The Complete Idiot's Guide to the Roman Empire (61 page)

 
Roamin' the Romans
The funeral remains of what is believed to be a female gladiator were unearthed in London in the summer of 2000. The London amphitheater where she would have fought and died lies under London's guildhall and held about 7,000 spectators.

Even though some had huge followings, gladiators as a group (along with actors and prostitutes) were
infames:
“slime balls” or “(social) trash.” As it is
with all disreputable sports, the arena nevertheless appealed to some wealthy Roman enthusiasts, including women, who trained and participated in the events. These bigwigs brought both enthusiastic crowds and condemnation from their peers. The most blatant class-jumpers were Nero and Commodus. Since these emperors were also the ones under whom aristocrats, dwarfs, and women entered the games, it seems that these emperors set the tone for these other performances.

 
Veto!
Don't get the idea that Romans were the only people to employ cruelty and a macabre use of realism in their productions. When Crassus was defeated and killed by the Parthians, his head was cut off and sent to the Great King. The king, who was viewing a production of Euripides'
Bacchae,
had Crassus's head used as the main prop.

Another stupefying kind of Roman spectacle sounds like Olympic Games Opening Ceremonies run amok: reenactments of mythological or historical events, complete with real suffering and death. Roman spectators loved big shows with realistic effects, and the games gave the opportunity to put the “real” into history and myths. Does the story have a burning house? Then burn a real house down! Nero's games featured just such a prop (the actors were allowed to keep the furniture they saved out of it for themselves). Does the story require a murder? An immolation? Someone to burn their hand off? One of those things that it's really hard to get the screams and smells just right? No problem! The games provided a ready supply of actors and extras perfect for those kinds of “one night only” parts.

Sea battles (
naumachia
) were among the grandest of the spectacles. Caesar was the first to organize a battle of 3,000, and Augustus followed by creating a drainable (for sanitation and smell) venue by the Tibur in which to stage his sea battles. Claudius celebrated his tunnel at Lake Fucini with a massive battle on the lake involving 19,000. The participants fought so well that the emperor let the survivors go free. Titus, Domitian, Trajan, Diocletian, and Philip the Arab also put on
naumachiae.

Games were announced beforehand by heralds, and the venues for the different events and performances were posted. Programs were distributed to increase interest and people studied their programs to determine where to go and who to bet on. A feast (or last supper) for the gladiators was put on the night before their show. On the day of the games, the participants paraded to music and great fanfare past the sponsor of the games (
editor
) and then retired to their stations for the games to begin.

The morning program was a warm-up for the big events. Morning games included mock duels and martial arts displays with wooden weapons and displays of wild or trained animals. Morning was also when the
venationes
and other hunts took place, pitting beast against beast (the more exotic the better) or man against beast.

 
Great Caesar's Ghost!
Productions of
Peter Pan
or even Wagner's
Ring
feature flying characters hauled about in the air to simulate flight. That's nothing new. A production of
Daedalus and Icarus
during Nero's games featured characters flying about on wires. Unfortunately this production was a little
too
true to form: The actor who played Icarus crashed and burned (or, in Icarus's case, burned and crashed) when his gear broke; he landed by Nero's seat and splattered on the emperor.

Lunch featured a half-time show of executions. In the more mundane games, this is when criminals were thrown to the jungle cats (which were usually bound to stakes) or forced to kill each other. The afternoon featured the gladiatorial pairs. The pairs were drawn by lot, and each fight was refereed by a
lanista.
If the gladiators weren't giving it their all, it was the
lanista
's job to (literally) whip them into fighting shape. When a gladiator was wounded or defeated (and yet alive), he could appeal for mercy and concede defeat by holding up his index finger (a kind of “Excuse me, I believe I'm dying here” gesture). Whether he lived or died was up to the
editor
(sponsor) of the games, but the crowd got into the picture by waving, cheering, and making hand gestures to either spare or kill the fallen participant.

Gladiators given a reprieve (
missio
) might have to fight again the same day; others were expected to be true to their oath and take the final blow without fear or flinching. After someone dressed as Charon (the spirit who ferried souls to Hades) or as Mercury (the god who escorted them there) tested to make sure that he really was dead, the fallen gladiator's body was dragged off with a meat hook by a slave through the
Porta Libitinensis,
or Death's Gate (
Libitina
was a goddess of death) and disposed of.

 
Veto!
Gladiators are popularly known to have said, “Emperor, we who are about to die salute you,” before each match. Not really. Suetonius (in
Claudius
21.6) reports that that captives who fought a sea battle said this to Claudius. There isn't any evidence that gladiators ever said this in the arena, much less that the phrase was a regular part of the games.

You'd think that the coming of Christianity would have ended the brutality of the Roman arena, but not completely. It is true that Constantine the Great issued an order in 326 against gladiatorial games, but neither edict nor the Christianization of the Empire stopped either the spectacles of execution or the gladiators. Constantine himself, in fact, had German captives thrown to the animals and was praised by Eubebius for destroying the Empire's enemies.

Honorius closed the gladiatorial schools in Rome in 399. However the games continued; we find Symmachus still putting them on. St. Augustine (ca 400) writes of a friend who was reluctantly dragged to the arena by friends, only to become an ardent fan. Such fans were so ardent that when a monk tried to interpose himself between two fighters in the arena in 404, the crowd killed the monk. This, at least, allowed Honorius the excuse to close the gladiatorial games themselves. In the east, gladiatorial combats ended about the same time. Entertaining executions by wild animals continued, however, to be officially sanctioned until 681.

I'm guessing that as you've been reading through these descriptions, you've asked yourself, “Why?” How could people have done these kinds of things and found them
entertaining?
Why were the Romans so warped? Some Roman writers defended the games as exhibitions that taught courage and spirit; others gave that defense all the contempt it deserved.

Before you attempt an answer, however, keep a few things in mind. Consider the public exhibitions of Medieval punishments and torture. Take a look at the crowds of families picnicking at public hangings in the American West in the 1800s. Take a look at footage of the parties and celebrations outside of prisons on the eve of executions enjoyed by people who are in no way connected with the victims of the condemned. Take a look at popular horror films, books, and magazines. Consider why people slow down at traffic accidents. Before you write the Romans off, ask yourself if their entertainment was warped or manifestations of desires that lurk in all humanity.

• The Roman games involved more than gladiators and gore.
  
• Chariot racing was the most popular spectator sport throughout the Empire.
  
• Roman fascination with spectacle, death, and pain permeated the most popular events.
  

Rome didn't fold. Like a big family with a common business, different branches of the Roman cultural clan went their separate ways while maintaining ties (in imagination if not in lineage) with their ancestors. In the east, the Byzantine Empire kept the business open in one form or the other until the fifteenth century; in the west, the popes kept the coals of the old headquarters alive until a merger with the Franks brought the western Empire back on line in
C.E.
800. Reincorporation of the two regional bodies was a shared goal, but by then their corporate culture was neither compatible nor particularly willing to combine. Hostile takeovers of the east by the Crusaders and by the Turks brought about the dispersal of the east's hard and soft assets to the benefit of the Renaissance, Imperial Russia, and the Ottoman Empire.

In the following chapters, we'll follow the history of Rome in both east and west, and see how some different periods continued to capitalize on Rome's legacy. I hope that you'll come to understand how big of a market share Rome has on our contemporary world, and speculate how future profits might come from an understanding of its case study. After all, we're all in the business.