Different types of gladiatorial games

Men and women bled and died in the arena for sport and entertainment, and the Romans ate it up for centuries. Even today gladiatorial combats are featured prominently in sword and sandal cinema Gladiator and television Rome, Spartacus.

In this class we'll explore the origins of gladiatorial games, who the gladiators were not all of them were slaves and why they participated in these combats, the different types of gladiators and gladiatorial contests, why the games were so popular in ancient Rome and the place they held in Roman society , and, finally, why the games, as all things, came to an end.

The idea of female gladiators appeals to the popular imagination, so that the supposed discovery of burials of gladiatrices in Britain in and were widely reported in the international press. In reality, the evidence is insufficient to determine their professions. This notice is about unusual spectacles put on by the emperor, and so may indicate that female gladiators were a novelty. It is also not clear whether, if and when women fought, they used sharp weapons. The ancient data are also insufficient to determine fatality rates among gladiators, let alone the proportion of those killed in the run of combat versus those dispatched after an appeal was rejected.

Vivid evidence, however, has come from gladiatorial epitaphs and cemeteries. The gravestones of gladiators, with their accompanying inscriptions epitaphs , are revealing about their origins, lives, careers, and attitudes toward their profession. Gravestones were expensive monuments to purchase and erect, and those inscribed with elaborate texts and even images were more expensive still.

Who dedicated the stone and so paid for it is an important consideration here, as are the circumstances of its commission. As such they are most instructive documents. This alone gives an impression of professional pride among this cadre of elite fighters. The texts of the epitaphs bolster this impression.

Some examples 8 :. Marcus Antonius Exochus, Thracian. Antonius Exochus, by birth an Alexandrian, in the games given at Rome to mark the triumph of the deified Trajan [ ce ], on the second day, in his first ever appearance tiro , he secured a draw stans missus with Araxis, imperial slave; at Rome, on the ninth day of the same games, he caused Fimbria, freeborn, veteran of nine fights, to concede missum fecit. Flamma, secutor. He lived 30 years. He fought 34 times, won 21 times, drew stans 9 times, and was spared missus 4 times.

Syrian by birth. Delicatus, his comrade-at-arms coarmio , made this tomb for a worthy man. To the souls of the departed. Lyco, freeborn or freed , left-handed murmillo , four fights. Longinas, freeborn or freed , contraretiarius , made this tomb for his well-deserving brother frater.

Tomb of Vitalis, unbeaten retiarius , Batavian by birth. He courageously fought it out to the end on an equal footing with his opponent; he was fast in his fights. For Urbicus, secutor of the first rank primus palus , by birth Florentine, who fought 13 times. He lived 22 years. I recommend that he who beats a man should kill him. His fans amatores will nurture his shade. Glauco, born at Mutina, veteran of seven fights, killed in the eighth.

He lived 23 years, five days. Aurelia, along with his fans amatores , made this tomb for a well-deserving husband. Pardo, from Dertona, veteran of ten fights, lies here, deceived in the eleventh.

He lived 27 years. Arriane to her darling husband, who lived with me. Constantius, the sponsor of games munerarius , to his gladiators on account of the popularity of his show munus.

He gave this grave as a tribute munus to Decoratus, who killed the retiarius Caeruleus, and then himself fell dead. Decoratus, secutor , veteran of nine fights, has bequeathed grief above all to his wife Valeria. I, who was once celebrated in the amphitheater, have truly found oblivion, after killing my opponent, who was full of irrational bitterness.

My name is Stephanos. After I was crowned winner for the tenth time in competition, I died and passed into eternity, bound in the bosom of the earth. Strength never left me, until the guardian of my life [i. Polychronis set up the inscription as a memorial. Here I lie victorious, Diodorus the wretched. After breaking my opponent Demetrius, I did not kill him immediately.

But murderous Fate and the cunning treachery of the summa rudis [i. I lie in the land of the original inhabitants. A good friend buried me here because of his piety. Pride in professional performance shines through in every case. The deceased are remembered by their armature, their rank, their fight statistics, and those personal traits pertinent to their appearances in the arena e.

They have fan clubs. In some cases, they have families. And they are never, ever beaten outright by an opponent. Rather, if they fall in the arena, it is because of betrayal, trickery, or deceit, or because the umpire made a bad call.

This refusal to concede honest defeat in the face of superior skill again speaks to professional pride and a certain braggadocio that is still operative today in combat sports. Several are known. Most recently, one has likely been identified at York in England. Containing eighty bodies, mostly male, the skeletons belong to men of robust build, many showing signs of severe injury, including in one case the teeth marks of a large carnivore.

While the identification of the site as a cemetery for arena performers remains unverified on current evidence, it is the best interpretation of the site so far advanced. An unequivocal example of a gladiator cemetery was unearthed in Ephesos in The skeletons were of well-fed men whose bones showed signs of intensive training such as stress at joints and, more tellingly, injuries inflicted with weapons.

Some of these were cut or penetration injuries, others blunt force traumas. The latter were possibly inflicted when helmets were bashed into skulls during fights. Twenty-one of the skeletons had twenty-six head injuries; eleven had survived those injuries, demonstrating the high-quality medical care that gladiators received. The cut and penetration wounds to the heads were often at the front—which reflects the frontal nature of gladiatorial combat—but they remain something of a mystery, since most gladiators wore helmets.

Perhaps some injuries were incurred outside the arena itself, in training or in private fights one imagines that gladiators were violent men in general.

Most lethal blows to the skulls were at the back or sides, perhaps administered after a failed appeal. One skull had a fatal wound of three penetrations in close proximity, showing that the person had been killed by a trident to the back of the head.

The evidence from the skeletons warns against whitewashing Roman gladiatorial shows as solely concerned with skill and artistry. Even if they were not the chaotic free-for-alls depicted in modern popular culture, even if part of their attraction indeed lay in watching athletic displays of expertise and talent, they were nevertheless very violent events in which performers were routinely killed or injured in horrible ways.

Figure 5. Skull with trident injury, Ephesus, Turkey. Gladiators were trained and housed in a school, the ludus gladiatorum , run by a manager called a lanista. Lanistae drew new stock from two main sources: the willing and the unwilling. The latter were slaves bought by the school or those condemned by the courts to fight as gladiators damnati ad ludum.

That such convicts were sentenced to fight, and not just serve the ludus in some supporting role, is made clear from several sources.

The 3rd-century ce jurist Modestinus notes that a provincial governor must not curry local favour by capriciously releasing people condemned to the beasts, but if the criminals have strength robor and skill artificium worthy of being exhibited at Rome, he should consult the emperor Dig. The specific mention of skill demonstrates that such criminals were to be trained to fight rather than simply slaughtered in public, though it is not clear whether they were to fight people or animals.

This text, found among the declamations ascribed to the 1st-century ce rhetorical teacher Quintilian, is an example of a controversia , an advanced rhetorical exercise in which the teacher presented a case to be litigated, and the students composed speeches representing the two sides.

Although fictions, the controversiae are likely to reflect at least popular perceptions of social reality that prevailed among the educated classes.

A rescript of Hadrian settles the factual matter. The former are to be killed no later than a year after sentencing. The latter, however, might survive the sentence and be restored to freedom after five years, or three years if they receive the wooden sword rudis Mosaicarum et Romanarum Legum Collatio The rudis was the wooden training sword used by gladiators, and it was presented to a gladiator after a successful career to mark his release from the ludus and from the arena Mart.

But what about the other group, those released after five years? There is no need to assume that they did not fight—although that is a possibility—but rather that they were not particularly successful at it.

That is, if you survived five years fighting as a gladiator, you were deemed to have fulfilled your sentence, but if you were good at it you could be out in three—a typical Roman carrot-and-stick arrangement, where the threat of punishment was balanced by incentives to toe the line. Willing, volunteer gladiators auctorati worked under contract, the details of which presumably varied by individual, but all had to take a fearsome oath agreeing to endure branding, being bound in chains, beaten with rods, and killed with steel Petron.

Since these were slavish indignities no freeborn Roman would tolerate, the oath effectively cast the volunteer out of respectable society. Why they enrolled remains a mystery. Ancient writers offer the moralizing explanations of bankruptcy and personal depravity Dio Ad Mart. The emperor Tiberius is on record as paying , sesterces each to some retired gladiators for their return to the arena, which shows that financial distress could indeed be alleviated by taking to the sand Suet.

But that men of senatorial or equestrian status enrolled as gladiators suggests that other factors were at play, perhaps the same impulse that drives some today to engage in extreme sports. The great popularity of gladiators and their status as sex symbols may also have drawn elite volunteers, such that emperors had to issue bans on senators and equestrians enrolling to fight Dio Little is known about life in the ludus , but conditions must have been harsh for convicted criminals to be condemned to the place.

Only three gladiatorial ludi are known to archaeology: the Ludus Magnus near the Colosseum in Rome, the ludus behind the theater in Pompeii, and the newly identified example at Carnuntum in Austria. Figure 6. Ludus Magnus, Rome. The men were housed in cells, several occupants per cell. They trained at posts in an open area, shaped like an arena at Carnuntum and the Ludus Magnus, but a rectangular palaestra at Pompeii.

Presumably, higher-ranked gladiators enjoyed perks in the ludus , such as better quarters and rations. Figure 7. Gladiatorial ludus , Pompeii. Recruits were therefore selected and trained based on their suitability and aptitude for specific armatures, which in turn suggests that each type of gladiator had a style of fighting readily recognizable to the spectators.

Roman social thought was of a distinctly hierarchical cast. As a whole, the Romans organized their social universe by categorizing individuals into groups and then ranking them according to their perceived worth, both between and within groups. Gladiators were no different.

This was a legally defined status that debarred people deemed infames from various political, legal, and social privileges. It applied to actors, prostitutes, lanistae , and others, as well as to gladiators.

The basic principle appears to have been that if you did not control your own body, or made a spectacle of yourself for money at the behest of an audience, you were infamis. This is why volunteer gladiators took the oath they did. When they consented to be bound, beaten, burned, and killed with iron, they effectively transferred control of their bodies to their trainers and the spectators in the arena.

In doing so, they agreed to join the infames. As a group, then, gladiators were officially rated among the lowest of the low, some of the most grotesque denizens of the Roman social basement.

Successful gladiators were celebrated and admired by their fans the amatores discussed in Gladiatorial Epitaphs and Cemeteries , honouring dead gladiators , their career trajectories closely charted, and their skills praised.

When condemned men fight with swords, there could be no sturdier training for the eye against pain and death. The key to understanding how the tension was resolved it is provided by Tertullian Spect. As long as he performed with skill ars , he was admirable. If he failed, he lost his status and reverted to a social nothing as was true of slaves in general. In contexts outside the arena, of course, his infamia rendered the gladiator contemptible.

All of this applied equally to freeborn or freed auctorati , whose oath subjugated them to the demands of their art. The ambivalence of the gladiator, then, lay in the contrast between the reviled outcast and the skillful combatant, between his low rank set by custom and law and his elevated status earned by the proper display of skill in the arena. But that status was ephemeral and could be lost on a turn, and this is what made gladiators ultimately expendable.

Among the gladiators themselves, the status of individual fighters varied significantly. As discussed above, some were slaves, some were freeborn or freed.

The gloves could be padded with leather to protect the hands, wrapped with iron, or even have metal spikes to further cause damage to their opponents.

The laauearius gladiators were very similar to the retiarius in that they had a lasso to try and catch their foes, and then once caught they would use a dagger or a spear to try and end their foe. A parmularius was not a gladiator as such but was the name for any gladiator that used a parma shield. The parma shield was easily identifiable for its small size and was only used by a couple of gladiators.

A rudiarius gladiator was one who had earned their freedom in the amphitheatre. The sagittarius was a horseback archer whose goal was to pick off noxxi gladiators with their bow and arrow. It was not expected for the noxxi to win, but they were often given various obstacles or cover to try and hide from the sagittarii arrows.

Not an individual gladiator as such but a parent class for any gladiator that carried a scutum shield. The scutum was typical Roman soldier equipment and therefore was also popular in the amphitheatre, and there were many gladiators who used this shield.

The noxxi were not specifically classed as gladiators, but were prisoners or criminals put in the amphitheatre to fight in special matches. These matches were often hard to impossible for the noxxi to win as they would face off in an animal, chariot against an essadarius or against an archer a sagittarius.

A murmillo gladiator class. A murmillo fights a thraex gladiator class.