The Colosseum (7 page)

Priscus
and
Verus
, while with equal Might,
Prolong’d an obstinate and doubtful Fight,
The People, oft, their mission did desire;
But
Caesar
from the law would not retire,
Which did the Prize and Victory unite,
Yet gave them what Encouragement he might;
Largess of Meat and Money did bestow,
Which also ‘mong the People he did throw,
I’ the’end, howe’er, the Strife was equal found,
Both fought alike, and both alike gave ground:
So that the Palm was upon each conferr’d,
Their undecided Valour this deserv’d.
Under no Prince before we e’er did see
That two should fight, and both should Victors be.

Given our own image of these bloody combats, it is perhaps surprising that this courageous but apparently bloodless draw should be the only gladiatorial fight commemorated at the inaugural games in the Colosseum. Even more surprising is that – so far as we have been able to discover, at least – this poem is the only account of a specific gladiatorial bout to survive from the ancient world. We have plenty of boastful claims of gladiatorial numbers, a good deal of discussion about the appeal of the gladiators themselves and the valour, or the horror, of the fighting, not to mention tombstones recording their death in the arena, and countless images of these distinctively dressed combatants, decorating everything from cheap oil lamps to costly mosaic floors. Yet the only thing approaching a description of an actual contest between two individual gladiators is this tale of imperial generosity and the ancient equivalent of a goalless draw in
AD
80.

ON WITH THE SHOW

Spectacular shows over many days, such as those that opened the Colosseum, were infrequent – though much trumpeted – events in the monument’s history. The enthusiasm of individual
emperors for these spectacles varied considerably, as did their generosity. Some were notoriously stingy. Others gave special games to celebrate the anniversary of their succession, for their birthday or victory over foreign enemies, or even to commemorate the glories of a predecessor. In the first decade of the second century, for example, the emperor Trajan gave the biggest bloodbath ever recorded, presumably in the Colosseum, to celebrate his conquest of Dacia (modern Romania). Dio again has some facts and figures: the shows took place on 123 days; 11,000 animals were killed, 10,000 gladiators fought. This time we have more details not from poetry written to commemorate the occasion, but from a record included in a calendar of public events inscribed in stone, from Rome’s port of Ostia. This more or less matches Dio’s picture of the scale of the events, but also makes clear that the celebrations did not take place in one continuous ‘sitting’ of more than a hundred days of solid slaughter. Instead they were broken down into smaller units. First, in 107 and 108, there were preliminary games in blocks of twelve or thirteen days, with over 300 pairs of gladiators at each. Then came the main show, which according to the inscription was staged on 117 days between June 108 and November 109 and involved ‘4941 and a half pairs of gladiators’ (the ‘half pair’ being a good indication that gladiators who survived one bout might fight again later in the same show – otherwise whom did the stray ‘half’ fight?). Maybe Titus’ inaugural games were divided up in this way too. It would certainly have made the organisation of animals and human fighters easier, and no doubt also have ensured a keener crowd. The idea that the Romans happily devoted weeks and weeks on end to watching displays of unadulterated slaughter in the
Colosseum is probably a modern fantasy. Titus and Trajan would have understood the value of breaking the monotony, and of rationing the violence.

The regular performances in the Colosseum were not these blockbuster shows sponsored by emperors. It had been a tradition going back decades before the building of the Colosseum that Roman aristocrats would present shows – involving gladiatorial combat or wild beast hunts and displays, or a combination of the two – as part of their bid for popularity with the Roman people. These were the occasions that took place in the Forum or in temporary amphitheatres. Whatever the dangers of mass gatherings of the electorate, in the toughly competitive politics of the city of Rome, particularly in the years just before the advent of monarchy under Augustus, a good performance no doubt enormously helped a man’s chances of winning prestige and public office. Shows hosted by aristocrats outside the imperial family certainly continued through the first century
AD
and presumably after 80 also took place in the Colosseum. We say ‘presumably’ because ancient writers were so fixated on the emperor’s shows that they give us precious few details of any others.

Many of these may have been by the emperor’s standards modest, even amateurish, occasions, with a restricted repertoire of both gladiators and beasts, a long way from the popular image of sadistic excess. In fact, legislation was enacted and re-enacted through the Roman empire to limit the number of gladiators an ‘ordinary’ aristocrat might present and to regulate the displays. It was, after all, in the emperor’s interest to prevent potential rivals currying popular favour with lavish spectacles. But some aristocrats did evade the restrictions (which may not have been consistently or
efficiently enforced anyway) and poured money into shows to enhance their public image. Even when it was centuries since they had been obliged to seek the votes of the people, their reputations still depended on ostentatious success. And, instead of a dangerous rivalry, some emperors may have felt that it was a relatively harmless way for them to spend their money.

At the end of the fourth century, a man by the name of Symmachus (a well-known defender of traditional Roman religion against the growth of Christianity), more than once invested huge amounts of time and wealth in funding shows to mark the public advancement of his son. We read in his
Letters
of his attempts to acquire exotic beasts: antelopes, bears, leopards and lions. It was not always worth the trouble or the cash. The bear cubs that he procured, for example, turned out to be emaciated specimens, but at least not quite the disaster that the Saxon gladiators were: twenty-nine of these strangled each other on the evening before their scheduled performance. But disasters or not, it was all phenomenally expensive. One Roman historian, whose work now survives only in snippets quoted by later writers, reckoned that Symmachus spent 2000 pounds of gold (in standard ancient Roman currency 9 million sesterces) to celebrate his son’s tenure of the office of praetor. That is a sum large enough to feed nearly 20,000 peasant families for a year at minimum subsistence, or nine times the minimum fortune required to qualify for senatorial rank, the topmost elite of Roman society. Allow for some exaggeration and suppose only 20 per cent of it went on the show; it still gives an idea of the level of expenditure that might be involved.

In the end it is hard for us to know how to visualise the
Colosseum in Roman times. One picture is very much that offered by epic movies: an auditorium packed with spectators, an arena covered with animals, beast hunters and gladiators, and dripping with blood. The other is a much more everyday, low-key image: an auditorium hardly bursting at the seams, with a rather tame troupe of B-team gladiators and some mangy animals that have seen better days. That is always the dilemma with imagining Rome. Do we embrace the larger-than-life vision that is projected by later writers and by many Roman writers themselves? Or do we cynically suspect that for most of the time, outside a few very special occasions, the reality was a lot less impressive, frankly rather tawdry? And how do we decide?

The same dilemma confronts us when we come to ask how often the Colosseum was in use. For Trajan’s celebrations of his Dacian victory through 108–9, it was apparently hosting performances almost one day out of five. But what was ‘normal’? No one knows. Strikingly few days, though, are assigned to ‘regular’ gladiatorial games in any of the Roman calendars that have been preserved: in the fourth century
AD
it seems that, out of 176 days of ‘holiday’, just over a hundred were devoted to theatrical shows, sixty-four to horse and chariot racing and only ten days to gladiatorial games. Are we to imagine that, outside special occasions, the Colosseum would have been mothballed? Or that it would have been a constant bustle of workmen and administrators clearing up the mess, getting ready for the next show and doing running repairs on the fabric and machinery? Or that, for much of the year, it provided a convenient home for all kinds of other activities that readily colonised its city-centre location, a place to flog your wares, take a nap, sight-see or make a pick-up?
Again, no one knows. But when we reflect on the significance of the shows that took place in the Colosseum, it is worth remembering that, as with Christmas, sheer frequency is not necessarily a good guide to cultural importance.

‘HAIL CAESAR. THOSE ABOUT TO DIE SALUTE YOU’?

To read most modern accounts of the shows in the Colosseum (or indeed of those, admittedly smaller-scale, displays in amphitheatres all over the Roman empire) you would think that a handbook to such events survived from the ancient world – or at the very least a series of programmes, laying out in detail the order of ceremonies according to a standard pattern. We are repeatedly told that the sequence of the day’s events in the arena was fixed by rule or custom. In the morning were the wild animal hunts: more or less exotic species (and the more exotic the better, of course) put to fight each other or pitted against trained marksmen and hunters, some on horseback, others on foot, picking the animals off with spear, sword or arrow. In the ‘lunch break’ came the public executions, either in the ‘mythological’ form that Martial evokes, or in other varieties of ingenious slaughter and torture (including the notorious lions), or just plain killing.

It was not until the afternoon, so it was said, that the gladiatorial bouts proper began. The fighters entered, hailed the emperor with the famous words ‘Those about to die salute you’ and the real fun started. They sported different types of armour and weaponry, and had adopted a range of fighting styles: there were ‘net-men’, for example, heavy-armed ‘Thracians’ and ‘Samnites’, and
murmillones
or ‘fish-heads’ (so
called after the emblem on their helmets). Although all kinds of formation were possible, they usually fought in pairs, one to one, trainers and umpires on hand to supervise the carnage, stretcher bearers (dressed as gods of the Underworld) to carry out the dead and wounded, as well as a blacksmith and forge for instant repairs. The victors may have been handsomely rewarded with popular fame, lavish presents from the sponsor of the show and ultimately (as was the fate of Priscus and Verus) with an honourable discharge. A wounded or defeated gladiator, on the other hand, was at the mercy of the audience. He would hold up his little finger as a sign of surrender, at which point the crowd would roar their preference for killing or sparing, putting their thumbs up or down. Many of the onlookers probably had a vested interest in the outcome and a small fortune staked on individual fighters (in fact the night before the show, the gladiators had their last meal
in public
, which gave aficionados a chance to study their form before placing their bets). But it was finally up to the sponsor to decide whether to spare the man’s life or have him killed.

This is the scene captured in perhaps the most evocative modern painting of the Colosseum’s arena (illustration 8). Jean-Léon Gérôme’s canvas, painted in the early 1870s, shows a victorious combatant standing triumphant over a ‘net-man’ (or
retiarius
; his trademark net and trident have fallen to his right), who seems to have collapsed over a fighter dead or injured from a previous bout, but not yet cleared out of the arena. The victor wears one of those elaborate helmets distinctive of several types of gladiator, here decorated with a fish – though it is hard to pick out except on the original (now in Phoenix, Arizona) or on very large-scale reproductions. He is meant to be a
murmillo
. Equally distinctively, he displays a large amount of naked flesh. For one striking feature of Roman gladiatorial combat, compared with medieval jousting and knights all protected in their chain mail, was the exposure of so much of the bare body; it is as if they had to be visibly vulnerable. We are witnessing here those tense few moments while the winner waits for a sign from the emperor, seen sitting in his imperial box in the carefully reconstructed Colosseum. Kill or not? But our attention is drawn to the women on the front row (presumably the Vestal Virgins, the priestesses who were, as we shall see in
Chapter 4
, the only women allowed to watch from these ringside seats). With disconcerting eagerness they are signalling their desire for the kill, thumbs down. In fact, the title of the painting is the Latin phrase ‘
Pollice Verso
’, literally ‘Thumbs turned’ – the phrase used by Roman writers to indicate the vote for a kill. Despite modern scholars’ often confident claims to the contrary, we do not actually know in which direction Romans ‘turned their thumbs’. It may have been ‘up’ for death and ‘down’ for mercy; or, as Gérôme imagines it, vice versa.