Gladiators: everything you wanted to know - History Extra podcast | Acast
"‘Did others ancient civilizations have their own form of gladiators?’
‘Sure. In fact, I would be hard pressed to think of a civilization that didn't have significant combat, sort of single combats between important individuals that other people gathered around to watch, that would have some sort of meaning or impact or significance in the moment. You might think about duels between heroes in epic. But that sort of activity is something that's find basically everywhere, though, not under the name of gladiators, necessarily...
It's never just entertainment. Let me put it that way. You know, we have a much more casual notion of entertainment, we have entertainment on demand when I'm standing in line somewhere, when I'm bored, whatever. I have vast arrays of spectacle literally in the palm of my hand, and they did not. So entertainment has a different meaning for them. Especially mass entertainments that the Romans start to come up with are special and rare and different from one's daily experiences. In these purpose built venues that blocked out the rest of the world, they literally become this new universe filled with meaning, with lessons about Rome's power with lessons about the Emperor, the generals’ generosity, and his command of nature. “He makes myths come true, and we have seen it with our own eyes. These fragrant mists drift down on us, they refresh our senses, they cool us. Silken sheets manned by sailors shade us from the sun, and transform our perceptions with colors.” And we're showered with cakes and fruits and exotic nuts from district gardens. And fighters in front of us demonstrate that even people from faraway who are unfamiliar with the city and its stories, who might be low born, who might be untaught. Even they have the capacity for bravery, and resilience that we can be inspired by. And we respect their efforts and we cheer their names, and the sponsor heeds us and our responses and our wishes. So it's it's not just entertainment at all...
Thumbs were turned, and that's literally what the Latin means… but we don't actually have images of how they were turned… Maybe one in five bouts ended in a death… for everyone who's actually entering the arena, it's a one in 10 chance of dying, but we don't know how that death actually takes place. are they dying fighting? Is it a weapons sort of thing? Or are they fighting to some person, submitting, asking to be released, being ordered to die? We're not quite sure. But if you think about it in an economic basis, you know, this is this is an investment that people are making to contract with these particular performers. And no doubt built into the contract are special fees if they actually lose one of those performances during the show that have to be paid. And so there's a certain kind of incentive to a number of different people to not encourage the death thing. It's also clear that in some particular shows, where the Emperor states that these will be cine missio [sp?] combats, that there will be no release for the the non winner, that the response from the audience is not a positive one. This is a judgment, apparently on the Emperor. And the stories that are told about this indicate that this is received pretty negatively, is the mark of a bad Emperor.
Plus, as I said, it's not cost effective. It's a waste of resources. And these are resources with faces, who have the opportunity to make connections with the crowds. And the Roman crowds don't seem to like that. It's interesting too, that in other contexts, they don't like the mass slaughter of animals either. This, this upsets them. It's off putting and they start to turn against the sponsor of the individual shows. So they like it when people have the opportunity to use the resources to take advantage of chance, of their skill set, of their charm, seizing their moments, fate and Fortuna on their side. These are meaningful things to the spectators, they're meaningful in their daily lives. And if someone *has* to die, that diminishes those factors. It's a bad message...
We know of a number of gladiators who actually retired… Some of them retired with special honor, they had a sort of ceremonial handing over of the wooden sword, the ludes [sp?], granted their freedom from the the ludes... some people were sentenced to the gladiatorial school to as a criminal penalty. And this was apparently available for them as well...
Everyone who became a gladiator surrendered a certain amount of social standing. Gladiators, by law were, infamous. And what I mean by that is that they lost certain things legally in Rome. So, by Roman law, gladiators, did not have access to certain kinds of political power. They did not have certain kinds of, of social mobility. By Roman law, they were not to marry, someone of elite standing. They had sort of the same social stigma, as actors and as prostitutes, because gladiators like them, used their bodies to give pleasure to many people. And they were submitting to the will and to the desires of the crowds. They also as gladiators had to take an oath, to submit to the discipline of being a gladiator. That meant as part of their training, they would regularly be beaten, they surrendered physical autonomy, they did not control their own bodies. And that was something that slaves had to submit to. So by becoming a gladiator, you put yourself physically in the same position, the same status as someone who was enslaved. That's something that was seen as absolutely horrific by those who were elites who assumed that, of course, they are always going to be in charge of their bodies, they will never have this kind of problem. And by elites, I of course, mean elite males in particular’...
‘What was the daily life of a gladiator actually, like? I think we tend to think about fights and rather than how they lived their life day to day’
‘For most gladiators, shows are fairly infrequent, nowhere near a daily or even a weekly schedule of actual performances. But clearly, they did train, they kept in shape. They were thoughtful about diet and conditioning. They are sort of famous for their their consumption of barley, sometimes called the barley men, that may be some form of carb loading for shows. They paid attention to temperatures, should they be drinking water, should they be drinking wine, they did commit to this kind of thing. They did get damaged, too...
The knowledge that you might end up fatally wounding or even outright killing someone that you associate with on a daily basis, someone that you feel connected to… you can prepare for that by practicing not just movements, choreograph steps that show off your weapons skills, but also potentially minimize the risk involved. There are different kinds of targets on the body, of course, that are going to be less dangerous to someone that you actually care about. On the other hand, living in close quarters, doesn't necessarily ensure that you feel affection for all the members of your troops...
How common were female gladiators. This is a hot question that is much contested by scholars, were female gladiators anomalies, or those are relatively skimpy evidence represent the tip of the iceberg... All kinds of women who do all kinds of things are pretty much absent from our ancient sources of information. And it's not because there are genuinely only 20 women who exist in the empire. And they're all staying quietly in one room. Right? So we know about the absences in the sources. We know about their silences. Sources do have women with weapons that appear as participants in spectacles. Sometimes the description surrounding this suggests that this is shocking, and outrageous. But usually that shock and outrage is directed against the sponsor, usually an emperor. And it's usually an emperor who's making other kinds of bad decisions about spectacle, and about power in general.
Sometimes we have women with weapons who are described and sometimes even named in large shows as part of the lavish provisioning of engagement and entertainment and performers and so forth. And when they're noted, you know, they're they're described sometimes they're, you know, described in more detail, but they're not singled out as something that's utterly unique and bizarre, right, but actually just part of a very expanded very detailed, very expensive show. We have a few commemorations of historical female gladiators. We have an inscription from Ostia that talks about women with swords, they were in a show. Woo! They're exciting. Probably the best piece of of information is the relief from Halicarnassus that's in the British Museum... It comes from the second century C, second century AD, and it has two women facing off against each other. They have their swords pointing towards each other. They have weaponry on, they have shields, they're stepping forward in a kind of dynamic pose. It's a face off between these two women. And they're in so called heavy armature, they're carrying significant weight in weapons and protection. And bear in mind that shields are weapons as well. Their names are there underneath them, Amazon and Achillia, great names. There's an inscription written above them that indicates that both of them were granted misia, both of them were granted release to fight another day, there was no death. So it's a recognition of their fighting skills, their determination, the effort that they're putting forward in this. Neither is yielding, neither is submitting and that's indicated as well of course by their posture. And those names, those names are great. Amazon, of course, a reference to the ancient, imagined female dominated society famed for their war skills and their interactions with heroes of yesteryear, heroes like Achilles and one of them is of course, named Achillia. So Achilles was famous for fighting Amazons too’"
