Daily Life in the Roman City by Gregory S. Aldrete

Author:Gregory S. Aldrete [Aldrete, Gregory S.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, Ancient, Rome, Social History
ISBN: 9780313331749
Google: 40AjSfdJXaAC
Amazon: 0806140275
Publisher: Greenwood Publishing Group
Published: 2003-12-31T13:00:00+00:00

GLADIATORS

On some holidays, the state provided public entertainment, of which there were two broad categories. The first was ludi, meaning “games.” These took many forms, including theatrical performances, dances, and circus races. The vast majority of entertainments were ludi. Much rarer were munera. These were spectacles such as gladiatorial combats, wild animal shows, and other unusual exhibitions. The biggest difference between the Romans' concept of entertainment and our own is that all of these events had a religious component. The Romans regarded them as a form of worship, and prayers and sacrifices to the gods were a part of all of them.

Gladiatorial combats have a very ancient history in Roman society. They probably originated with the Etruscans, the predecessors of the Romans in central Italy. Among the Etruscans, when a king or war leader died, as part of the funeral ceremony a pair of warriors fought to the death as a way to honor the warlike spirit of the leader. Over time, this practice became institutionalized, and the Romans subsequently imitated it. Throughout the next 800 years of the Roman Republic, gladiator games remained very rare and on a small scale and were always held as part of a funeral service.

Like many other things, this began to change in the Late Republic. Julius Caesar is regarded as the man who began to transform them from primarily a religious ceremony into a form of entertainment. At an early point in his career when he was trying to gain fame, Caesar put on a gladiatorial show that featured an unheard-of 320 pairs of gladiators. This was supposedly in honor of his father, despite the fact that the elder Caesar had been dead for over 20 years. Whatever the effects on the ghost of Caesar's father, these games made Caesar popular with the people of Rome.

During the empire, by law the senate could sponsor no more than two gladiator shows per year. There was no limit, however, to the number the emperor could hold. Despite this, they always remained rare and unusual events. In his 60-plus-year reign, the emperor Augustus put on gladiator shows only eight times. Thus, the popular image in movies and on television of Romans spending all their time at gladiator shows is erroneous.

There were three sources for gladiators. The first and most common was slaves who were condemned to be gladiators because they either had committed some crime or else seemed likely to be good fighters. This latter category included prisoners of war captured in Rome's campaigns. Second, criminals were sometimes condemned to be gladiators. The third (and by far the rarest) category was free people who volunteered to become gladiators in a quest for fame and money.

When one became a gladiator, he (the vast majority of gladiators were men, although there are a few attested instances of female gladiators) was sent to gladiator school, where the first thing he did was abandon his old name and take a new stage name. During the republic, most of these schools

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