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REVIEW BY MARC DeSANTIS
Romans were hypocritical about gladiators. Typically slaves, criminals, or prisoners of war, they were seen by the upper crust as sitting squarely among the dregs of society. Yet they were admired, ogled, and cheered across the Empire. Gladiatorial matches only came to an end at the very close of antiquity, when the western half of the Empire had fallen, and the eastern half, now Christianised, survived in a very changed world.
Here, Harry Sidebottom takes on the difficult task of collating the disparate material concerning gladiators and the attitudes of the general populace toward them. ‘General’ must be understood broadly to mean the wealthy who had the wherewithal to write, and, if fortunate, to have their words preserved from ancient times, unlike the silent masses. A few of the latter did actually record their attitudes to gladiators, not least the arena fighters themselves, who on occasion provided their own funeral inscriptions that served to tell, in brief, their stories, and how they saw themselves.
Sidebottom organises the book around a single, hypothetical day in and around Rome’s Colosseum. Divided into ‘watches’, the tour takes us from the gladiators’ meal the evening before their bouts, to the fitful sleep they had during the night, and then on to the manifold events running from morning until night. This is a remarkable way to arrange a book, and one that I enjoyed. It allows for a range of topics concerning the ancient world to be covered, across the broad range of time (centuries, in fact) in which gladiators fought, while never straying from the central focus on the gladiators themselves.
These fighters were by no means the day’s only attraction, but they were the most notable. The gladiators were part of a familia, or troupe, and during the Republic were usually owned by a disreputable lanista, who housed and trained them in a ludus; the Games themselves were put on by the editor. During the Imperial era, gladiators were also owned by emperors, with four schools in the capital itself, as well as several schools elsewhere in the Empire.
The Romans believed that gladiatorial combat was a foreign import, maybe from Etruria or from Campania. The first record of such duelling dates to 264 BC, during the middle years of the Republic. Rome was always at war, and these conflicts saw the city fighting an ever-widening array of peoples. Some of these gave their names to types of arena combatant, such as the Samnite of southern Italy or the Thraex of Thrace. The variety of gladiators was part of the appeal. There was the famed retiarius, with net and trident; the murmillo, with a large shield, a helmet with visors and tall crest, and a single greave on the left leg; and the secutor, who was similar to the murmillo but equipped with a helmet with no visors over the eyes.
Sidebottom dispels a number of misconceptions. For instance, a gladiatorial battle was not the same as a death sentence. A combatant had a roughly one-in-eight chance of dying per match, and these were fought perhaps once or twice in a year. A man might spend three years as a gladiator in total, so his survival was not out of the question.
Also, far from being built like Hercules, they were usually plump, on account of their diet of barley stew. These heavy-carbohydrate rations caused them to bulk up with a layer of fat beneath the skin. When they were cut, they would bleed, but superficial wounds would not stop them from fighting, since the fat protected their vital organs from severe injury. The sight of their dripping blood pleased the cheering crowds.
Those Who Are About to Die: a day in the life of a Roma gladiator
Harry Sidebottom
Alfred A Knopf, hbk, $35
ISBN 978-0593801765
