Invisible Romans (45 page)

Besides a context for training, the
familia
provided bonding. An inscription from southern Spain tells of how a
familia
took care to bury one of its own:

A gladiator-fighting-from-a-chariot named Ingenuus, of the Gallician training camp, 25 years old, victor in 12 matches, a German by birth, lies here. His entire gladiatorial household (
familia)
set this up at their own expense. May the earth rest lightly upon you! (
CIL
2
²
–7.362, Córdoba)

Another from Smyrna notes that the
familia
pooled resources and helped a fellow gladiator pay for the funeral honors of his little son. Yet another from Telmessos has one gladiator setting up a gravestone for the fellow he shared living quarters with in the gladiatorial school (
ludus).

It is impossible to know how such bonding affected gladiators who were paired against their fellows of the same
familia.
When forty-nine pairings from a single
familia
fought, it is hard to believe that some contests did not pit friends against each other:

Forty-nine pairings! The
Familia Capiniana
will fight at Puteoli in the Augustan Games, May 12th, 14th, 16th, and 17th. There will be awnings [over the arena]! (
CIL
4.7994, Pompeii)

Some epitaphs do, however, recognize the inherent possibility for inner conflict when men of the
familia
were pitted against each other in the arena. Louis Robert gives the examples of Olympos, whose gravestone notes that ‘he spared many in the arena’; Ajax ‘saved many souls.’ These sentiments mean that these men, and presumably others, fought with seriousness, but not with uncontrolled anger or blood-lust; they fought to win, not to kill, if it could be avoided. But even granted that the ‘rules of combat,’ if strictly adhered to, could produce both a good show and mutual survival of a pair, there was always the chance of a miscue. And, of course, just being in the same
familia
would not
guarantee a friendly disposition toward all of one’s fellow gladiators. Competition, pride, jealousy – many emotions could turn one member of the
familia
against another. The intricacies of friendship and rivalry must have been great. Perhaps the best friend was at times a dog: Robert has identified canines on more than a half-dozen grave reliefs set up for gladiators.

31. A gladiator and his faithful canine. Many gravestones of gladiators feature a dog at the feet. With the stress of preparation and competition among fierce men, it was perhaps a gladiator’s most trusted friend.

I have already quoted the material from Plutarch in which he states that some gladiators on the eve of combat took the opportunity to recommend their women to the care of their friends and set free their slaves. Suetonius notes in his
Life
of Emperor Claudius that Claudius freed an
essedarius
(chariot fighter) who had four sons. There are also many inscriptions which indicate that gladiators, whether slaves or free, had families. Their epitaphs are sometimes written by fellow fighters or other males, but the most usual by far is for a woman to dedicate the monument, often with expressions of endearment. Although in other
ways gladiators were assimilated to the ways of soldiers, in this they are very distinct: soldiers’ graves are almost always set up by a male, not surprisingly since soldiers, although they often formed liaisons, were long forbidden to marry. The dedications of gladiators thus clearly show that they belonged to the ‘normal’ world insofar as family was concerned. Indeed, a number of epitaphs give the names of children, so family life extended beyond just a wife. And it is worth noting that a term common for slave relationships (slaves could not legally marry),
contubernalis,
‘tent mate,’ is almost entirely lacking from gladiators’ dedications. Rather
coniunx
or
uxor
are found, both terms for a legal wife. There is no reason not to accept this at face value: Free gladiators were married, and slave gladiators seemed comfortable using the terminology strictly appropriate only to the free. Despite the disparagement of elite authors there is no reason to see these women as ‘gladiatorial groupies’ handed from one gladiator to the next as each was killed off, the lowest of the low, hardly better than long-term prostitutes. Just by looking at the epitaphs, it is impossible to distinguish their form and sentiments from those of any other ordinary people who set up monuments. And when we consider that a gladiator had not only the ‘sex appeal’ so notoriously mentioned in the ancient sources, but steady employment which yielded prize money once or twice a year, possibly in considerable amount, it is not surprising that some would form permanent relationships and have children.

While a good deal of time was taken up on an ongoing basis with training, gladiators must still have had quite a bit of time on their hands as they normally fought only infrequently. An intelligent manager must have looked for ways to make his investment pay. Renting out gladiators as bodyguards was an obvious option. Unfortunately, there are only rare mentions of this, and then always in relation to the elite. As in so many other aspects of his life, a gladiator’s employment outside the arena remains something of a mystery.

Beyond the
familia
and family, gladiators found social contacts and relationships in professional associations. As with other such organizations, these
collegia
provided an opportunity to gather for a meal, discuss professional matters, gossip, and, perhaps, save up for the costs of a decent burial. We have a fine mosaic from North Africa that may show a club of beast fighters gathered at table. Inscriptions tell of associations
of other beast fighters, as well as of a
collegium
of retired gladiators at Rome.

32. Nemesis. Gladiators and beast fighters (shown here) were under the protection of the goddess of vengeful fate – remorseless and fierce.

Very little is known about the religious outlook of gladiators. This is surprising, since in such a deadly profession one might expect an interest in divinities that could provide protection. One gladiator makes a dedication to Venus, but this can hardly be related to the activity of the arena. Another dedicates to Mars, something that we might expect, as Mars was the god of war. A few others make dedications to Nemesis. This deity was closely associated with Fortune in the Romano-Greek mind, and as such was a power to be called on in parlous professions such as in military service and the arena. Nevertheless, it is striking that of almost 250 Latin inscriptions that mention Nemesis, only three, two by beast fighters and one by a gladiator, come from the arena professionals; the heaviest concentration by far is from soldiers of one rank or another. The Greek evidence concurs: Nemesis figures in only four or five of the documents.

While gladiators made bloody sacrifices to gain the protection of the supernatural, their mortal contemporaries in turn valued gladiators’ own blood as a magical philter. The Roman antiquarian Festus (55.3L)
states that ‘the bride’s hair used to be parted with the “celibate” spear which had been fixed in a gladiator’s body that had been killed and thrown aside.’ The blood on the spear was evidently thought to be a fertility potion. How else was the blood obtained? Evidently by rushing to the scene of death and collecting it. Tertullian tells that people caught the blood in cups and carried it off:

Likewise what of those who, after a fight in the arena, carry off in their avid thirst the blood of the guilty slain – blood just then caught gushing from the neck. And this they use as a cure for epilepsy. (
Apology
9.10)

Given Tertullian’s animus against the games, I might suspect exaggeration. But years earlier the medical writer Celsus wrote, ‘Some have freed themselves from epilepsy by deep drafts of the warm blood spilled from a gladiator’s throat’ (
On Medicine
3.23.7). Pliny the Elder recommends the blood as a cure for epilepsy as well:

Epileptics drink the blood of gladiators as though it were the cup of life … They believe it is by far the most effective to gulp down the blood hot from the very man still gasping out his last breath, putting their lips to the wound, drawing out the essence of life itself. (
Natural History
28.4–5)

And Aretaeus of Cappadocia describes exactly what Tertullian does: ‘I have seen persons holding a cup below the wound of a man recently slaughtered, and drinking a draft of the blood! (
Treatment of Chronic Disease
7.4.7–8). Besides insuring fertility and curing epilepsy, a gladiator’s blood was useful in a potion to attract a lover:

Love spell of attraction performed with the help of heroes or gladiators or those who have died a violent death. Leave a little of the bread which you eat; break it up and form it into seven bite-sized pieces. And go to where heroes and gladiators and those who have died a violent death were slain. Say the spell to the pieces of bread and throw them. And pick up some polluted dirt from the place where you perform the ritual and throw it inside the house of the woman whom you desire, go on home and go to sleep. (
PGM
4.1390–98/Betz)

The gladiator’s cultivated mystique of valor and violence made not only his life’s essence coveted after death. It is an added curiosity to note that some people also, apparently, didn’t stop with the gladiator’s blood but cut out his liver as well: The Roman physician-pharmacologist Scribonius Largus reported that ‘some people take a nine-times dosage of a small quantity of liver cut from a fallen gladiator’ (
Compositions
17). As Largus had earlier recommended as a cure for epilepsy the liver of a stag killed by a weapon that, in turn, had been used to kill a gladiator, it is safe to assume that the dose of gladiator’s liver was for epilepsy as well.

Gladiators represent only one type of spectacle favored by ordinary Romans. Stage performances, chariot racing, athletic contests: All were a part of their lives. But the combination of fabulous popularity, bloody danger, and relatively extensive evidence for their lives makes those idols of the arena especially interesting. The lives of free, voluntary fighters were exceedingly dangerous, but that danger was part of the allure – that and the fame and, possibly, fortune. As a slave, of course, the gladiator had little choice, but even here the chance for freedom could be some motivation. In the midst of all the uncertainties and risks, men (and some women) carved out a life with friends and family even as they prepared for the duels on the sand. They were, in a way, just like other ordinary Romano-Greeks, doing their best to succeed in a world that was stacked against them.

9
BEYOND THE LAW: BANDITS AND PIRATES

AN OUTLAW IS SOMEONE WHO LIVES IN CONTACT
with a society but who does not abide by the laws of that society. It is the very nature of stratified societies to create the possibility of outlaws. Stratified societies institutionalize and culturally enforce differential worth, power, and wealth; this provides the context for outlaws to appear. Simply put, there have to be laws before there can be outlaws, and hierarchically stratified societies regularly use laws to secure their structure. Their basis in exploiting some to the benefit of others offers motivation to some to escape the enforcing laws. One way to do this is to turn to outlawry.

The acceptance of a simple definition of outlaws – one who lives in contact with but outside society’s laws – automatically eliminates from consideration two very prominent types of outlaw in the Romano-Grecian world: the tribal outlaws, routinely labeled by contemporaries as ‘bandits’ or ‘pirates,’ on the one hand, and the common petty criminal, on the other. The tribal type of outlaw is not operating within the sphere of Roman society; rather, these people might more accurately be labeled ‘otherlaws,’ because they are their own community, have their own laws, are organized in a stratified, hierarchical way, but simply do not abide by Roman laws. In this category belong such outlaws as the bandits of the Calycadnus Valley in Cilicia, the Maratocupreni of Syria, and, much later, the maurading Saxons in late antiquity. These
are tribally based raider societies, which, like similar raider societies of other ancient times, such as the Cilician pirates and the Homeric chieftains themselves, and in later times, the Vikings, prey on anyone who has possessions to take. The geographer Strabo gives us an excellent description of such a raider society:

After the Sindic territory and Gorgipia, on the sea, one comes to the coast of the Achaei and the Zygi and the Heniochi, which for the most part is harborless and mountainous, being a part of the Caucasus. These peoples live by robberies at sea. Their boats are slender, narrow, and light, holding only about twenty-five people, though in rare cases they can hold thirty in all; the Greeks call them ‘camarae’ … by equipping fleets of ‘camarae’ and sailing sometimes against merchant-vessels and sometimes against a country or even a city, they hold the mastery of the sea. And they are sometimes assisted even by those who hold the Bosporus, the latter supplying them with mooring-places, with market-places, and with means of disposing of their booty … they are well acquainted with wooded places; and in these they first hide their ‘camarae’ and then themselves wander on foot night and day for the sake of kidnapping people … the territory that is subject to the Romans affords but little aid, because of the negligence of the governors who are sent there.
(Geography
11.2.12/Jones)