by M. C. Bishop
The most commonly believed version of the pollice verso gesture
sees the thumbs-up to mean ‘let him live’ and thumbs down
‘kill him’. However, it has been suggested that the thumbs-up
gesture (with phallic undertones) meant ‘kill him’ and the
thumbs down implied ‘spare him’ (thumbs up not acquiring a
positive meaning until comparatively recently). The outcome
of the less-favourable version of the gesture is shown on relief
sculpture and in mosaics, but who had made that decision?
There is some evidence to suggest that it was up to the victor
and that all the audience (and even the editor) could do was
appeal to that individual’s generosity. Of course, an appeal for
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clemency from the emperor was probably not something one
would overlook lightly.
The lucky loser whom the crowd judged had fought well
would enjoy missio and be allowed to live to fight another day.
Those who were not so lucky faced execution by the victor.
A relief from Lucus Feroniae (Italy) shows one Republican-
period gladiator, sword blade resting on his right shoulder,
finishing off another with his dagger. Another relief depicts
a kneeling gladiator, his face concealed behind a shield
apparently attached to his head, about to be executed by the
man who had defeated him.
Each contest was overseen by a summa rudis (‘top stick’) who
acted like a referee in a modern boxing match. These individuals
can be seen on depictions of gladiatorial combats wielding a long
cane and, perhaps understandably, are most visible when one
gladiator is down and appealing for mercy. He was supported by
a deputy, the secunda rudis. It was up to the summa rudis at this
point to ensure fair play and stop either of the contestants taking
unfair advantage of the pause in proceedings. A tombstone from
Amisus in Turkey records how a bent referee managed to turn
a result and the victor, Diodorus, ended up dead as a result.
The tombstone of summa rudis Publius Aelius from Pergamum
records that he had honorary citizenship from a number of cities
in the East – Abdera (Greece), Apros (Kermeyan in Turkey), Bizye
(Vize in Turkey), Larisa (either in Greece or Turkey), Nicomedia
(İzmit in Turkey), Perge (Turkey), Philippopolis (Plovdiv
in Bulgaria), Thasos (Greece), Thessalonica (Thessaloniki in
Greece) – suggesting that he was an itinerant umpire.
If the umpire thought the gladiators were not trying hard
enough, he might use his cane to encourage them to produce
a better performance. He would doubtless have been sensitive
to the mood of the crowd. Where there was a decisive winner,
then they would be awarded a palm branch, a laurel crown and
perhaps a purse of coins or other gifts as a sign of their victory
from the editor of the games. Prize money was divided between
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Pompeii graffiti including a gladiator appealing (drawing by M. C. Bishop)
the gladiator and his lanista: Marcus Aurelius set the amount for
the gladiator at 25% of the purse if free, 20% if a slave.
When the time came to leave, the crowd did so by means of
the exits known as vomitoria. Although the word vomitorium
is often thought to be a room where debauched Roman diners
could shed what they had been eating earlier to make room for
more, this is in fact a myth. Vomitoria were exits from arenas
which were carefully designed so that they did not constrict a
crowd in a hurry to leave a building.
Career
The hardest part of a gladiator’s career was making the move from
an untried tiro (new recruit) to a man who had survived (and
possibly even won) his first fight. Experienced gladiators were
known as veterans ( veterani) and the number of their victories was
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Summa rudis on the Zliten mosaic (photo by Carole Raddato)
recorded, since it is found associated with their names on both
graffi ti and tombstones. Once a gladiator had started winning,
beyond surviving, they could aspire to reaching the status of
primus palus , ‘fi rst stake’, named after the stake against which they
trained. Th e best gladiator in the school would be primus palus ,
the next best secundus palus and so on. Th ere is evidence for at least
four grades and inscriptions from the East suggest that there may
have been up to eight levels. When viewed in the context of the
legislation of AD 177 to limit the costs of games using the ranks
of gladiators, this suggests that all gladiators within a school would
thus have had a palus ranking, not just an elite few. Inherent in the
system seems to have been the ability for any gladiator to work
their way up through the hierarchy, although how many (or what
proportion of) victories were necessary to achieve this is unclear.
Whilst the ultimate goal of most gladiators was retirement,
that does not mean that some of them at least did not enjoy what
they did and look forward to a fi ght:
Even among the gladiators of Caesar (the Emperor) there are some
who complain grievously that they are not brought forward and
matched, and they off er up prayers to God and address themselves
to their superintendents intreating that they may fi ght. (Epictetus,
Discourses 1.29.37)
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Gladiator with palm branch (photo by Carole Raddato)
Collegia
Like many groups in Roman society, gladiators organised
themselves into trade guilds, even though they were only
slaves, for the most part. It is generally assumed that collegia
acted as burial clubs, but they probably acted as social clubs
too. Elsewhere in Roman society, collegia organised feasts as a
component of religious festivals and gladiatorial guilds may have
helped organised the cena libera before a fight. Collegia were
organised into decuriae (‘tens’) and, if they were big enough,
centuriae (‘hundreds’) and headed by initiales (‘leaders’ or
‘founders’). An example was the collegium of Silvanus recorded
on an inscription from Rome dating to AD 177 when Marcus
Aurelius and Commodus were co-emperors:
For Emperor Caesar Lucius Aurelius Commodus and Marcus
Plautius Quintillus consuls, the initiales of the collegium of Silvanus
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Aurelianus, curatores Marcus Aurelius Hilarus, freedman of the
emperor, and Coelius Magnus, cryptarius.
decuria I
Secundinus provocator beginner
Borysthenes, thraex veteran
Eleuther thraex beginner
Clonius hoplomachus veteran
Pirata masseur
Callisthenes thraex veteran
decuria III
Zosimus essedarius veteran
Barosus contraretiarius beginner
Plution essedarius veteran
Aemilianus contraretiarius newly
Pertinax contraretiarius veteran
arrived
Carpophorus murmillo veteran
Ulpius Euporas Proshodus contra-
/>
Crispinus murmillo veteran
retiarius beginner
Pardus provocator veteran
Aurelius Felicianus (?civilian)
Miletus murmillo veteran
Aurelius Felix (?civilian)
decuria II
Zoilus civilian
Vitulus murmillo veteran
Flavius Marissus (?civilian)
Demosthenes armguard-maker
Flavius Sanctus (?civilian)
Felicianus retiarius beginner
Diodorus civilian
Servandus retiarius beginner
decuria IIII
Iuvenis murmillo sword-maker
Aprilis paegniarius
Ripanus contraretiarius beginner
Zosimus thraex sword-maker
Silvanus contraretiarius beginner
( CIL VI, 631)
The likely burial function of the collegium is reflected by the
post of cryptarius, the man who looked after the burial plot. It
is noticeable how all of the veterans were in the first decuria, the
beginners in the second and assorted other statuses in the third
and fourth decuriae. Likwise, there were sword- and armour-
makers, as well as a masseur. Presumably, all of the gladiators
in the collegium belonged to the same familia, but this is not
stated. It is known that there was a collegium for summa rudes in
Rome since a tombstone of one of its members, Publius Aelius,
is known from Pergamum (Turkey).
Retirement
A gladiator who survived to retirement was awarded with
freedom and the wooden sword or rudis, which was of course the
132 | GLADIATORS
Rudis from Saalburg (photo by C. Rusalen)
very practice weapon with which they had trained. It is unclear
whether this would have been an actual double-weight wooden
sword, or whether it might in fact have been a symbolic replica,
such as the slightly scaled-down wooden swords excavated from
Carlisle (UK) and Saalburg (Germany). The wooden sica from
the Roman fort at Oberaden mentioned above may have served
a similar purpose for a thraex.
A successful gladiator, who had in most cases been a slave,
might receive their freedom, enabling them to set up in business
or (certainly in the turbulent Late Republican period) perhaps get
into the security trade, acting as a politician’s henchman. They
might even aspire to the role of lanista and train other gladiators.
Even after retirement, it might be possible to persuade a
gladiator to fight again for a very special occasion. The Emperor
Tiberius offered a massive fee of 100,000 sesterces to rudiarii
(‘men who have received the rudis’) who would fight in a games
in honour of his grandfather Drusus.
Life, health and death
Gladiators were expected to eat healthily as well as train in order
to maintain peak fitness. Cyprian alludes to this in his Christian
diatribe against the games:
The body is fed up with stronger food, and the vigorous mass of
limbs is enriched with brawn and muscle, that the wretch fattened
for punishment may die a harder death. Man is slaughtered that
man may be gratified, and the skill that is best able to kill is an
exercise and an art. (Cyprian, Letter to Donatus 1.7)
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Paegnarius (‘play fi ghter’)
• Armour: padded left arm
• Special feature: whip or cane
• Period: Imperial
• Common opponent: paegnarius
Analysis of the bones from the gladiator cemetery at Ephesus
(Turkey) confi rms that they enjoyed a special diet and showed
just how much it diff ered from that of the general population.
Th ey apparently had a vegetarian diet (called sagina or ‘stuffi ng’),
preferring carbohydrate over protein. Gladiators were indeed
nicknamed hordearii (‘barley boys’) and Galen notes that they
mainly ate bean soup and barley, sometimes served as a pudding,
sometimes watered down as a drink. However, aside from leading
to excessive fl atulence, barley and legumes could not provide
everything they required for peak fi tness and Galen made eff orts to
improve the diet of the gladiators under his charge at Pergamum.
It has even been suggested that, to avoid calcium defi ciency,
gladiators consumed a special concoction which scientists believe
was made from the ashes of burnt plants. Th is would ensure that
their calcium levels were not just maintained but markedly higher
than that of the general population. It has been speculated that
one eff ect of this diet may have been to increase the subcutaneous
body fat of the combatants, making it possible for them to receive
fairly impressive-looking wounds without it having too much
direct impact on their ability to fi ght. Cicero repeatedly plays on
the word ‘gladiator’ in his Th ird Philippic speech against Julius
Caesar’s former right-hand man, Marc Antony, as a way of both
sneering at his slightly thuggish physique and demeaning his
status.
134 | GLADIATORS
One of the paradoxes of the Roman world was that, apart
from the very wealthy, those whose lives were most at risk
(such as soldiers and gladiators) had access to some of the
best living conditions (relatively speaking) and the highest
quality healthcare. The physician Galen, whose writings were
highly influential upon medieval medicine, began work as the
doctor ( medicus) for a gladiatorial school in Pergamum from
AD 158 to 161 before becoming the personal physician of the
Emperor Marcus Aurelius. He was clearly good at what he did,
since his predecessor had lost 60 gladiators under his charge,
whereas Galen only lost two. As he was treating the living and
patching together the wounded, he was learning about anatomy,
dissection of humans no longer being popular amongst the
medical profession of his time.
Galen described treating an eques who had suffered a nasty
wound to his thigh (an occupational hazard for any mounted
warrior) and how he went about stitching it back together.
Learning on the job, Galen’s knowledge of drugs and how to
use them slowly improved and he evidently diligently sought the
correct treatments.
Again, skeletal analysis of the remains of 68 individuals from the
gladiator cemetery at Ephesus has proved extremely informative
with regard to the injuries and wounds they received. Most of
those wounds were to the head and usually fatal, although a
diamond-shaped puncture wound resembling the cross-section
of a gladius blade showed signs of healing, whilst the triple
puncture characteristic of a retiarius’ trident was decidedly fatal.
Others had been finished off with a blow to the head with a
hammer, doubtless dealt by the figure dressed as Dis Pater or
Charun. Some healed wounds to the head, it was suggested, may
have resulted from over-vigorous training sessions.
We even have a joint epitaph with a medical twist from one of
the training schools in Rome:
Claudius Agathocles, medicus of the emperor, physician at the
Ludus M
atutinus, made this for himself, Claudius the lanista of the
CHApTeR 6: LIfe AS A GLADIATOR | 135
emperor, Primitivus, keeper of the morgue, and Thelesphorus the
retiarius, may the earth rest lightly upon you. ( CIL VI, 10171)
Like everybody else in the Roman world, gladiators were usually
concerned to make some sort of provision for a memorial once
they were dead. At Ephesus, not only do many of the gladiators’
tombstones survive, but there is also a gladiator cemetery
which has been examined archaeologically. Scientific analysis of
the bodies of some of the deceased has produced a wealth of
extremely interesting information about the lives and deaths of
the gladiators buried there.
Accommodation
True to the notion of the familia gladiatoria, gladiators usually
lived together in some form of barracks. Various ludi in Rome
and elsewhere with practice arenas and cells for accommodation
have already been mentioned but two sets of gladiatorial
accommodation are known from Pompeii. The first, which
apparently dated back to the beginning of the Imperial period,
was a peristyle courtyard structure in Regio V of the town known
as the House of the Gladiators. Excavated at the end of the 19th
century, it was found to include over 100 graffiti connected with
gladiators, recording Thracians, murmillones, retiarii, equites and
essedarii. However, it was badly damaged in the earthquake of
AD 62 and the barracks was moved to the quadriporticus next
to the Triangular Forum in Regio VIII, which was uncovered
in the 18th century. There were rooms on two floors around
the central courtyard, the lanista having rooms on the upper
floor whilst the gladiator cells were at ground level. There was
even a kitchen with mess hall for communal dining and, on its
wall, somewhat enigmatically, was written the name of Lucius
Annaeus Seneca, that critic of at least some aspects of the games.
When the building was first excavated, the remains of eighteen
individuals were found including, in one cell, the skeleton of a
136 | GLADIATORS
woman wearing jewellery, lying next to the remains of a man;
this poignant scene has invited many different interpretations
over the years. The barracks also produced a number of pieces of
gladiatorial armour – including helmets, greaves, belts, daggers,
a shield and a spear – as well as graffiti attesting to the presence
