator show fight in Trier in 2005

Gladiator Business

Andrew Curry wrote in National Geographic: Renting gladiators was a “you break it, you buy it” type of arrangement. If a fighter was killed, whether intentionally or not, the sponsor of the fight paid full price to the gladiator’s owner. “These people were so valuable because they were so highly trained. You don’t want to squander that,” says NYU’s Welch. “Out of 10 pairs, there would be one death, possibly two.” [Source: Andrew Curry, National Geographic, July 20, 2021]

As amphitheaters proliferated across the empire and political hopefuls spent lavishly on spectacles, the costs of gladiatorial games spiraled out of control. By the second century A.D., the pressure to put on ever more impressive events made the games prohibitively expensive, threatening their existence. A massive bronze tablet discovered more than a century ago in the ruins of Italica, a Roman town on the outskirts of modern-day Seville, Spain, reveals how Romans tried to get things back under control.

Known as the Tabula Gladiatoria, it’s inscribed with a decree issued in A.D. 177 that limited what sponsors could spend on games. It even includes a detailed table of fees. A gladiator “of the highest and best-looking grade” could earn up to 15,000 sesterces, more than enough to pay the annual wages of a typical Roman soldier. Up to a quarter of that sum went to the gladiator — and was payable in advance.

By A.D. 150, the cost of gladiator fights was spiraling out of control as political hopefuls sponsored ever more spectacular games to outdo their rivals. To rein in spending, Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius set price limits.

Lanistae — Gladiator Contractors

In the Italian municipia and in the provincial towns, the local magistrates whose duty it was annually to provide the government-sponsored shows called in the expert advice of specialist contractors, the lanistae. These contractors, whose trade shares in Roman law and literature the same infamy that attaches to that of the pander or procurer (leno), were in sober fact Death's middlemen. The lanista would hire out his troupe of gladiators (familia gladiatoria), at the best figure he could command, to duumvir or aedile for combats in which about half were bound to lose their lives. [Source: “Daily Life in Ancient Rome: the People and the City at the Height the Empire” by Jerome Carcopino, Director of the Ecole Franchise De Rome Member of the Institute of France, Routledge 1936]

Arles Amphitheater

He maintained his "family" at his own expense, under a system of convict discipline which made no distinction between the slaves he had purchased, starving wretches whom he had recruited, and ruined sons of good faftiily. These young ne'er-do-wells were lured by the rewards and fortune they would win from the victories he would ensure them, and by the certainty of being well and amply fed in his "training school," the Indus gladiatorius. They discounted the premium which he was to pay them if they survived the term of their contract, and hired themselves out to him body and soul, abandoning all their human rights (auctorati) and stealing themselves to march at his command to the butchery.

By the A.D. 2nd century, in Rome, there were no longer any lanistae. Their functions were performed exclusively by the procuratores of the princeps. These agents had special official buildings on the Via Labicana at their disposal the barracks of the Indus magnus, probably erected under Claudius, and those of the Indus matutinus, constructed by Domitian. They were also in charge of the wild and exotic animals which subject provinces and client kings, even to the potentates of India, sent to fill the emperor's menagerie, or vivarium, just outside the Praenestine Gate. Their gladiators, constantly recruited from men condemned to death and from prisoners taken in war, formed an effective army of fighters.

Gladiator Code of Conduct

Andrew Curry wrote in National Geographic: Gladiators were more than mere entertainment. Literary accounts make it clear that by fighting — and sometimes dying — bravely, gladiators reinforced Roman concepts of manliness and virtue. (Except, that is, for the net-wielding retiarius, whose tricky tactics and long-distance trident attacks made him the arena’s designated baddie.) “Gladiators, whether ruined men or barbarians, what wounds they endure!” the Roman orator Cicero wrote around 50 B.C. “When condemned men fight with swords, there could be no sturdier training for the eye against pain and death.” [Source: Andrew Curry, National Geographic, July 20, 2021]

Reuters reported: “Gladiators may have fought and died to entertain others in the brutality of the Roman arena but they appear to have abided by a strict code of conduct which avoided savage violence, forensic scientists say. Tests on the remains of 67 gladiators found in tombs at Ephesus in Turkey, center of power for ancient Rome's eastern empire, show they stuck to well defined rules of combat and avoided gory free-for-alls. Injuries to the front of each skull suggested that each opponent used just one type of weapon per bout of face-to-face contact, two Austrian researchers report in a paper to be published in Forensic Science International. [Source: Reuters March, 2006]

“Savage violence and mutilation, typical of battlefields 2,000 years ago, were out of order. And the losers appear to have died quickly. Despite the fact that most gladiators wore helmets, 10 of the remains showed the fighters had died of squarish hammer-like blows to the side of the head, possibly the work of a backstage executioner who finished off wounded losers after the fight.

Magerius Mosaic in Tunisia

“The report confirms the picture given of battles in the arena by Roman artwork, which suggests gladiators were well matched and followed rules enforced by two referees. Kathleen Coleman of Harvard University, who was historical consultant for Ridley Scott's film "Gladiator," agreed with the findings of the report. "The fact that none of the gladiators' skulls was subjected to a repeated battering does seem to confirm that discipline was exercised in gladiatorial combat and its aftermath," she was quoted by New Scientist magazine as saying.

“The scientists, Karl Grosschmidt of the Medical University of Vienna and Fabian Kanz of the Austrian Archaeological Institute, used special X-ray scans and microscopic analysis to investigate the gladiators' deaths.The bones were uncovered in 1993 and are thought to date from the second century AD. Grosschmidt and Kanz told New Scientist: "Injuries to the front of each skull suggested that each opponent used just one type of weapon per bout of face-to-face contact," they report in magazine. The lack of multiple injuries and mutilation shows that the very strict nature of combat rules for gladiator fights was adhered to."

Gladiators in Art

The great popularity of gladiator fighting is reflected in the frequency with which it was represented on articles of common use, such as vases, dishes, lamps, seal-rings, and in sculpture, mosaic, and painting for the decoration of walls. A combat between a Samnite and a Thracian decorates one lamp. Another shows a wounded Samnite on one knee. On a third a Thracian has brought his opponent to the ground, and by holding up his thumb, seems to signify that he will spare him, or perhaps asks permission of the spectators to do so. A fourth lamp is decorated with two swords and two pairs of greaves. [Source: “The Daily Life of the Greeks and Romans”, Helen McClees Ph.D, Gilliss Press, 1924]

Four gladiatorial combats appear in relief upon a glass cup, made in Gaul in the second century A.D. The names of the combatants are placed over their heads, so we may suppose that they represent actual gladiators who were famous in their day. Gamus, a Samnite, stands over Merops, who is lying on the ground and holding up his thumb to ask mercy from the spectators. Next come Calamus, a Samnite, paired with Hermes, a Thracian, then another pair of Samnite and Thracian, Tetraites and Prudes. The latter has lost his little shield. In the fourth combat Spiculus is victorious over Columbus.

Gladiator can be seen a number of Roman-Era mosaics.The Gladiator Mosaic is a famous set of five large mosaics of gladiators and venators and two smaller ones. The mosaics are dated to the first half of the 4th century and are now in the Salone of the Galleria Borghese in Rome. They were discovered in 1834 on the Borghese estate at Torrenova, on the Via Casilina outside Rome. [Source Wikipedia]

Panel 3 of the Gladiator Mosaic

The mosaic depicts a single narrative of munera and venationes similar to the celebratory events a wealthy person would host in their domus at the time. Panel 1 shows a group of seven men, of which six have been injured, facing a bull next to a pair of venatores facing a bull, an ostrich, an elk, a deer, and a lion, with one of the men piercing it with a spear. Panel 2 shows two bestiarii along with eight panthers on two different levels of the mosaic, indicating depth. On Panel 3, the viewer can see four different gladiatorial pairings. A secutor kills a missing figure, another secutor, Mazicinus, is struck by the retiarius Almunus, an hoplomachus fatally wounds the retiarius, Callimorfus, and finally a smaller gladiator or incitator named Ideus, appears in the upper register. On Panel 4, displays four pairs of gladiators fighting with three incitatores. The role of the incitator is to urge the enslaved fighters who may not be engaging in the bloody combat expected of them.

Inscriptions from Pompeii About Gladiators

Andrew Curry wrote in National Geographic: Like many things about ancient Rome, some of the best preserved evidence for gladiators comes from Pompeii. In 1766 early excavators uncovered a trove of gladiator armor at a site on the edge of town that had been turned into a training facility and residence for fighters. Even after three centuries of excavations, archaeologists continue to uncover fresh evidence at Pompeii. In 2019 archaeologists working in a narrow alley on the north side of town came upon a fresco of two gladiators with what look like ostrich plumes adorning their bronze helmets painted on the wall of a small tavern.Alain Genot, an archaeologist at the museum of antiquity in Arles, says it includes unprecedented detail: One of the fighters is wearing pants under his leg protectors. And after my close escape in Arles, I’m pleased to learn that cords hanging below his chin may represent straps used to keep his heavy helmet firmly in place. [Source: Andrew Curry, National Geographic, July 20, 2021]

Bloody wounds on the bodies of both men show the fight has taken a toll. But there is a clear loser: One of the fighters, who is bleeding from a gash on his exposed chest and seems to be doubled over in pain, has dropped his shield and raised his forefinger. The gesture, repeated in many gladiator depictions, is the ancient equivalent of “tapping out” of a fight.

William Stearns Davis wrote: “There are almost no literary remains from Antiquity possessing greater human interest than the inscriptions scratched on the walls of Pompeii (destroyed 79 A.D.). Their character is extremely varied, and they illustrate in a keen and vital way the life of a busy, luxurious, and, withal, tolerably typical, city of some 25,000 inhabitants in the days of the Flavian.” [Source:William Stearns Davis, ed., “Readings in Ancient History: Illustrative Extracts from the Sources,” 2 Vols. (Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 1912-13), Vol. II: Rome and the West, pp. 260-265]

Many of the graffiti inscriptions in Pompeii are related to gladiators, such as one from A.D. 1st century that indicates the outcome of a match between gladiators Severus and Albanus Many of them announce upcoming events.
1) “Twenty pairs of gladiators provided by Quintus Monnius Rufus are to fight at Nola May First, Second, and Third, and there will be a hunt.”
2) “Thirty pairs of gladiators provided by Gnaeus Alleius Nigidius Maius quinquennial duumvir, together with their substitutes, will fight at Pompeii on November 24, 25, 26. There will be a hunt. Hurrah for Maius the Quinquennial! Bravo, Paris!”
3) “The gladiatorial troop of the Aedile Aulius Suettius Certus will fight at Pompeii May 31. There will be a hunt, and awnings will be provided.”
4) “Twenty pairs of gladiators furnished by Decimus Lucretius Satrius Valens perpetual priest of Nero, son of the Emperor, and ten pairs of gladiators furnished by Decimus Lucretius Valens his son, will fight at Pompeii April 8, 9, 10, 11, and 12. There will be a big hunt and awnings. Aemilius Celer wrote this by the light of the moon.”

Panel 4 of the Gladiator Mosaic

How Gladiators Brought Roman Culture to Anatolia

Tolga İldun wrote in Archaeology magazine: Anatolia’s transition from being ruled by a succession of local empires to becoming part of the Roman world at the start of the second century B.C. involved military conquests, diplomatic maneuvers, and cultural assimilation. Festivals held in honor of Roman emperors, many of which included gladiatorial contests, were key events in this process of Romanization. Anatolia played a significant role in the development and expansion of gladiatorial culture, and the games became a way in which the vast region reinforced its allegiance to Rome. [Source Tolga İldun, Archaeology magazine, November-December, 2024 archaeology.org ]

Ephesus was one of the first Anatolian cities to host gladiatorial games. This important trading hub came under Roman control in 133 B.C. after Attalus III of Pergamon (reigned 138–133 B.C.) bequeathed his kingdom to Rome. Ancient sources indicate that gladiatorial games in Ephesus were organized by the Roman general and statesman Lucius Licinius Lucullus. “While there’s no epigraphic evidence, literary sources do refer to gladiatorial games organized and supported by Lucullus in Ephesus,” says archaeologist Martin Steskal of the Austrian Archaeological Institute. “These are the earliest mentions of gladiatorial games in the city.”

These Roman-style games quickly captured people’s attention. By the late first century A.D., their popularity had spread throughout Anatolia, from the region of Pamphylia in the south to Bithynia in the north, though many people may have been unaware of their roots in sacred religious rites. “It’s an interesting question how distant this cultural practice was for the audience in Anatolia,” says Smith. The games were, however, almost certainly seen as a way to demonstrate locals’ adoption of Roman ways. Adding to the ample literary evidence exploring the world of gladiators, over the last century archaeologists have uncovered figurines, graffiti, friezes, and especially grave stelas depicting gladiators throughout Anatolia. It seems that aristocrats not only from Ephesus but also from cities such as Aphrodisias, Hierapolis, Aydın, Stratonicea, and Cibyra began hosting the lavish spectacles they had witnessed in Rome.

Most of these cities already had theaters and stadiums to hold Greek-style athletic contests including wrestling, boxing, the long jump, and discus and javelin throwing. With some modifications, these venues were suitable for gladiatorial contests as well. “Theaters were seen as places where gladiatorial games could coexist harmoniously with other cultural activities,” says Smith. Wealthy aristocrats and religious officials soon realized that sponsoring games was a faster and more effective way to curry public favor, and thereby amass political power, than, for example, building bathhouses or aqueducts. But it was also expensive. Arranging gladiatorial shows, whether by renting combatants from a lanista—a gladiator school owner—contracting with freelance gladiators, or purchasing an entire gladiatorial family, was very costly. An inscription dating to A.D. 177, for example, records that the price to hire professional gladiators, who were graded according to their skill and experience, was substantial, ranging from 3,000 to 15,000 sesterces.

A letter from the emperor Hadrian (reigned A.D. 117–138) to the city of Aphrodisias, inscribed on a slab that was later reused as a paving stone, suggests that high priests, who were required to stage gladiatorial games as part of their official duties, found this an intolerable financial burden. “It’s possible to read the inscription as evidence that, as an incentive to stand for office, potential candidates were permitted to contribute to the construction of an aqueduct instead of the staging of a gladiatorial show, thereby replacing fleeting entertainment with a lasting improvement to the civic infrastructure,” says classicist Kathleen Coleman of Harvard University. Despite the hefty financial outlay, gladiatorial games attracted a great deal of public interest and were a boon for tourism, with spectators traveling from across the region to watch, purchasing figurines or oil lamps depicting their favorite fighter, and dining and staying in the city.

Gladiator Graffiti From Aphrodisias

Hundreds of graffiti messages engraved into stone in the ancient city of Aphrodisias, in modern-day Turkey, have been discovered and deciphered, more than in most other cities of the Roman East (an area which includes Greece and part of the Middle East)." Many of the inscriptions rale to gladiators.

Owen Jarus wrote in Live Science: “The graffiti also includes many depictions of gladiators. Although the city was part of the Roman Empire, the people of Aphrodisias mainly spoke Greek. The graffiti is evidence that people living in Greek-speaking cities embraced gladiator fighting, Chaniotis said. [Source: Owen Jarus, Live Science, June 15, 2015]

more gladiator graffiti from Pompeii

Angelos Chaniotis, a professor at the Institute for Advanced Study, in Princeton New Jersey, said a lecture at Toronto's Royal Ontario Museum: “"Pictorial graffiti connected with gladiatorial combat are very numerous," he said. "And this abundance of images leaves little doubt about the great popularity of the most brutal contribution of the Romans to the culture of the Greek east."

““Some of the most interesting gladiator graffiti was found on a plaque in the city's stadium where gladiator fights took place. The plaque depicts battles between two combatants: a retiarius (a type of gladiator armed with a trident and net) and a secutor (a type of gladiator equipped with a sword and shield). One scene on the plaque shows the retiarius emerging victorious, holding a trident over his head, the weapon pointed toward the wounded secutor. On the same plaque, another scene shows the secutor chasing a fleeing retiarius. Still another image shows the two types of gladiators locked in combat, a referee overseeing the fight.

“"Probably a spectator has sketched scenes he had seen in the arena," Chaniotis said. The images offer "an insight (on) the perspective of the contemporary spectator. The man who went to the arena in order to experience the thrill and joy of watching — from a safe distance — other people die."

Gladiator Blood and Skin Used to Make Medicines and Cosmetics

Romans believed that the blood of a slain gladiator could cure epilepsy. In some cases, after a gladiator was killed and his body removed from the arena, the blood was quickly collected and sold still-warm by vendors. After gladiatorial combat was outlawed around A.D. 400, people began using the blood of executed criminals for the same cure. [Source: Andrew Handley, Listverse, February 8, 2013]

Mark Oliver wrote for Listverse: “Several Roman authors report people gathering the blood of dead gladiators and selling it as a medicine. The Romans apparently believed that gladiator blood had the power to cure epilepsy and would drink it as a cure. And that was just the civilized approach—others would pull out the gladiators’ livers and eat them raw. [Source: Mark Oliver, Listverse, August 23, 2016 ]

“This was so popular that when Rome banned gladiatorial combat, people kept the treatment going by drinking the blood of decapitated prisoners. Strangely, some Roman physicians actually report that this treatment worked. They claim to have seen people who drank human blood recover from their epileptic fits.

“The gladiators who lost became medicine for epileptics while the winners became aphrodisiacs. In Roman times, soap was hard to come by, so athletes cleaned themselves by covering their bodies in oil and scraping the dead skin cells off with a tool called a strigil. “Usually, the dead skin cells were just discarded—but not if you were a gladiator. Their sweat and skin scrapings were put into a bottle and sold to women as an aphrodisiac. Often, this was worked into a facial cream. Women would rub the cream all over their faces, hoping the dead skin cells of a gladiator would make them irresistible to men.”

Critics of Gladiators

Professor Kathleen Coleman of Harvard University wrote for the BBC: “There were some dissenting voices: the philosopher-emperor Marcus Aurelius found gladiatorial combat 'boring', but he nevertheless sponsored legislation to keep costs at a realistic level so that individuals could still afford to mount the displays that were an obligatory requirement of certain public offices. Both pagan philosophers and Christian fathers scorned the arena. But they objected most vociferously not to the brutality of the displays, but to the loss of self-control that the hype generated among the spectators.” [Source: Professor Kathleen Coleman, BBC, February 17, 2011 |::|]

The following letter indicates how by the age of Nero cultured and elevated men were beginning to revolt at the arena against butcheries which still delighted the mob. Seneca wrote: “I turned in to the games one mid-day hoping for a little wit and humor there. I was bitterly disappointed. It was really mere butchery. The morning's show was merciful compared to it. Then men were thrown to lions and to bears: but at midday to the audience. There was no escape for them. The slayer was kept fighting until he could be slain. "Kill him! flog him! burn him alive" was the cry: "Why is he such a coward? Why won't he rush on the steel? Why does he fall so meekly? Why won't he die willingly?" Unhappy that I am, how have I deserved that I must look on such a scene as this? Do not, my Lucilius, attend the games, I pray you. Either you will be corrupted by the multitude, or, if you show disgust, be hated by them. So stay away. [Source: Seneca (b.4 BC/1 CE-d. 65 A.D.): Epistles 7: The Gladiatorial Games, William Stearns Davis, ed., “Readings in Ancient History: Illustrative Extracts from the Sources,” 2 Vols. (Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 1912-13), Vol. II: Rome and the West]

Image Sources: Wikimedia Commons

Text Sources: Internet Ancient History Sourcebook: Rome sourcebooks.fordham.edu ; Internet Ancient History Sourcebook: Late Antiquity sourcebooks.fordham.edu ; “Outlines of Roman History” by William C. Morey, Ph.D., D.C.L. New York, American Book Company (1901) ; “The Private Life of the Romans” by Harold Whetstone Johnston, Revised by Mary Johnston, Scott, Foresman and Company (1903, 1932); BBC Ancient Rome bbc.co.uk/history/ ; Project Gutenberg gutenberg.org ; Metropolitan Museum of Art, National Geographic, Smithsonian magazine, New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Live Science, Discover magazine, Archaeology magazine, Reuters, Associated Press, The Guardian, AFP, The New Yorker, Wikipedia, Encyclopædia Britannica, Encyclopedia.com and various other books, websites and publications.

Last updated November 2024