Naval warfare at the time tended to consist of ships ramming
each other and then the crews effectively fighting a land battle
at sea. The whole thing would have been scaled down (a real
sea-going galley might have several hundred rowers on it) but
would nevertheless have provided an exciting spectacle. Caesar
later filled in the lake and also planned to build a temple to
Mars on it, although this was never actually constructed. He had
definitely started something, however.
Gladiatorial combat and its derivatives – animal hunting and
naval battles – had become a political tool, an increasingly lavish
entertainment (despite occasional checks and balances) and
even an architectural driving force. Nevertheless, the taste for
gladiatorial combat continued unabated. Indeed, on the day that
Julius Caesar was assassinated in 44 BC, it was apparently no
accident that gladiators were performing nearby in the Theatre
of Pompey.
The death of Caesar marked the beginning of the end for the
Republic and the arrival of a new phase for Rome. In violent
times, the demand for gladiators showed no signs of decreasing
just yet.
40 | GLADIATORS
CHApTeR 4
AT THE PEAK
At any rate, gladiators never charged with a crime are
off ered in sale for the games so that they may become
the victim of public pleasure.
Tertullian, Spectacles 19
The Julio-Claudians
THE END OF THE REPUBLIC AND beginning of the Empire in
the last few decades of the 1st century BC saw many changes,
not least in the fi eld of gladiatorial games. Th e association with
celebrating the death of signifi cant individuals with the deaths
of others evaporated and the by-product – the intense interest of
the crowd – became the dominant element. Th is was the origin
of the term munus (literally, a gift) for gladiatorial games: it was a
gift or bribe to the electorate. Th e beginnings of this process can
perhaps be seen with the construction of the stone amphitheatre
at Pompeii in 70 BC: a permanent venue for funerary games is a
slightly odd concept. Under Augustus (27 BC to AD 14), it was
quickly realised that the popular desire for entertainment could
be used to the advantage of the new regime. Th is was nicely
CHApTeR 4: AT THe peAk | 41
summed up towards the end of the 1st century AD by the poet
Juvenal with his phrase panem et circenses (‘bread and circuses’):
provide the mob with free food and free shows and they could be
controlled. However, it has also been suggested that Augustus saw
a new direction in which games could be taken, by associating
them with religious festivals, such as his Quinquatrus in 12 BC
in honour of Minerva.
To underline the continued importance of the games, one
of the first things that happened after the defeat of Antony
and Cleopatra was the construction of Rome’s first stone
amphitheatre in 29 BC. Located on the Campus Martius, it was
erected by the nobleman Statilius Taurus, who had commanded
Octavian’s land forces during the Battle of Actium.
Once he had established himself as the de facto emperor of
what had formerly been the Roman Republic, Octavian (now
known as Augustus) made sure that all of the prime political
tools available to great men were under his control. He had
inherited the Ludus Iuliani at Capua from his adoptive father
and this was to provide the core of the new Imperial gladiatorial
training school. Gladiators trained there were known as Iuliani
until the time of Nero, when (because the school was renamed
to honour him) they became Neroniani.
In 2 BC, following the example of his adoptive father,
Caesar, Augustus arranged for a naumachia, which he himself
described in the document known as the Res Gestae (roughly
‘Achievements’) of which more than one copy survives as an
inscription. Since the original lake had been filled in, a new one
had to be provided:
I gave the people a spectacle of a naval battle, in the place across
the Tiber where the grove of the Caesars is now, with the ground
excavated in length 1,800 feet [532 m], in width 1,200 [355 m],
in which thirty ships with rams, biremes or triremes, but many
smaller, fought among themselves; in these ships about 3,000 men
fought in addition to the rowers. (Augustus, Res Gestae 23)
42 | GLADIATORS
The location he chose for his naumachia was thus on the other
side of the Tiber, in the area now known as Trastevere. Other
sources tell us that it was a re-staging of the Battle of Salamis
(480 BC), between the Athenians and Persians. We know that
an aqueduct was built specially to supply the water necessary
(the Aqua Alsietina) and that there was an island in the middle
linked to the shore with a bridge. It only seems to have been used
once and was partly filled in even during Augustus’ lifetime.
Augustus also flooded the Circus Flaminius in order to stage
a crocodile hunt. He nevertheless made sure that the more
traditional aspects of the games were attended to. In keeping
with tradition, his were bigger and better, and he was not averse
to boasting about it:
Three times I gave shows of gladiators under my name and five times
under the name of my sons and grandsons; in these shows about
10,000 men fought. Twice I furnished under my name spectacles
of athletes gathered from everywhere, and three times under my
grandson’s name. I celebrated games under my name four times,
and furthermore in the place of other magistrates twenty-three
times. As master of the college I celebrated the Secular Games
for the college of the Fifteen, with my colleague Marcus Agrippa,
when Gaius Furnius and Gaius Silanus were consuls [17 BC].
Consul for the thirteenth time [2 BC], I celebrated the first games
of Mars, which after that time thereafter in following years, by a
senate decree and a law, the consuls were to celebrate. Twenty-six
times, under my name or that of my sons and grandsons, I gave the
people hunts of African beasts in the circus, in the open, or in the
amphitheatre; in them about 3,500 beasts were killed. (Augustus,
Res Gestae 22)
This was death as entertainment on a massive scale, even if
allowance is made for some political licence in those numbers
(in those eight gladiatorial shows with 10,000 combatants, were
they all gladiators, or was he including noxii put to death in the
lunchtime hiatus?).
CHApTeR 4: AT THe peAk | 43
Gladiatorial contests were by no means just confined to the
huge public spectacles of the arena. They could also be staged as
private entertainments by the wealthy and powerful. Writing in
the 1st century AD, Nicolaus of Damascus’ account (preserved
in Athenaeus’ writings) is worth citing in more detail:
The Romans staged spectacles of fighting gladiators not merely
at their festivals and in their theatres, borrowing the custom
from the Etruscans, but also at their banquets. At any rate, it
often happened that some would invite their friends to dinner,
not merely for other entertainment, but that they might witness
two or three pairs of contestants in gladiatorial combat; on these
occasions, when sated with dining and drink, they called in
the gladiators. No sooner did one have his throat cut than the
masters applauded with delight at this feat. And there have even
been instances when a man has provided in his will that his most
beautiful wives, acquired by purchase, should engage in duels;
still another has directed that young boys, his favourites, should
do the same. But the provision was in fact disregarded, for the
people would not tolerate this outrage, but declared the will void.
(Athenaeus, 4.153f–154a)
Tiberius (AD 14–37), who withdrew from Rome to Capri, was
not particularly interested in gladiatorial contests or the games
in their broadest sense, but that does not mean they ceased
altogether under his rule. He held games to mark the death of
Augustus in AD 14 (subsequently added to the calendar as the
Augustalia festival) and more games followed the next year:
A show of gladiators, given in the name of his brother Germanicus,
was presided over by Drusus, who took an extravagant pleasure
in the shedding of blood however vile — a trait so alarming to
the populace that it was said to have been censured by his father.
Tiberius’ own absence from the exhibition was variously explained.
Some ascribed it to his impatience of a crowd; others, to his native
morosity and his dread of comparisons; for Augustus had been a
good-humoured spectator. (Tacitus, Annals 1.76)
44 | GLADIATORS
Nevertheless, Tiberius’ lack of enthusiasm, as noted here by
Tacitus, prompted one of the leading gladiators of the time,
Triumphus, to respond to the hiatus with the rueful comment
‘what a glorious time is passed’. In fact, gladiators were to play an
unwelcome part in events in Gaul, for in AD 21, a revolt broke
out there led by two Romanised locals, Florus and Sacrovir.
Florus, who was based in Augustodunum (Autun in France),
raised an impressive army:
His followers amounted to forty thousand; one-fifth armed on
the legionary model; the rest with boar-spears, hangers, and
other implements of the hunting-field. To these he added a
contingent of slaves, destined for the gladiatorial ring and encased
in the continuous shell of iron usual in the country: the so-called
cruppelarii – who, if too weighty to inflict wounds, are impregnably
fortified against receiving them. (Tacitus, Annals 3.43)
Two legions and their accompanying auxiliaries marched against
them from the Rhineland and they met just to the north of
Augustodunum. The soldiers were at first frustrated by the
heavily armoured crupellarii but soon found ways of dealing
with them:
The cavalry enveloped the flanks, and the infantry attacked the
van. On the wings there was no delay; in front, the iron-clad men
offered a brief impediment, as their plating was proof against
javelin and sword. But the legionaries caught up their axes and
picks and hacked at armour and flesh as if demolishing a wall:
others overturned the inert masses with poles or forks, and left
them lying like the dead without an effort to rise again. (Tacitus,
Annals 3.46)
Back in Rome, the games were still a vital part of the political career
of those seeking office, since the audience – or, at least the male
citizens amongst them – were potential voters. Entrepreneurs
stepped in to fund games themselves and tried to turn a profit
CHApTeR 4: AT THe peAk | 45
out of it, cutting corners where they deemed it desirable. As so
often happens with penny-pinching and profiteering, this was
to lead to disaster. In AD 27, an amphitheatre collapsed; Tacitus
records the events:
A certain Atilius, of the freedman class, who had begun an
amphitheatre at Fidena, in order to give a gladiatorial show, failed
both to lay the foundation in solid ground and to secure the
fastenings of the wooden structure above; the reason being that
he had embarked on the enterprise, not from a superabundance of
wealth nor to court the favours of his townsmen, but with an eye
to sordid gain. The amateurs of such amusements, debarred from
their pleasures under the reign of Tiberius, poured to the place,
men and women, old and young, the stream swollen because the
town lay near. This increased the gravity of the catastrophe, as the
unwieldy fabric was packed when it collapsed, breaking inward
or sagging outward, and precipitating and burying a vast crowd
of human beings, intent on the spectacle or standing around.
Those, indeed, whom the first moment of havoc had dashed to
death, escaped torture, so far as was possible in such a fate: more
to be pitied were those whose mutilated bodies life had not yet
abandoned, who by day recognized their wives or their children by
sight, and at night by their shrieks and moans. The news brought
the absent to the scene — one lamenting a brother, one a kinsman,
another his parents. Even those whose friends or relatives had left
home for a different reason still felt the alarm, and, as it was not yet
wider range for fear.
When the fallen materials came to be removed, the watchers
rushed to their dead, embracing them, kissing them, not rarely
quarrelling over them, in cases where the features had been
obliterated but a parity of form or age had led to mistaken
identification. Fifty thousand persons were maimed or crushed to
death in the disaster; and for the future it was provided by a decree
of the senate that no one with a fortune less than four hundred
thousand sesterces should present a gladiatorial display, and that
no amphitheatre was to be built except on ground of tried solidity.
(Tacitus, Annals 62–3)
46 | GLADIATORS
The Emperor Gaius (AD 37–41) was much more enthusiastic
about the games. Gaius was more commonly known by the
nickname his father’s soldiers had given him when he was a
small boy: Caligula or ‘Little Boots’, since they gave him a pair
of small military boots. Wayward by even the most charitable
interpretation, Caligula’s reign is inevitably seen through the lens
of Tacitus’ and Suetonius’ accounts (often, for a modern reading
or TV-viewing public, via Robert Graves’ I Claudius). It was
not thought particularly eccentric that he himself trained as a
Thracian gladiator, since many members of the nobility indulged
in arms drill of some kind. In much the same way, it would not
attract comment if a UK prime minister or US president might
go jogging regularly, but it would be thought odd if they started
competing in professional athletics.
Having spent the vast fortune Tiberius had left, some
2.7 billion
sesterces, Caligula was forced to come up with a
solution. His ingenious idea for raising more money was to hold
a rather unusual auction:
He would sell the survivors in the gladiatorial combats at an
excessive valuation to the consuls, praetors, and others, not only
to willing purchasers, but also to others who were compelled very
much against their will to give such exhibitions at the Circensian
games, and in particular he sold them to men specially chosen by
lot to have charge of such contests (for he ordered that two praetors
should be chosen by lot to have charge of the gladiatorial games,
just as had formerly been the custom); and he himself would sit on
the auctioneer’s platform and keep raising the bids. Many also came
from outside to put in rival bids, the more so as he allowed any
who so wished to employ a greater number of gladiators than the
law permitted and because he frequently visited them himself. So
people bought them for large sums, some because they really wanted
them, others with the idea of gratifying Gaius, and the majority,
consisting of those who had a reputation for wealth, from a desire to
take advantage of this excuse to spend some of their substance and
thus by becoming poorer save their lives. (Cassius Dio 59.14.1–4)
CHApTeR 4: AT THe peAk | 47
Claudius (AD 41–54) chose to celebrate the anniversary of his
accession by holding gladiatorial games (without an animal hunt)
at a rather unusual location: the Praetorian Camp. Presumably
this took place on the exercise ground immediately outside the
fortress. Th ese games of course was in response to, and perhaps
thanks for, the role the Guard played in his accession, when they
supposedly found him hiding behind a curtain in the Imperial
palace and decided they would make him emperor on a whim.
Such is the narrative that has come down to us, but the cynical
might suspect that a Praetorian-backed coup lay behind the
original assassination of Caligula and elevation of Claudius to
the purple. If so, this was indeed an appropriate way to mark
the event.
It was under Claudius that a particularly signifi cant sham
naval battle ( naumachia ) took place in AD 52 on the Fucine
Lake, some 85 km east of Rome. Some of these were held in
bespoke lakes, also called naumachia , whilst other, smaller-scale
events could be staged by fl ooding an arena (Roman warships