Gladiators
Michael Grant
Number of quotes: 28
Book ID: 97 Page: 9
Section: 4B
In 358 BC, three hundred and seven Roman prisoners of war were slaughtered as human sacrifices in the forum of Tarquinii. In 40 BC Octavian, the future Augustus, immolated to deceased members of the Julian family three hundred of the principal people of rebel Perusia (Perugia), pointing out with sinister irony that he must allow his Etruscan enemies the rites which belonged to their own national customs.
Quote ID: 2467
Time Periods: 01
Book ID: 97 Page: 11
Section: 2A3,4B
Obviously, most spectators just enjoyed the massacre without any such antiquarian reflections. But the more thoughtful ancient writers continued to be well aware that gladiators had originated from these holocausts in honour of the dead. The African Christian Tertullian, writing two centuries after the birth of Christ, described these combats of the amphitheatre as the most famous, the most popular spectacle of all. "What was offered to appease the dead was counted as a funeral rite....It is called munus (a service) from being a service due...The ancients thought that by this sort of spectacle they rendered a service to the dead, after they had tempered it with a more cultured form of cruelty."
Quote ID: 2470
Time Periods: 01
Book ID: 97 Page: 11
Section: 2A3,4B
For such reasons, gladiators were sometimes known as bustuarii or funeral men. Throughout many centuries of Roman history, these commemorations of the dead were still among the principal occasions for such combats; indeed the cult of deceased and deified emperors provided typical opportunities. Men writing their wills often made provision for gladiatorial duels in connection with their funerals.
Quote ID: 2471
Time Periods: 01
Book ID: 97 Page: 12
Section: 2A3,4B
The munera - the word is never used for any sort of games other than gladiatorial displays - came to be fixed in December, the time of the Saturnalia. Although the predecessor of our Christmas, this was also the festival of the god Saturn, whose name was linked with human sacrifice.
Quote ID: 2472
Time Periods: 01
Book ID: 97 Page: 30
Section: 2A3,4B
Most gladiators, at Rome and elsewhere, were slaves; but in addition, there were always some free men who became gladiators because they wanted to.
Quote ID: 2473
Time Periods: 01
Book ID: 97 Page: 31
Section: 2A3,4B
An exceptional feat of survival was claimed by the gladiator Publius Ostorius at Pompeii - a freeman and voluntary fighter, combatant in no less than fifty-one fights.
Quote ID: 2474
Time Periods: 01
Book ID: 97 Page: 32
Section: 3B
Cicero repeatedly sneered at Antony’s brother Lucius for fighting as a gladiator in Asia Minor, and cutting his opponent’s throat. Similar contests involving members of respected families are recorded under the first two emperors; and it pleased Caligula to compel many knights and senators to fight.
Quote ID: 2475
Time Periods: 1
Book ID: 97 Page: 33
Section: 3B
That is to say the offense of being a gladiator, for a member of the upper classes, is comparable to acting - though even worse. Indeed, it is a logical step downwards from the one to the other, and emperors had sometimes forced such men to fight in the arena just because they had already disgraced themselves by appearing on the stage.
Quote ID: 2476
Time Periods: 1
Book ID: 97 Page: 33
Section: 4B
Another rich source of scandal was the adoption of the gladiatorial career by women. The mind reels at the thought of what a female Roman gladiator must have been like;
Quote ID: 2477
Time Periods: 01
Book ID: 97 Page: 35
Section: 4B
The number of days in each year given up to annual games and spectacles of one sort or another in the city was startlingly large, and increased continually. Already 66 in the time of Augustus, it had risen to 135 under Marcus Aurelius, and to 175 or more in the fourth century. Yet these are figures which take no account of the enormous and repeated special shows given by each successive emperor.
Quote ID: 2478
Time Periods: 0124
Book ID: 97 Page: 36
Section: 3B
Later emperors did their best not to disappoint. Thousands of fighters were matched against one another at Philip the Arabian’s celebration of the millenary of Rome (AD 248), and
Quote ID: 2479
Time Periods: 3
Book ID: 97 Page: 36
Section: 2A3,4B
The arch-patron of this gigantic activity was always the emperor. Gladiatorial entertainments had become a wholly indispensable feature of the services a ruler had to provide, in order to keep his popularity and his job.
Quote ID: 2480
Time Periods: 01
Book ID: 97 Page: 49
Section: 2A3,4B
No arms were allowed in the schools, for fear of outbreaks - or suicides. Symmachus in the fourth century AD rather unsympathetically tells a harrowing story of twenty-nine Saxon prisoners of war, who despite supervision succeeded in doing away with each other en masse, rather than fight in the arena.
Quote ID: 2483
Time Periods: 014
Book ID: 97 Page: 74/75
Section: 4B
When a man fell, the herald raised their trumpets, and spectators yelled ‘Got him! He’s had it!’ (habet, hoc habet). The fallen fighter, if he was in a state to move, laid down his shield, and raised one finger of his left hand as a plea for mercy. The decision whether his life should be spared rested with the provider of the games; but he generally found it politic to take account of the spectators’ loudly expressed views. Thumbs up, and a waving of handkerchiefs, meant that the man should be spared, thumbs down that he should not.
Quote ID: 2488
Time Periods: 01
Book ID: 97 Page: 76
Section: 4B
While African boys raked over the bloodstained sand, fallen gladiators were taken away. A ghoulish touch, reminiscent of the religious origins of the sport, was added by the costumes worn by those who removed the bodies, who were dressed as Mercury (Hermes Psychopompos), divine guide of dead men’s souls to the infernal regions. Another distasteful note was struck by officials disguised as Charon, the underworld ferryman inherited by Roman myth from Charun the savage death-demon of the Etruscans, the people from whom the whole gladiatorial institution came. For when a man had been struck down and lay in his death agony, it was the function of these Charons to finish him off.
Quote ID: 2489
Time Periods: 0123
Book ID: 97 Page: 85
Section: 1B,4B
Of the Colosseum they said in the eighth century, ‘As long as it stands, Rome will stand; when it falls, Rome will fall; when Rome falls, the world will fall.’ The Colosseum has often been raided, but has never fallen.
Quote ID: 2490
Time Periods: 17
Book ID: 97 Page: 114/115
Section: 4B
Another factor to be reckoned with was the absolute mastery of the early Roman paterfamilias over his children. ‘The Roman lawgiver,’ wrote Dionysius of Halicarnassus, ‘gave the father complete power over the son, power which lasted a whole lifetime. He was at liberty to imprison him, flog him, to keep him a prisoner working on the farm, and to kill him.’ And though the laws were modified, much of the spirit remained.
Quote ID: 2491
Time Periods: 0
Book ID: 97 Page: 116/117
Section: 2A3,4B
A century and a half later, Pliny the younger is equally disappointing. He praises a friend who gave a gladiatorial display and approves of the disdain of death and love of honourable wounds which such combats encouraged, inspiring, he said, ambition in the hearts even of criminals and slaves. Nowhere do we see more clearly than in the inadequate comments of this usually kind-hearted man what it was to live in a society where some people had no rights at all; and where policy and tradition had institutionalized the brutalities inherent in this situation.Pastor John’s note: Institution!!!
Quote ID: 2492
Time Periods: 01234
Book ID: 97 Page: 117
Section: 3C
The climate of opinion still encouraged Constantine the Great, the first Christian emperor, to throw masses of German prisoners (Bructeri) into the arena and have them torn to pieces by wild animals - the fate that Christians had suffered for centuries. The comment of his cultured panegyrists is that he ‘delighted the people with the wholesale annihilation of their enemies - and what triumph could have been finer?’
Quote ID: 2493
Time Periods: ?
Book ID: 97 Page: 117
Section: 2A3,4B
The earliest and most notable protest comes from the Romano-Spanish philosopher, essayist and dramatist Seneca the younger. Whatever his equivocations as Nero’s minister, he must be credited with the first known unambiguous attack upon the whole institution of gladiators, and the popular enjoyment of its human bloodshed. Seneca invokes the Stoic Universal Brotherhood.
Quote ID: 2494
Time Periods: 01
Book ID: 97 Page: 122
Section: 3C
Although Constantine the Great made many a German prisoner fight in the arena, he later issued from Berytus (Beirut) an edict ostensibly abolishing gladiators’ games altogether (AD 326).This initiative may have been due to pressure from the Fathers of the Church assembled for the Nicaean Council.
Quote ID: 2495
Time Periods: ?
Book ID: 97 Page: 122
Section: 3C
...but the main prohibition was not enforced, at least in the west. Indeed in Italy it was very soon denied by Constantine himself, when he wrote to the town of Hispellum (Spello) agreeing that municipal priests in Umbria should continue to give gladiators’ shows, and that their colleagues in Etruscan towns should combine forces in this respect so as to concentrate their displays at Etruria’s religious centre of Volsinii (Bolsena).
Quote ID: 2496
Time Periods: ?
Book ID: 97 Page: 123
Section: 3C
Yet restrictive legislation was again on the way. An edict of Constantius II (357) forbade soldiers and officials in Rome to take part personally in the games, penalizing those who did so,
Quote ID: 2497
Time Periods: ?
Book ID: 97 Page: 123
Section: 3C
and eight and again ten years later Valentinian I prohibited the condemnation of Christians to the gladiators’ schools:
Quote ID: 2498
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 97 Page: 123
Section: 3D
At Rome, in 399, the western emperor Honorius closed what remained of the gladiatorial schools.
Quote ID: 2499
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 97 Page: 123
Section: 4B
When Augustine in the Confessions (c. 400) told of his friend’s seduction by the arena, it did not sound as if the danger was dead, and two or three years later the poet Prudentius, in his denunciation of the pagan Symmachus, was still urging the emperor to forbid the use of such shows in order to inflict death-sentences upon criminals. Curiously enough, Prudentius suggested that the emperor should instead only allow them to be pitted against wild beasts - a sport which still persisted, although the state was now Christian. The puritan, economical ruler Anastasius banned them in 499, but they were revived and went on during the sixth century; indeed they were not officially abolished until AD 681.
Quote ID: 2500
Time Periods: 567
Book ID: 97 Page: 123
Section: 4B
As regards gladiators, however, Prudentius’ plea was very soon followed by the final crisis. This was precipitated by Telemachus, a monk from Asia Minor, who rushed into a Roman arena to part the fighters, and was torn to pieces by the infuriated crowd. Honorius seized the opportunity to abolish gladiators and their games altogether. This event is usually dated to AD 404. {1}
Quote ID: 2501
Time Periods: 45
Book ID: 97 Page: 124
Section: 3A2A,3C,4B
Moreover, some of the most bloodthirsty human holocausts in the arena were perpetrated by Constantine the Great, who made the empire officially Christian; and gladiatorial combats were not abolished until approximately ninety-two years after the Christian revelation that he claimed to have experienced. Yet, for all that, it was appropriate that a monk should have taken the initiative in the final abolition of this scandal. For in the last resort, and in spite of the long time-lag, its termination must be attributed to the spreading of Christian ideas.
Quote ID: 2502
Time Periods: 04
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