Gladiator by Philip Matyszak

Author:Philip Matyszak
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Thames & Hudson
Published: 2014-05-15T04:00:00+00:00

The emperor Vespasian, restorer of peace in AD 70, founder of the Flavian dynasty. Known to gladiators mainly as the builder of the Flavian Amphitheatre, the world’s all-time premier fighting venue, where thousands of men and tens of thousands of animals have since perished. (Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, Copenhagen)

Gladiators in the house

• • •

He lived with a household of actors and gladiators, the former to abet his lusts, the latter to abet his crimes.

CICERO ON STANDING FOR CONSUL 3

(WRITING TO HIS BROTHER QUINTUS ABOUT A POLITICAL RIVAL)

• • •

Gladiators might train in the ludus, but they do not always live there. Blaesus, proconsul of Pannonia in AD 14, had slave gladiators in his retinue while he was commander of the army, and used these men to discipline recalcitrant soldiers. Even when in Rome many wealthy senators and equestrians have found it useful to have a gladiator or two on the premises. This is not simply so that unwelcome petitioners can be ejected with extreme force, but also because gladiators act as personal trainers for a senate whose members still take skill at arms very seriously. Julius Caesar used to do this the other way around, billeting his younger gladiators at the homes of experienced military men and urging them to practise duelling against each other and so mutually improve their skills. When the head of the household goes out into the forum, his gladiators accompany him as bodyguards for his esteemed person and as visible proof that he is rich enough to afford such trappings of power.

In these peaceful days a gladiator on bodyguard duty will probably appear simply as an over-muscled Roman, with – at most – a vest of chain mail jingling gently under his tunic. Two centuries ago, in the disturbed days at the end of the Republic, gladiator bodyguards were a lot more blatant about it.

The tribune Caius Cato (a distant relative of Cato the Younger) acquired a number of gladiators and Cicero remarked to his brother that ‘he never appeared in public without them in their complete panoply of armour. However, he could not afford to maintain them, and had trouble keeping the troupe together’. Eventually, to Cato’s chagrin, the gladiators were purchased by a rival.

Clodius, a bitter rival of Cicero, used gladiators to protect not just his person but also his political ambitions. When he successfully had Cicero exiled, Clodius borrowed gladiators from his brother Appius Claudius and used them to disrupt the people’s assemblies that gathered to vote for the orator’s recall. We have already seen how Clodius’s gladiators were outmatched by those of his rival Milo, who killed the turbulent politician on the Appian Way outside Rome (see chapter II – ‘Death of Clodius’).

Decimus Brutus, as we have seen above, provided gladiators to his relative Marcus Brutus to beef up the efforts of Caesar’s assassins. These gladiators were stationed under arms near the assassination site on the pretext that they were practising for a show, and after the killing they withdrew with the ‘liberators’ to guard their refuge on the Capitoline Hill.

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