Defending Constantine: The Twilight of an Empire and the Dawn of Christendom (27 page)

Suicide was an honorable escape from illness, tyranny, slavery or shame in the Roman world,'
but Curtius and Decius were doing something more overtly religious than Cato the Younger when he messily killed himself to escape the prospect of life under King Caesar. Their deaths were not apolitical. On the contrary, both devoted themselves in service to Rome as much as to the gods. Whatever the general truth of Emile Durkheim's dictum "Society is god," it holds true for Rome: Rome is god. Shakespeare knew his Romans. Volumnia, the mother of Coriolanus, representing mother Rome, is a devouring mother with a taste for her children's blood.

ROMAN MICROCOSM

This complex of interlocking ideas-devotio, patriotism, self-sacrifice to chthonic deities-supported a military and political practice closely resembling human sacrifice.4
And this is the set of ideas that Tertullian found at the basis of the Roman munera, the gladiatorial shows. Explaining that munera (duties, obligations) were so called because in combats "they rendered offices to the dead," he argued that they were simply a commuted form of human sacrifice. Earlier, it was believed that "the souls of the departed were appeased by human blood," and like Achilles at the funeral of Patroclus, Romans bought "captives or slaves of wicked disposition, and immolat[ed] them in their funeral obsequies." Over time, this seemed too barbaric, and someone decided to "throw the veil of pleasure over their iniquity." Thus they trained and armed men so that "they might learn to die," and at a funeral they killed them before the dead: "they alleviated death by murders." This is the way of all idolatry, Tertullian declared, since idolatry is "a sort of homage to the departed," humans deified by death, and thus spectacles are as idolatrous as the worship of the pagan temples.5
Tertullian would not have been surprised to learn that the arena in Lugdunum was immediately adjoined by a temple complex.6

This connection between the munera and patriotic self-sacrifice reveals only one of the cultural and political values reinforced by the shows. Combats in the arena reenacted the founding sacrifice of Remus by Romulus. According to Rome's founding myth, Romulus "killed his brother for jumping over the walls which would define Rome and separate it from the non-Roman." For republican Romans like Cicero and Seneca, "the gladiator plays Remus to the normative aristocrat's Romulus: he is the brother
who must be slain that an empire may be founded." Just as "the murder of Remus permanently establishes the validity of this boundary and secures the name of Rome for the city," so the death of the gladiator helps "to found the nobility of the nobilis."
7

Further, the games provided an opportunity for Romans, at Rome and at the many amphitheaters throughout the empire, to see Rome on parade. The maeniana or levels of seating offered a public view of the hierarchy of Roman society and of the centers of power. Social classes were distinguished by their proximity to the games, with the senators occupying the "box seats" and members of other orders further back. Some priesthoods and other associations had their own sections of seating, but commoners had to settle in the back rows, with only the women behind them. At the games, the variegated social order of men was represented and distinguished visually and spatially from the homogenous collection of women.'
Ovid noted the double spectacle: Spectatum veniunt, veniunt spectentur ut ipsae-"they come to a spectacle, they come to make a spectacle of themselves."9

Games were also political events. Prominently seated so his reactions to the show could be viewed, the emperor served as editor, or master of games, and decided the fate of the fighters. His presence at the games was an exercise of power just as surely as was his place at the head of a triumphal procession.10
Crowds carefully monitored the emperor's behavior. If he answered correspondence (as Julius Caesar did) or heard appeals during the combats, he was criticized, but if, like Augustus, he enjoyed the games, he won the admiration of the crowd."
For perceptive emperors, the games
provided an opportunity to display the levitas popularis, the "common touch" so important in a principate that still claimed to be rooted in republican values.12
At the same time, the games provided one of the few opportunities the people still had to voice their grievances in the hearing of the emperor. Chants about oppressive taxation or the high price of bread mingled with cheers for favorite fighters.13

The arena was also an instrument of imperial policy in the provinces. The spread of Roman power was marked architecturally by the spread of amphitheaters. Not only were the arenas-built in a distinctively Roman style-visual reminders of the sometimes distant power of the emperor, but the bloody combats that took place on the sands reminded viewers of Rome's willingness to use violence and gave restless provincials pause. Arenas embodied the empire; the gladiatorial shows and their amphitheaters were the "imperial process in microcosm.""

Gladiatorial shows captured the very "essence of Romanitas."15
Gladiators were often slaves, and socially despised, yet at the same time aristocrats recognized a common bond between the gladiators' pursuit of glory and their own. War was one of the main arenas for aristocratic advance, so that the bloody sand of the literal arena mirrored the bloody sands where aristocratic soldiers fought for the empire. Despite legal bans, some aristocrats even went so far as to join the gladiators in the colise- um.lb
Romanitas was a masculine ideal, and Pliny the Younger commended Trajan's games because there was "nothing spineless or flabby, nothing that would soften or break the manly spirit of the audience," but rather "a spectacle that inspired the audience to noble wounds and to despise death, since even in the bodies of slaves and criminals the love of praise and desire for victory could be seen.""
For Cicero, the games played on the dynamics of dignitas and ignominia to exhort Romans to devotio: "If the state [res publicae] ... has come to its moment of truth, let us do as worthy gladiators do to die with honour, let us, the leaders of all
peoples, fall with dignity rather than submit with shame.""

Cicero, and Seneca even more, found not only politico-religious but philosophical meaning in the combats.19
Though often cited as a philosophical critic of the shows, Seneca, his fantasies filled with tragedies of erotic violence, never mounted a criticism of the shows as such. In a famous letter, he warned Lucilius to "stay away" because he would "either be corrupted by the multitude, or, if you show disgust, be hated by them." He admitted to being "bitterly disappointed" when he attended the games "hoping for a little wit and humor." He found "mere butchery." The morning show was good enough. Men were thrown to lions and bears, but in the afternoon the crowd became bestial. Though "the slayer was kept fighting until he could be slain," still the crowed cried out, "Kill him! flog him! burn him alive.... Why is he such a coward? Why won't he rush on the steel? Why does he fall so meekly? Why won't he die willingly?"20

Seneca was a critic not of violent spectacles but only of useless violence. Violent spectacles could, he believed, be socially and even philosophically beneficial. Identifying more with the defeated than with the winner, he found the gladiator a model of courage in adversity, of dignified death. "The gladiator considers it a disgrace to be matched with an inferior and knows that he who has conquered without danger has conquered without glory." Philosophers face similar dangers: "Fortune does the same; she seeks out the bravest for her opponents, and passes over some with contempt. She attacks the most unyielding and upright against whom she may exert her strength. She tried Mucius by fire, Fabricious by poverty, Rutil- ius by exile, Regulus by tortures, Socrates by poison, Cato by death. Misfortune alone reveals great examples.""
Like the gladiator, human beings are thrown sine missione into an arena of combat from which there is no escape, save death. Philosophers aim, like gladiators, to make their death a brave one.

Gladiators were "both a version of the Stoic sapiens, offering a metaphor
of apathy, independence, and contempt for the opinions of society, and an expression of intense interaction with, and acceptance of, others, a longing for esteem and appreciation, in other words, glory."22
Spectacles lent the powerless a sense of power, gave the curious something to watch, provided a cathartic outlet for violence, and encouraged the fundamental virtues of Roman citizenship-courage, patriotism, self-sacrifice. They gave emperors opportunities to display their godlike munificence and magnificence, as well as their potential for violence, while at the same time sharing the enthusiasm of commoners for high-stakes competition. Gladiators had something for everyone. The shows were as basic to Rome as sacrifice
.23 Rome was the arena, and the arena was Rome. What would the empire be without it?

CONSTANTINE AND THE SPECTACLES

With Constantine, Rome had a chance to find out. In 325, he issued an edict concerning spectacles. "Bloody spectacles are not suitable for civil ease and domestic quiet," he declared, and therefore "since we have proscribed gladiators, those who have been accustomed to be sentenced to such work as punishment for their crimes, you should cause them to serve in the mines, so that they may be punished without shedding their blood" (CTh 15.12.1). The emperor's hedging in the first sentence is intriguing. The prohibition is not absolute but is fitting for a time of domestic ease (in otio civili et domestica quiete non placent), which leaves open the possibility that Constantine thought the games might be fitting in another time and condition. The final clauses prohibit condemnation to the arena as a criminal punishment, replacing it with bloodless exile to the mines, and the law has been interpreted as if Constantine's only intent were to outlaw confinement to the arena as a punishment, not to outlaw the games themselves.24
Eusebius took this law as an absolute prohibition, and that is what
the law actually says. If so, Constantine's views on the shows had shifted over time. In 315 he had issued a rescript (CTh 9.18.1) condemning kidnappers to the beasts or to gladiatorial schools, but a decade later he had become disgusted by the whole business and prohibited gladiators as a part of a reorganization of public entertainments.25
It is notable that there was no arena in Constantinople; instead, a hippodrome was to be the place of public entertainments. This was a major departure from imperial custom.

CONSTATINE AS LEGISLATOR

Constantine's legislation on gladiatorial shows illustrates some important dimensions of the impact of his reign on Roman government, law and society. Constantine was an active legislator, responsible for about three hundred extant laws as well as others that we have lost.26
Like the laws of other Roman emperors, these take various forms. Some are decreta, oral decisions made by the emperor in a court case, some of which became widely known but, so far as we know, were not published. Others were edicts initiated by the emperor to address a particular problem in the empire, or some part of the empire, and published in the affected provinces and cities. Others were "rescripts" composed in answer to questions com
ing from provincial governors and were published in the place of origin.27
Most of the Constantine's legislation comes from the period after 323-324 when he assumed sole imperial power in the empire.

Constantine's legislation was collected by the later Christian emperors, Theodosius, who commissioned the codification of Roman law, and Justinian, who commissioned both a codification of the law and a Digest and Institutes for lawyers, judges and law students.28
The Codices include only the strictly legislative portions of edicts and rescripts and leave out preambles that offer the rationale and explain the intent of a particular law. As a result, the Codices give a somewhat distorted portrait of imperial legislation. Still, it is far better than nothing, and more complete versions of some laws found their way into the works of Eusebius and Lactantius.

Constantine's legislation is uneven in both substance and style.29
It has been charged that some of his laws were composed in haste, even in anger, though the tone of some laws maybe no more than evidence that Constantine had mastered the rhetorical bombast fashionable in his time. His sarcasm about the details of the law is so pervasive that the Codices attribute to Constantine virtually any law that manifests this "Constantinian" tone. In substance, the legislation is not consistent. In one law he shuts down the imperial cult, but in another he permits a city in Bithynia to erect a temple in his honor, with the limitation that no images should be erected or venerated there.3o

Is there any consistent pattern here? Did Constantine have a legislative agenda? More specifically, did his legislation have the effect of incorporating Christian principles into law? Did his laws make any difference in forming a Christian political order?

No, says Ramsay MacMullen. Constantine's legislation, he argues, shows two main features: obsession with sexual crimes and increased bru
tality in punishment.31
Constantine's sexual legislation of April 326 demonstrates the presence of both of the alleged obsessions. "Constantine totally forbade married men to have concubines. He restricted the right to bring a charge of adultery to husbands, fathers, brothers, uncles, and cousins. He laid down that when a female ward grows up and wishes to marry, her guardian must furnish proof that she is a virgin inviolate; if the guardian has seduced her, he shall be deported and all his property confiscated." Sexual crimes were punished severely. "Constantine decreed that rapists should be punished by being burned alive, and he disallowed any appeal against the sentence." If a man abducted "a girl against her parents' wishes, he could no longer marry her, even if she was willing; on the contrary, her acquiescence rendered her too liable to be burned alive." Accessories to elopement were also in danger: "nurses who encouraged girls to elope were to have boiling lead poured down their throats, while anyone of either sex who aided the lover would also be burned alive." In short, he "treated seduction like a ritual impurity which can in no way be cleansed." Parents of seduced virgins who tried to hide their daughter's disgrace were "liable to deportation," and "even a virgin who was violently raped deserved punishment, since she could have stayed safely at home."32