Gladiatorial games

Origins

Early literary sources seldom agree on the origins of gladiators and the gladiator games. In the late 1st century BCE Nicolaus of Damascus believed they were Etruscan.A generation later, Livy wrote that they were first held in 310 BCE by the Campanians in celebration of their victory over the Samnites. Long after the games had ceased, the 7th century CE writer Isidore of Seville derived Latin lanista (manager of gladiators) from the Etruscan for executioner, and the title of Charon (an official who accompanied the dead from the Roman gladiatorial arena) from Charun, psychopomp of the Etruscan underworld. Roman historians emphasised the gladiator games as a foreign import, most likely Etruscan. This preference informed most standard histories of the Roman games in the early modern era.
Reappraisal of the evidence supports a Campanian origin – or at least a borrowing – for the games and gladiators. The earliest known Roman gladiator schools (ludi) were in Campania. Tomb frescoes from Paestum (4th century BCE) show paired fighters, with helmets, spears and shields, in a propitiatory funeral blood-rite that anticipates early Roman gladiator games. Compared to these images, supporting evidence from Etruscan tomb-paintings is tentative and late. The Paestum frescoes may represent the continuation of a much older tradition, acquired or inherited from Greek colonists of the 8th century BCE.
Livy dates the earliest Roman gladiator games to 264 BCE, in the early stages of Rome's First Punic War against Carthage. Decimus Iunius Brutus Scaeva had three gladiator pairs fight to the death in Rome's 'cattle market' Forum (Forum Boarium) to honour his dead father, Brutus Pera. This is described as munus (plural munera): a commemorative duty owed the manes of a dead ancestor by his descendants. The gladiator type used (according to a single, later source), was Thracian. but the development of the munus and its gladiator types was most strongly influenced by Samnium's support for Hannibal and subsequent punitive expeditions by Rome and her Campanian allies; the earliest and most frequently mentioned type was the Samnite.

The war in Samnium, immediately afterwards, was attended with equal danger and an equally glorious conclusion. The enemy, besides their other warlike preparation, had made their battle-line to glitter with new and splendid arms. There were two corps: the shields of the one were inlaid with gold, of the other with silver... The Romans had already heard of these splendid accoutrements, but their generals had taught them that a soldier should be rough to look on, not adorned with gold and silver but putting his trust in iron and in courage... The Dictator, as decreed by the senate, celebrated a triumph, in which by far the finest show was afforded by the captured armour. So the Romans made use of the splendid armour of their enemies to do honour to their gods; while the Campanians, in consequence of their pride and in hatred of the Samnites, equipped after this fashion the gladiators who furnished them entertainment at their feasts, and bestowed on them the name Samnites. (Livy 9.40)

Livy's account skirts the funereal, sacrificial function of early Roman gladiator combats and underlines the later theatrical ethos of the gladiator show: splendidly, exotically armed and armoured barbarians, treacherous and degenerate, are dominated by Roman iron and native courage. His plain Romans virtuously dedicate the magnificent spoils of war to the Gods. Their Campanian allies stage a dinner entertainment using gladiators who may not be Samnites, but play the Samnite role. Other groups and tribes would join the cast list as Roman territories expanded. Most gladiators were armed and armoured in the manner of the enemies of Rome. The munus became a morally instructive form of historic enactment in which the only honourable option for the gladiator was to fight well, or else die well.

Development

In 216 BCE Marcus Ameilius Lepidus, late consul and augur, was honoured by his sons with three days of gladiatora munera in the Forum Romanum, using twenty-two pairs of gladiators. Ten years later, Scipio Africanus gave a commemorative munus in Iberia for his father and uncle, casualties in the Punic Wars. High status non-Romans – and possibly Romans too – volunteered as his gladiators. The context of the Punic Wars and Rome's near-disastrous defeat at Cannae (216 BCE) link these early games to munificence, the celebration of military victory and the religious expiation of military disaster; these munera appear to serve a morale-raising agenda in an era of military threat and expansion. The next recorded munus, held for the funeral of Publius Liciniusin 183 BCE, was more extravagant. It involved 3 days of funeral games, 120 gladiators and public distribution of meat (visceratio data) – a practice that reflected the gladiatorial fights at Campanian banquets described by Livy and later deplored by Silius Italicus.
The enthusiastic adoption of gladiatoria munera by Rome's Iberian allies shows how easily, and how early, the culture of the gladiator munus permeated places far from Rome itself. By 174 BCE 'small' Roman munera (private or public), provided by an editor of relatively low importance, may have been so commonplace and unremarkable they were not considered worth recording:

Many gladiatorial games were given in that year, some unimportant, one noteworthy beyond the rest — that of Titus Flamininus which he gave to commemorate the death of his father, which lasted four days, and was accompanied by a public distribution of meats, a banquet, and scenic performances. The climax of the show which was big for the time was that in three days seventy four gladiators fought.

In 105 BCE, the ruling consuls offered Rome its first taste of state-sponsored "barbarian combat" demonstrated by gladiators from Capua, as part of a training program for the military. It proved immensely popular. The ludi (state games), sponsored by the ruling elite and dedicated to the numen of a deity such as Jupiter, a divine or heroic ancestor (and later, during the Imperium, the emperor), could now compete with privately funded munera for popular support.

Peak

By the closing years of the politically and socially unstable Late Republic, gladiator games provided their sponsors with extravagantly expensive but effective opportunities for self-promotion while offering cheap, exciting entertainment to their clients. Gladiators became big business for trainers and owners, for politicians on the make and those who had reached the top. A politically ambitious privatus (private citizen) might postpone his deceased father's munus to the election season, when a generous show might drum up votes; those in power and those seeking it needed the support of the plebians and their tribunes, whose votes might be won with an exceptionally spectacular show – sometimes even the mere promise of one. Sulla, during his term as praetor, showed his usual acumen in breaking his own sumptuary laws to give the most lavish munus yet seen in Rome, on occasion of his wife's funeral.

Recreation of a combat between a thraex and murmillo in the Carnuntum Roman ruins. A contemporary inscription credits Carnuntum with having the fourth largest amphitheatre in the Roman Empire. With exceptions, a gladiator fought in two to five bouts a year, with each lasting around 15 minutes

Ownership of gladiators or a gladiator school gave muscle and flair to Roman politics. In 65 BCE, newly elected curule aedile Julius Caesar topped Sulla's display with games he justified as munus to his father, who had died twenty years before. Despite an already enormous personal debt, he used three hundred and twenty gladiator pairs in silvered armour. He had wanted more but the nervous Senate, mindful of the recent Spartacus revolt, fearful of Caesar's burgeoning private armies and even more fearful of his overwhelming popularity, imposed a limit of 320 pairs as the maximum number of gladiators a citizen could keep in Rome. Caesar's showmanship was unprecedented not only in scale and expense but in putting aside a Republican tradition of munera as funeral offerings. The practical differences between ludi and munera were beginning to blur.
Gladiatorial games, usually linked with beast shows, spread throughout the Republic and beyond. Anti-corruption laws of 65 and 63 BCE attempted but signally failed to curb their political usefulness to sponsors. Following Caesar's assassination and the civil war, Augustus assumed Imperial authority over the games, including munera, and formalised their provision as a civic and religious duty. His revision of sumptuary law capped private and public expenditure on munera – claiming to save the Roman elite from the bankruptcies they would otherwise suffer – and restricted their performance to the festivals of Saturnalia and Quinquatria. Henceforth, the ceiling cost for a praetor's "economical" but official munus of a maximum 120 gladiators was to be 25,000 denarii ($500,000). "Generous" Imperial ludi might cost no less than 180,000 denarii ($3.6 million). Throughout the Empire, the greatest and most celebrated games would now be identified with the state-sponsored Imperial cult, which furthered public recognition, respect and approval for the Emperor, his law, and his agents. Between 108 and 109 CE, Trajan celebrated his Dacian victories using a reported 10,000 gladiators (and 11,000 animals) over 123 days. The cost of gladiators and munera continued to spiral out of control. Legislation of 177 CE by Marcus Aurelius, which did little to stop it, was completely ignored by his son, Commodus.