GLADIATORS AND

ROMAN SPECTACLE

Essays and articles about all things gladiatorial,

from ideology and skill to pop culture...


The Roman arena is a place that we tend to mythologise, and all sorts of misconceptions can become rooted in 'fact.' One of the newest ones is the idea that gladiators were porky, and on purpose. The idea supposes that because gladiators wore no armour on their torsos, a thicc layer of subcutaneous fat would protect major organs from injury. Even The Simpsons has an episode where Homer fights in an amphitheatre under the name Obeseus. It's become one of those 'facts' that everybody assumes must be true. So, does this theory hold water?

Osteo archaeology

One way of determining what someone may have looked like is to examine skeletal remains. Strong and large muscles leave a mark on the bone, allowing osteo archaeologists to estimate how muscular someone may have been. We have skeletal remains of gladiators from two locations: Roman cemeteries in York and Ephesus. Both cemeteries contained the remains of multiple fighters buried over extended periods of time, and these two groups can be scientifically examined and tested to learn more about their diet and health. 

Of the Ephesian gladiators whose skeletons were analysed, muscle markers on the bones indicate that the men’s muscles were ‘significantly enlarged’. Fabian Kanz, who worked on the skeletons, surmised that this was the result of intense physical training over an extended period (2009: 2018). When Kurt Hunter-Mann examined skeletons from York, he came to the same conclusion.

The idea that gladiators were purposefully obese is relatively new, and it can be traced to the Ephesus excavations. One of the paleopathologists gave an interview in a magazine, making a (very generalised) statement based on the results of stable isotope testing on the bones. The tests suggested that most of the Ephesian gladiators had a largely vegetarian diet with large amounts of barley and beans. Recalling a quote from Pliny the Elder that mentions gladiators and barley, the conclusion given in the interview was that gladiators were deliberately fat.

“ "Gladiators needed subcutaneous fat," Grossschmidt explains. "A fat cushion protects you from cut wounds and shields nerves and blood vessels in a fight." Not only would a lean gladiator have been dead meat, he would have made for a bad show. Surface wounds "look more spectacular," says Grossschmidt. "If I get wounded but just in the fatty layer, I can fight on," he adds. "It doesn't hurt much, and it looks great for the spectators." ”
This assertion has remained largely unchallenged but often repeated, making its way into many documentaries and magazine articles, but there are several issues with assuming that gladiators were flabby:

Diet

The gladiators excavated in Ephesus were found within a cemetery that also contained civilians, and isotope analysis revealed that the civilians had practically the same diet as gladiators: a largely vegetarian diet heavily featuring barley and legumes (Lösch et al 2014: 13). The only difference scientists found between gladiators and civilians was that the gladiators had higher strontium levels, which could be attributed to either increased dairy intake or an ash supplement that Pliny mentions gladiators taking to speed up healing. Quoting Marcus Varro, Pliny says “your hearth should be your medicine chest. Drink lye made from its ashes, and you will be cured. One can see how gladiators after a combat are helped by drinking this” (Natural History 36.69). Pliny suggests ash as a cure for a lot of ailments, but there is evidence that this particular drink was indeed beneficial for bone strength. It would not, however, make a gladiator fatter than a civilian. The York gladiators also had a comparable diet to the civilians excavated beside them, though did not show evidence of drinking ash supplements (Müldner et al, 2011: 286). 

Pliny’s quote about gladiators being called hordearii, or ‘barley-men’, remarks on the nickname in the past tense in the original latin. Gladiators used to be known as barley-men (Natural History 18.72). Pliny died in 79 CE, and the Ephesian gladiatorial burials mostly date to the second and third centuries CE. Moreover, when Galen, himself a gladiatorial physician in the second century CE, quotes this passage of Pliny in his own work De Alimentorum Facultatibus, or ‘On the Nature of Foodstuffs;’ he elaborates that this was an outdated Athenian nickname for gladiators. This nickname therefore seems to be both regional and old-fashioned by the late first century CE, so it is inappropriate to apply it to gladiators en masse. 

Galen writes in ‘On the Nature of Foodstuffs’ that the gladiators he worked with in Pergamon ate a lot of beans. He states that this diet made them ‘fleshy’ (1.19)  However, if Galen meant ‘fat’ he could have used the appropriate words he uses elsewhere in his medical texts; the word he uses for obese is ‘polisarkos’ and is not used for gladiators. Instead he clarifies that the gladiatorial body type is not rock hard, but softer and less dense. Gladiators could perhaps pinch an inch, but their rigorous training ensured that they remained mainly muscle. If Galen, a ludus physician who treated these men daily didn’t call gladiators fat, then perhaps neither should we. 

If the barley and beans diet was commonly used in ludi across the empire, as it seems to have been in specific locations, then the protein-rich food provided would have indeed been calorific, but was used as fuel for the intense physical activity involved in training. The daily exertions of gladiators meant that they were unlikely to gain thick layers of fat as someone with the same diet and a sedentary lifestyle would. 

Weapons

Most gladiators fought with a short sword called a gladius, which was also used by the army. It was primarily a stabbing weapon, the point of which could prove fatal at a mere 5cm of penetration (Bishop 2016: 54). Extra subcutaneous fat, even in the obese, is not going to prevent a fatality from a gladius thrust. Carter has compellingly suggested that most of the time, the point of gladiatorial swords must have been blunted, citing that there are only a few inscriptions, either advertising fights or commemorating them, that describe the swords as having sharpened points, suggesting that this was not the norm and added a heightened layer of drama (Carter 2006). When we consider the nature of gladiatorial combat, this makes a lot of sense:

Legionaries used short swords in a thrusting manner to methodically deliver fatal blows to as many enemies as possible in a short space of time. Gladiatorial fights, however, were one-on-one and designed to be as entertaining as possible for a prolonged length of time: average fights are estimated to have lasted on average between 10-15 minutes (Potter 1999: 314). Blunting the points of swords reduced (but did not eliminate) the probability of fatalities (Carter 2006: 166). Of course, the owners of gladiators were reimbursed for their full worth if they were killed; dead gladiators were incredibly expensive for whoever was staging the show and lowering the odds of death was in their interest as well as the fighters. But did a blunted tip change how gladiators fought, and inspire them to get fat as a form of defence? The gladius could be used in a slicing, slashing motion, but the Romans seemed to consider it a reckless technique. The idea that a few shallow slashes with the long edge of a sword could produce safe spurts of blood to entertain the crowds doesn’t align with how the Romans saw using the sword in that way: Vegetius writes 

“The Romans not only easily conquered those who fought with cutting motions, they even ridiculed them for doing so. [...] When a cut is delivered, the right arm and side are exposed, but the stabbing point is delivered with the body protected and wounds the enemy before he sees it. This is what characterises Roman practice with respect to combat.” (Vegetius, Mil. 1.12) 

Gladiators wore less armour on the torso than legionaries, so it does not make sense for them to regularly raise their arms to slice, leaving so much of themselves exposed. So if points of swords were usually blunted, how did gladiators fight?

Techniques

We don’t have a surviving ancient manual to reveal the rules of combat, though we know rules existed. What we do know is that gladiatorial bouts were carefully controlled by referees, and that fighters were placed in traditional pairings according to their armature and fighting style, for instance retiarius versus secutor or murmillo versus thraex. Fighters were given their speciality early in their career, and their training would have been specific both to their style and to defending themselves from the style of their normal opponent types. Beyond this, much is a mystery. Junkelmann, having studied gladiatorial arms and armour and artistic depictions, decided that the best way to fill in the gaps in our knowledge was with practical experimentation, and so formed his own modern gladiatorial familia to test out various techniques and theories which he documents in his book Das Spiel mit dem Tod: So kämpften Roms Gladiatoren (2000). The results of years of this experimental archaeology are fascinating. 

Firstly, we must forget the cinematic hacks and slashes we’re accustomed to; the swords are too short for the constant clanging we see in movies. Junkelmann’s heavyweight gladiators found that it was their shield, the scutum, that was the primary piece of kit with which to parry a sword. The scutum is a large shield that protected most of the body. Usually, a gladiator’s forward leg would be protected by a greave called an ocrea and their striking arm by an armoured sleeve called a manica. Combined with the helmet, if the scutum was held in the correct position, the gladiator would be almost entirely protected. Slashing blows with a sword would often do little more than produce a loud clang, and such ineffective manoeuvres in heavy gear were too tiring to waste time performing. Not only this, but a hacking slash leaves the side of the attacker’s torso dangerously vulnerable. However, careful thrusts aimed at gaps between sword and armour were more effective, and as we’ve seen, thrusting blows are dangerous at any percentage of body fat. This aligns with Carter’s theory that sword tips were frequently blunted to minimise physical damage to the gladiator’s bodies.

Not all gladiator types were equipped with a scutum. The thraex, or Thracian, and the hoplomachus, loosely based on Greek hoplites, carried a smaller shield called a parmula. However, it does not follow that less protection from a smaller shield might induce their opponents to slash instead of thrust; both the thraex and hoplomachus compensated for their shield size with longer ocreae on both legs. They were also able to capitalise on the  greater agility a smaller shield allowed, so these fighters, despite their smaller shields, would have had reason to stay light on their feet and not bulk up. Similarly, the retiarius, or net-fighter, had no shield, no greaves and only a thick padding protection on his non-dominant arm. This was topped with a metal galerus, or shoulder guard, which was the only protection for his bare head. A retiarius, then, was the least defensively armed fighter. He would not want to be large and ungainly; his best defense was to be nimble. He fought against heavily armoured gladiators, usually secutores. ‘Secutor’ means ‘chaser,’ and their name proves that retiarii used speed and agility to their advantage, forcing the secutor to abandon the protection of his defensive stance and go on the offensive, whilst the net-man, armed with a long trident, could keep him at a safe distance. As artistic depictions prove, retiarii did not compensate for their lack of armour with fat, but with lithe bodies built for agility.
None of Junkelmann’s conclusions indicate that a gladiator would have benefitted in any way from a thicker-than-normal layer of subcutaneous fat. A gladiator’s armature was his primary protection, and a second layer of defence, such as obesity, would be superfluous at best and a hindrance at worst. Of course, if a fighter let his guard down or dropped his shield, he left himself vulnerable to a slashing blow. When this happened, the gladius as a chopping sword was simply too effective to reliably produce mild yet ‘theatrical’ injuries, no matter the physique of your opponent. Particularly when we remember that most gladiators wore vision-restricting helmets, defending oneself whilst dealing blows that were deliberately not very serious but looked spectacular would be really difficult to achieve.

Galen, as physician to Pergamene gladiators, witnessed the damage a slashing injury could make first hand, noting that most physicians found these cuts difficult to treat and that they involved long periods of recovery. In one example, a blow to the upper thigh had sliced deep into muscle (Scarborough 2013: 102). Against a gladius, thick subcutaneous fat is simply no substitute for a shield or armour. 


Artistic depictions

There are hundreds of ancient images of gladiators. We have mosaics, frescoes, figurines, graffiti, reliefs and piles of terracotta lamps. These works of art are found across the empire and were popular for centuries. Livius.org has catalogued an excellent selection here: https://www.livius.org/tag/gladiator/. There is evidence for some diversity in physiques amongst these fighters; most are broad and heavily muscled, but the level of muscle definition varies. A few, particularly amongst the ‘lightweight’ gladiatorial types such as the retiarii and hoplomachi tend to be more slender. It is rare to find an ancient image of a bulky gladiator. Not all gladiators are depicted as ‘ripped,’ with six packs, but it is hardly appropriate to describe these men as ‘fat.’ 

Conclusion

The idea that gladiators deliberately ate to bulk up does not align with the evidence that we have for gladiatorial combat. Their diet, unlike bulky Greek contact athletes, does not seem to have included a lot of meat and bread. Instead, it seems that the little archaeological evidence we have supports the literary sources, which together indicate that a gladiator’s diet was largely vegetarian with cheap, humble ingredients and designed to provide the energy needed to train and compete. We also know that gladiatorial training was arduous and highly specialised, it is unlikely that such regular physical exertion allowed these fighters to grow obese on such a diet. Finally, careful experimentation through recreation of actual combat confirms that fights were not frenzied slashing as depicted in movies, a fighting style that would not have impressed Roman fans. Rather, gladiatorial combat was characterised by defensive stances, tactical use of the shield (which movies omit,) and economical, carefully judged thrusts and lunges. Because of this fighting style and the lethality of gladiatorial weapons to any physique, obesity was unlikely to have been a priority. Some gladiators may have naturally carried some extra weight, but it was by no means deliberate, nor the norm. Just because a six pack isn't visible (think: most WWE heavyweights, the front row of a rugby team, etc etc) doesn't mean that an athlete is classified as obese. A healthy layer of fat provides the energy required to endure prolonged periods of hard physical work, meaning that the (modern, Hollywood/social media) concept of the ripped ideal athletic physique is probably unsuited to an ancient professional gladiator,  but we simply do not have enough evidence or reason to believe that gladiators were obese on purpose.

Bibliography

D.S. Potter, 'Entertainers in the Roman Empire' in: D.S. Potter & D.J.Mattingly, Life, Death and Entertainment in the Roman Empire (1999) p.256-326
F. Kanz & K .Grossschmidt 'Dying in the Arena: the Osseous Evidence from Ephesian Gladiators' in: T. Wilmott, Roman Amphitheatres and Spectacula, a 21st-Century Perspective (2009) p.211-222
J. Scarborough, 'Galen and the Gladiators,' Episteme, vol.5 (1971), p.98-111; revised with an 'Epilogue' (2013)
M. Carter, 'Gladiatorial Combat with 'Sharp' Weapons' : Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik, vol.155 (2006), p. 161-175
M. Junkelmann, Das Spiel mit dem Tod: So kämpften Roms Gladiatoren (2000)
M.C. Bishop, The Gladius: The Roman Short Sword (2016)
R. Dunkle, Gladiators: Violence and Spectacle in Ancient Rome (2008)


Picture
A lot of Romans found gladiators to be really, really sexy. Other Romans could not wrap their heads around it. Take Juvenal's 6th Satire, a poem about rich ladies and their shocking and inappropriate boyfriends/side pieces. He talks about Eppia, a senator's wife. He says she ran away from her husband, home and children to follow a troupe of gladiators to Alexandria where she shacks up with a gladiator named Sergius. Juvenal doesn't get the appeal; Sergius has cauliflower ears, a bent nose, scars, missing teeth and an eye that constantly weeps a little. Sergius is a walking wreck as far as Juvenal is concerned, yet he says that because Sergius is a gladiator, he might as well be Hyacinthus in Eppia's eyes. Juvenal can't see the sex appeal, but a lot of women certainly could/can - in the darkest recesses of female sexuality, there is often a deep desire for a musclebound bad boy who, whilst perhaps not a witty raconteur, can nevertheless find plenty of things to keep a lady from getting bored. It's a satire, so Eppia is likely a fictional character Juvenal concocted to illustrate his concerns over who women were lusting over.

Sexy gladiators even pop up in the archaeological record. One of my favourite objects that illustrates the concept perfectly is actually from London. A terracotta lamp was found in Southwark, on the south bank of the river Thames. For centuries, Southwark had a (well deserved) reputation of being a bit seedy and sordid - you could get drunk, watch a cock fight or bear baiting, go to a Shakespeare play full of innuendoes, then catch venereal disease from a sex worker, all within a five minute walk. From the looks of it, this reputation is even older than we thought. Let's take a closer look...

There are two gladiators in the throes of a 'combat'. This one looks a little more fun than the traditional stabby variety, certainly from a participatory perspective. The arena is swapped for the bedroom. The gladiator on top is a woman, and she has the smaller shield and curved blade (sica) of a thraex. She's clearly in a dominant position, and has her opponent right where she wants him. She's in control and looks really happy about it. Her opponent, on the other hand, is pinned down and prone on the bed, with minimal options for retaliatory manouevres. He's dropped his weapon and shield on the bedroom floor - the straight blade of the gladius and the large, rectangular scutum shield lines up with him being a murmillo, the typical  opponent of the thraex.

So who is winning? At first glance, the thraex clearly has the upper hand in this bout. At the same time, the Romans weren't the first or last people to spot the psychological paralell between sword and phallus, and this murmillo seems to have penetrated his opponent with his secondary weapon. She seems quite pleased about this, so perhaps we can call it a tie?
It’s been a few days since I watched Gladiator II, during which time the dopamine has firmly worn off and I’ve been wrapped up in writing and presented a paper on Those About to Die and comparing it to other cases of spectacle on screen. Gladiator II has been percolating in my brain, and I’ve been able to think about it a little more deeply, now that the popcorn has run out. There's a joke that graces my feed every now and again that pokes fun at the idea that if you enjoy music, literature or art, studying it at university will soon put paid to that. There's some truth in that, because we're taught to forensically analyse, instead of passively consume. That's certainly true of me and Gladiator. I first watched it as a teenager obsessed with the ancient Mediterranean, who never once dreamt that I'd one day get to properly dedicate myself to its study. My mouth hung open the entire time, at the score, at the aerial shots of a reconstructed city I hadn't yet seen the ruins of, to the sheer scale of it.

I thought about this a lot when the trailer for Gladiator II came out. In the intervening years, I've very recently earned two degrees and extensively researched and written about gladiators. 24 years ago I was a wide-eyed teen, and now I'm much older and (currently) write about gladiators full time. I've dipped my toes deep into the pool of classical reception, and have written about the movie from that standpoint. I enjoy classical reception - I love to see snippets of antiquity where I least expect them, and I love to see how the ancient world is woven into modern media. I had a little trepidation with Gladiator II, though. In writing about the movie, (because who wouldn't get a kick out of writing about one of their favourite movies?) I was obliged to read about the movie. And so I did, holing myself up in the library reading articles and chapters upon articles and chapters. I was instantly reminded of why I quit my English Lit A-level after a couple of months - deep engagement in a piece of media, really grappling with it and dissecting it to examine the entrails can really change how you think and feel about that media. I have now read all of these clever observations about fascist aesthetics, mixed constitutions and the agrarian ideals of the American dream. Worse, I'd just finished and submitted a lengthy study of usages of the film's script and imagery by various far right groups and individuals, using the (ample, as I see now) fuel provided in the movie to fan the flames of their shitty ideology. My beloved Gladiator has become 300.

I watched the sequel on the day it was released with anticipation and not a little trepidation. Nostalgia and nerves, all in one. And it was... fine. The kind of fine I'll watch again, probably. It's adequate. The aerial shots still made me shiver, but the niggles I now have about the original were all present and correct.  This time I was bracing myself for more elements that would give me an uncomfortable feeling, when once upon a time they whooshed over my naive little head. To quote Sondheim: "isn't it nice to know a lot!? And a little bit not..." And you can't voice your anxiety on social media, because then you're the curmudgeon who doesn't realise that it's just a movie. Few things are ever just anything, but Gladiator II is apparently firmly just a movie. Except it isn't to me, because this is my subject now. I read about gladiators because I'm fascinated by them, and because I believe they're misrepresented by both Hollywood and, to be frank, various eminent scholars.  One thing I quickly came to realise is that the arena is a place of far more nuance than we give it credit for, which is missing from what much of the public gets access to. I'm putting my money where my mouth is on this, and trying to put out as much objective, nuanced content as I can.

Working Classicists, always keen to produce content for enthusiasts of every level, asked me to provide a quick companion to Gladiator II, because within 24 hours of release they were already getting questions about what was real. I was delighted to oblige, because I genuinely love writing for people who are new to learning about the ancient world in general. There is no such thing as a basic or stupid question, and it may be a hangover from my tour guide/museum days but I just get such a kick out of teaching someone something cool that might be pretty new to them. And, to be frank, it can be a useful skill that takes time to hone. So I sat down and got writing. Quickly, I realised I needed to add a disclaimer: I'm not here to preach, and I'm not here to whinge. I'm just here to sort fact from fantasy. You can read what I came up with here, if you like. But people don’t like feeling lectured, so a waiver had to go in. There's the constant retort that 'everyone knows it's not accurate' so there's no point presenting our research to explain what is real and what isn't. I have two questions about this POV:

  • When exactly are we supposed to share what we know with the public? Or are we admitting that we don't want them sniffing around, wanting to learn stuff without chucking thousands of pounds a year at an institution? Antiquity is not usually a part of the zeitgeist for very long, beyond the men who Think About Rome Every Day; I'd have thought striking whilst the iron was hot would be ideal regarding public engagement, but what do I know?
  • Do you not have enthusiasm enough for your own niche that you want to talk about it? Share it? If the right moment came and the planets aligned, would you not want to talk about it? 

I do wonder if there isn't an element of hierarchy going on, regarding sub-topics. This goes for the public as well as for academics. Adaptations of Homer are something that can be acceptably cross examined because Homer is literature, and high-brow literature at that. See also: Shakespeare's history plays. Novels fill this same category if they are hardbacks with that snazzy gilt font on the jacket. They are deemed sophisticated and as such can be critiqued freely.

Gladiators are pulpy in comparison, I suppose. They're a base entertainment, with elements that fascinate the darkest corners of our minds in a way that isn't discussed in polite society. Because gladiation can be so easily dismissed as crude, it's all too tempting to not have those conversations that attempt to contextualise them. Hence why they lack nuance in material the public sees. You'll forgive me, then, if I was left a little cold by Gladiator II, which was distinctly lacking in the nuance department.

There’s also an assumption from the public that academics don’t read ‘high brow’ texts critically, instead placing them on high pedestals as works of art to be revered with a fervent devotion, like a sacred text. This couldn’t be further from the truth, with various philologists, historians and archaeologists scrutinising every last consonant and vowel. Whilst we’re at it, a good theologian will tell you the same about actual sacred texts, except they can name wars that have happened over translations and interpretations of those texts. Scrutiny at a deep level is literally in the job description, so if historians talk about the ancient world all day, you can’t expect them to clam up when they see it interpreted in the modern world.

I suppose any historian latches on to a person, event or  institution because it fascinates them, because it is interesting. I now know of a dozen gladiatorial stories - fragments of stories, really, that would make great movies. I've been trained to search for context clues and to read between lines, and much of my job is to construct a plausible frame around the little evidence I have. Plausible. There's the keyword. What is possible? What is probable? The joy of gladiators is that they provide such riveting narratives without the help of a screenwriter. The drama is built-in, and needs no fuss or fanciness to augment it. The first movie trod a fine, quite wobbly line between plausibility and dubiousness, but the reason I think it still holds up so well (and why I'll never quit it) is that it has a faint whiff of authenticity about it. This is probably due in an unknowable part to Kathleen Coleman, the professor hired to be their historical consultant. Most of Coleman's hard work did not make the final cut, and after seeing the movie Coleman asked that her name be taken off of the credits. Coleman wrote a chapter about her experience, entitled "The Pedant Goes to Hollywood: The Role of the Academic Consultant." You can read it here, with no paywall. If it wasn't in an edited volume dedicated to the movie, you'd barely guess which movie is being discussed. I read it as a scathing indictment on working with this particular set of writers, producers and Ridley Scott - that same Scott who told historians to shut the fuck up when they pointed out some inaccuracies in Napoleon. Her frustration is palpable, because she knows it could have been better. 

It sounds, from this chapter and literally everything I have ever read about Ridley Scott, that he doesn’t like being questioned, or critiqued. After Dan Snow made a TikTok about Napoleon, Ridley had a tantrum and banned historians from coming anywhere near the Gladiator II set. It shows. One may even say that what he seems to want is unquestioning deference and adoration, like the deference and adoration people think academics reserve for Homer, and I doubt that he got that from Coleman. Good for her. What he seems to want is a starstruck yes-man who will let a dozen egregious things slide because they’re just happy to be there. Without wishing to sound mean, it looks like that’s exactly what Ridley found for this sequel, leading to the consultant being invited to fact check the film he consulted on and being forced to admit it’s chockablock with anachronisms. But, he says, Ridley is an artist. This is not a documentary. The insinuation here is that it’s Ridley’s genius vision, and that authenticity couldn’t enhance the finished product if it tried.
It's giving Annie Edison in the 'Redux' episode.

For this to be true, the movie had better be good. When Ridley proudly boasted that he refused to consult historians for Napoleon, (even though he seems to have,) was the genius vision enough to make a great movie? Hell no, do you know anyone who liked it? Let’s be really honest, when it comes to historical epics, Ridley has more misses than hits. To be charitable, perhaps this movie would have been better if Ridley hadn’t thrown his toys out of his pram and allowed a historian (any historian) on set. It’s no secret that consultants work more efficiently if they’re permitted on the property.

Gladiator II is OK. It’s mid, it’s meh. It’s mediocre. The combat and aerial shots are still pretty great. The plot, pacing, dialogue and characterisations are all inferior to the original. CGI baboons look worse than a real tiger did 24 years ago. It’s not particularly immersive. Certain scenes require the suspension of disbelief, which is easier to do with speculative fiction rather than historical drama. Viewers are happier to accept the implausibility if the protagonist has superpowers, or is on an alien planet, or has a pet dragon. Suspension of disbelief is the Achilles’ Heel of immersive ‘historical drama,’ though; as plausibility fades in the face of improbability. 

When improbable elements start being sprinkled in, plausible elements start to masquerade as improbable. Even Charlotte Higgins, an ancient historian, commented that the Colosseum wouldn’t have been flooded in her list of anachronisms, despite very convincing evidence that it absolutely was. Herein lies the rub: ancient spectacle doesn’t need implausible anachronisms - it is perfectly capable of still being a spectacle on its own merit. The same is true of the rest of Roman history, generally. 

Let’s go through a few alternatives that would have vastly improved the the vibe of the film:

  • Ben Paites has already made the excellent suggestion that the ridiculous café set was jarring, and that the scene would have felt much more natural and, well, Roman, if it had been set in a bathhouse. The idea of shakedowns and shady deals being done whilst naked and marinating in human soup is so weird to modern sensibilities, it would have made for a wonderful scene, adding an extra layer to an otherwise thin scene. The power imbalance could have had so much more impact if, for instance, only one of the interlocutors was nude. Or if Thrax was forced to awkwardly stand whilst Macrinus manipulated him mid-massage. Hell, they could have even thrown in an easter egg along the lines of ‘Caracalla is a lunatic, but he sure can build a frigidarium.’ A meh scene becomes elevated, simply because it would feel a bit more authentic.
 
  • I rolled my eyes at the newspapers. Ridley famously doesn’t listen to historians, preferring to draw from existing examples of Rome on screen. Why, then, did he not realise how great HBO’s Rome newsreader was? Ian McNeice, stood on a stool, reading the headlines with oratorical flair and gestures. It looked right, because it felt authentic and plausible. You can still get an authentic feel without reading a book, if you nick the bits from films and shows that manage it fairly well.
 
  • The rhino - the rhino was fine! We know of Romans watching rhinos in the Colosseum. Commodus even fought one (if you count shooting arrows at it from the safety of a platform ‘fighting…’) Making the rhino slightly larger than reality is fine! Jurassic Park does it with dinosaurs and it’s fine! What Jurassic Park doesn’t do is saddle the triceratops, and if it did it would rightly jump the shark. Note that the Jurassic World films are a little bit rubbish because they flirt with exactly this kind of idea. Of course you can’t ride a wild rhino. But here is where a history book or consultant could have made an improvement: swap in that rhino for a war elephant with mounted archers. We know that ancient Persians, Hellenistic states and Carthaginians had them, we know that Romans soiled themselves when first confronted with them. Keep the rhino, unmounted, and have it replace those laughable baboons. Then have Lucius face an elephant. I have been killed by war elephants in Assassin’s Creed Origins enough times to know that such a battle is a) tough b) looks incredible. You’re welcome.
 
  • Those About to Die beat Gladiator II both to the flooded arena and Cinecittà Studios punch. Theirs was an elaborate execution with senators dressed as Egyptians, being preyed upon by crocodiles. It felt more authentic, and not because Romans didn’t know what sharks were, they did (and claiming otherwise without checking beforehand may result in public embarrassment.) Those About to Die has its own issues with authenticity and plausibility, but not in this case. I’m not saying the sharks are a terrible choice, necessarily, just that the crocodiles are a better one.

Of course, there is a particular demographic that will forgive mutant baboons if they can find what they loved about the first film, and I suspect that there is an agenda behind why they don’t want minor anachronisms deflated lest the whole facade starts to crumble; Scott provides a very alluring version of Rome that appeals to wonky ideas of what it was like. 

  • Lucilla is the only woman to speak in the original. She’s smarter than any man she shares a room with, and she knows it. She was supposed to die in the original script, because the historical Lucilla predeceased Commodus. Her death was going to reinvigorate Maximus’ quest for revenge. She was only saved when a female Executive Producer insisted that half the women in the movie (2) should survive, and it should probably be the only one with lines. In the original, Lucilla never succeeds as a politician but she is maternal, and that makes her weak. She’s punished for her cleverness and her quiet defiance with emotional and implied physical abuse. Lucilla is still the smartest person in any room, but in a room where everyone is just that little bit dimmer than before. Her maternal instincts have proven to be her undoing again. If you’re the type of person who likes to see clever women in manacles, psychologically tortured and then pretty soundly silenced, then this is the movie for you. I had supposed that in a movie featuring Severans, a Lucilla that had ahistorically survived was going to be the stand in for Geta and Caracalla’s mother, Julia Domna. Like Lucilla in the movie, Julia Domna was smart, and she held real power. She was the centre of a circle of philosophers and writers, and administration was delegated to her by her sons because she was so damn capable. Another missed trick; Julia Domna witnessed Caracalla order guards to kill his brother, holding Geta in her arms as he died. What a scene that would have made! Granted, it’s watching a woman suffer, but in an accurate way that’s far more believable than what happened to poor Lucilla.
  • This movie has a grand total of three women who speak! But the two who show some capability and equal skills and abilities as men (Lucilla and Lucius’s warrior wife) are the ones to die horrible deaths. Scott loves to see smart Roman women silenced. I suppose I should be grateful that Gladiator(s) doesn’t go down the Starz Spartacus and Those About to Die route of portraying elite women as nymphomaniac sociopaths, but the bar is low. Lucilla was the total opposite in fact, as quite the sexless matron. She’s over 40 now, and doesn’t do that kind of thing anymore. Having zero sexual chemistry with Pedro Pascal is quite the achievement.
  • Speaking of the brothers - I was horrified when I saw the casting announcements. For the uninitiated, Julia Domna was Syrian, and her husband Septimius Severus was from Leptis Magna (Libya.) Initially Caracalla was going to be played by Barry Keoghan, and when he dropped out to lick jizz out of plugholes, they found the only actor paler than him to step in: Fred Hechinger. Geta is similarly lily white. Their whiteness is emphasised by thick white pan stick and burgundy rouge, which makes them look like hungover clowns. Commodus was pale, yes, with those eyes that looked bruised as if he hadn’t slept in a month. If anything, the first movie toned down Commodus’ adventures in the Colosseum, preferring to signpost him as the bad guy with SS Praetorian guards and incestuous tendencies. So far, so corrupt. But the Severan brothers weren’t anything like Commodus. Geta seemed to be a good, level headed administrator who was cursed to hate his brother. The movie Caracalla is a small, syphilis ridden sybarite who has a retinue of twinks and a pet monkey he makes consul - we get it Ridley, you really wanted Caligula. He's easily manipulated and clearly incapable of critical thought. Physically, he's small and weak, and dresses effeminately. This is a world away from battle-hardened soldier of the sources. The sources give plenty of cruelty for a writer to play with, but he seems to have been manly. Hechinger’s Caracalla is a cheap stereotype of the debauched queer man, behold, he bends gender norms and as such is a terrible guy. Only Lucius can be truly masculine, because Lucius is the Good Guy. Also - a missed opportunity. Caracalla was assassinated whilst mid-pee at a roadside. That’s the kind of death that a show like Game of Thrones would jump on with glee (and arguably a crossbow bolt whilst pooping may be a direct homage.)  
  • So why does the portrayal of the brothers matter? Their father is depicted in art as having a dark skin tone, theirs slightly less so. They weren't pale, they didn't make their faces whiter to emphasise a whiteness they didn't have. They had darker skin and ruled the Roman empire. Accurate representation would have been valuable to help dismantle the concept of Roman power being paper white. It's a misconception that fuels the idea of western civilisation and white supremacy. It's tricky, because the whitewashing doesn't tie in with presenting the brothers as good rulers or even good people, but most people only engage with antiquity through Hollywood. The problem now is that audiences will equate Severans with pasty dissipation, not a darker skinned dynasty who achieved a lot. I'm not suggesting a portrayal that shows Caracalla as a saint, because he certainly wasn't one, but he also wasn't a witless puppet. It would have been interesting to explore why he was hated by Roman historians but so adored by his troops, or to explore why he could be so brutal without explaining it away with advanced venereal disease. It would have been amazing to see the immediate ramifications of Caracalla's Edict, for example. By whitewashing the Severans and eradicating their actual deeds, Ridley is racialising them in a manner that Romans never did. How on Earth can someone produce such a thinly drawn picture of a man like Caracalla? It takes deliberate effort to get it so wrong.
  • I’ll paraphrase what I’ve said previously about Macrinus:  I worry about Denzel Washington's arc. By making him an ex-slave, and a Black one at that, who holds such a grudge against his white former masters that he schemes to bring them all tumbling down… Macrinus (as great as Denzel is) will be seen by some as the Angry Black Man. With the original having the fan base it does (white supremacists) - making this choice after BLM is adding fuel to the fire. Showing a Black former slave having such a violent vendetta against his former masters... It just made me feel uncomfortable. Macrinus isn't given a chance to elaborate on the trauma he clearly carries, and IMO his anger is 100% justified - I'm not sure everyone in the audience will agree with me there. He doesn’t want reparations, he wants revenge. He wants ultimate power and will kill those in power to do so, but we’re shown that he plans to be even worse than the STD-ridden spoilt white boys. An angry Black man (in this movie) should never be trusted, and never allowed to threaten the (unrealistic) utopia that the Good white guy is working towards. Ridley Scott has all the grace of a sledgehammer when it comes to race so I’d love to know his reasons for casting Washington specifically - he’s too willing to whitewash Severans with lesser known (and frankly second tier) actors to get away with using the star power excuse this time. 

I feel comfortable saying this because I am nowhere near the rank of public historian that would ever be brought to his attention. But one does wonder why Scott is so determined to make historical dramas with so little history in them. Proud of it, in fact. Does he enjoy trolling historians? Does he revel in our frustration? Which secondary school history teacher hurt you, Ridley? He definitely seems to enjoy baiting us like a matador with a bull, or Lucius with that rhino.  Why not go down the fantasy route, if so determined to make stuff up? Ah, but that still involves a deep engagement with scholarship if you want it to be any good. GRR Martin loved reading about the Wars of the Roses so much he created Westeros, a place that has dragons and ice zombies but is still a richly textured world only conceivable to a mind that has spent hours in libraries, been to the museums and sites, and talked to historians. Tolkien similarly created a universe and a narrative that felt fantastical, yet grounded in a profound understanding of myth and its reception. They both feel more historical than Gladiator II because that sheer amount of work can’t help but saturate every element of storytelling. It becomes real because it feels real. Even with Smaug and Shelob and hobbits. You want authenticity? You have to do the work. You want to still have fun with the unbelievable? Make it speculative fiction and go nuts. But don’t refuse to do the homework, make a movie that’s just fine and then complain that people who study and work on this as their vocation have something to say about it. That reeks of a fragile ego. Authenticity makes films better.

To wit: Russell Crowe may be popular as Maximus, but the CHOKEHOLD that Master and Commander has on fans is astounding, myself included. That’s a film that sandwiches minutiae between broadsides, and offers a complex portrait of male comradeship, friendship and masculinity. There’s more. Saving Private Ryan has a quasi-fictional plot, but the attention to detail and respect for the history took it (and its iconic opening scenes) from good to great. Band of Brothers is a masterpiece. Wolf Hall is just about as immersive as television can get, down to using candles as a sole source of light at night. My husband wouldn’t forgive me if I didn’t mention Sharpe at some point (though I’m a Hornblower girl at heart.) None of these examples are 100% accurate but there’s a reason historians quibble less with them. Films that play fast and loose by cutting corners don’t age well - see Braveheart, Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, Troy and of course, 300. Authentic details aren’t pedantry, they’re an expression of passion, and an addition that elevates the vibe of any movie. Authentic details are also a demonstration of care, so it is no coincidence that you find authenticity paired with thoughtful dialogue, a meticulously paced plot, and layered character studies. 
Compare Coleman's experiences to those of Rebecca Usherwood as consultant on the Domina series. Usherwood speaks of a collaborative process with mutual enthusiasm and desire for authenticity. Usherwood's efforts paid off, too, because the series is commendable. That’s why I’m not a fan of Ridley's  inauthenticity. It betrays a lackadaisical attitude towards a sequel that didn’t need to exist that does a disservice to the original and to us as the audience. It screams ‘cash grab.’ It screams ‘resting on laurels.’ It practically bellows ‘half arsed.’ For a movie that features so many unabashed callbacks to the original, it manages to disservice both the characters of the original and its fans. The original managed to present itself as a serious movie: pretending this sequel isn’t deeply silly is risible. Even Russell Crowe has problems with it!! Tell him to chill out, I dare you. 

In many ways, the movie is not my Circus Maximus and not my schlocky CGI monkeys, but you’re never going to convince me that this is just a movie. If it really were just a movie, historians wouldn’t be reprimanded by the creatives nor the fans. I wonder if Maximus stans will cease complaining about perceived pedantry when they too realise that the movie they’ve waited 24 years for is just OK. When they too start compiling a list of things that could have been done better. Or, has Ridley consistently depicted a Rome that they prefer to the historical one? By questioning the veracity of rhinos and flooded arenas, we challenge the wider depiction of Ridley’s Rome and reveal the sinister elements of his narrative that get missed in a superficial viewing. The deeper analysis from scholars will come after the wave of arena based fact checking, and it won't be neutral. That's the criticism Ridley should throw a tantrum over, and I really hope it sticks in his craw.
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With new excavations in Pompeii, there are exciting finds being shared every few weeks. Pompeii stirs the public imagination like nothing else in antiquity (whether we like it or not) and each new find is assured its place in the news cycle. Pompeii, to the public at least, encapsulates Rome. All of it. The entire empire, over centuries. That's a forgivable misconception, and the clickbait articles that follow each announcement are devoid of any contextualisation. 

That's predictably true this week; excavations have found graffitied doodles of gladiators on a Pompeiian wall, close to the ground and with a simplistic style that can only the be work of little children. They're charcoal doodles, and it's all too easy to picture the kids scribbling on the walls when Mum wasn't looking, in what must have been only a few days or even hours before Vesuvius erupted. Archaeologists of Pompeii have written up a mini-report of the excavations of that particular building, if you fancy a read (in Italian.) Or, if you like, you can watch Gabriel Zuchtriegel (the current Director of the archaeological site) show you the drawings, complete with English subs:

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 The children drawing these gladiatorial fights and arena hunts are young, perhaps five to seven, and the archaeologists, together with Italian psychologists, have decided that the kids are drawing what they've witnessed. That would mean they're not copying gladiatorial graffiti by adults, they're not looking at the professionally painted depictions of gladiators in Pompeiian art, or the gladiators carved in relief on Pompeiian tombs. This is evidence, they say, that children were spectating.

I'm on the fence about this. After all, Pompeii was full of gladiatorial art. Let's look at some, because why not? (All photos but the first are my own.)

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This is a fresco from a bar in Regio V, and was excavated in 2019. The match is over, and the gladiator on the right, bleeding profusely and utterly exhausted, is extending a finger to signal that he gives in. His fate (the nature of which depends on the stakes of the match) will be decided by the person presenting the Games. He could be spared and live to fight another day, or he could be killed. Click the photo to go to the official press announcement about this discovery.
This is a close up photo I took of a Pompeiian fresco now kept in the Archaeological Museum in Naples. It was found in the House of Anius Anicetus (I.3.23.) The whole fresco shows the Pompeii ampthitheatre in the middle of a famous riot between local fans and spectators who'd travelled from Nuceria twenty years before the eruption. The fans behaved so badly Pompeii was slapped with a ban on spectacles!
Thank goodness Francesco Morelli painted a copy of this fresco, found near the Porta Nola in Pompeii, when it was discovered in 1813; the fresco is long gone and this painting is all we have as evidence for it.
It wasn't just kids doodling gladiators - an adult Pompeiian scratched this one into a plastered wall.
This little terracotta murmillo was found at Pompeii; cheap little souvenirs of gladiators have been found all over the empire. Lamps were also wildly popular. This, I suppose, is the equivalent of an action figure!
This massive relief was part of the funerary monument of a Pompeiian and was found in the necropolis outside of the Stabian Gate in 1854. It was in a prominent position to be viewed by passers by, and depicts an entire day of Games - the 'pompa' procession at the beginning, the beast hunts, and the gladiators. Archaeologists now think it was part of the monument to Gnaeus Alleius Nigidius Maius, a prominent local politician. The base of the monument, (if the two do indeed belong together,) was finally excavated in 2017, and the inscription records that this politican paid for Games, earning himself some goodwill with voters and constituents.
My point is, Pompeiian children had lots of opportunities to see art of all kinds that depicted gladiators. So does their doodling mean that they were spectating, or just surrounded by images of a cultural mainstay? 
It's open to interpretation, but it's an exciting window into Roman childhood all the same. You can almost picture them playing at gladiators in the atrium, using sticks for swords. 

The archaeologists seem pretty convinced that the kids must have attended the amphitheatre, and that conviction has definitely convinced the press. Let's look at a few headlines and quotes:

"The youths’ vivid drawings illustrate the degree of violence to which they were casually exposed on a regular basis." - Smithsonian

"Today we have warnings on certain films and video games that are thought to be too adult for children to watch, but at the time that Pompeii was buried by the volcanic eruption, children would have seen gory things like gladiators fighting to the death!" - CBBC Newsround

"Newly discovered Pompeii graffiti reveals horrifying secret about brutal and bloody gladiator fights 2,000 years ago." - The Sun

"Shocking Pompeii Graffiti Exposes Brutal Truths of Ancient Gladiator Battles!" - Central Recorder

Comments on social media are less formal, with accusations of Romans being bad parents due to an insatiable bloodlust. Zuchtriegel rightly points out that modern children are exposed to violence too, but that hasn't stopped the accusations that Romans were particularly brutal in comparison. Naturally I have a few thoughts on this, and I aim not to defend Romans nor condone their behaviours - I merely seek to understand.

Firstly - as a parent and aunt, I have witnessed some weird drawings by young children. Some have some pretty heavy themes, and I vaguely remember drawing some pretty horrifying stuff myself. Children pick up on the culture around them and are exposed to darker aspects of life whether vicariously through entertainment, or from lived experience. They're negotiating discovering the birds and the bees, death, and everything in between and they're doing so with or without adult permission or encouragement, though I will suggest that shielding children merely stokes fascination. In the Roman world, such subjects were dealt with without the reticence of our modern, western societies, and were likely more conspicuous in day to day life. Most Pompeiian children would have been exposed to death early - mothers dying in childbirth, high infant mortality rates, and gnarly illnesses for which cures were not yet known. Again, I'm not saying that an amphitheatre was the ideal place to introduce children to the concept of mortality, but I am going to point out that Romans had to face death far more often than we do, which we can take for granted. 

Secondly - beware of generalisations. This does not demonstrate that children watching gladiators was common even in Pompeii, let alone the whole empire throughout its entire existence - this demonstrates that one or two children may have attended at one point. We all know that one kid with a lax parent who had access to stuff we didn't even know existed and would never be allowed near ourselves. One parent =/= Roman parenting.

Thirdly - and most importantly - modern revulsion at children watching bloodsports comes from a long tradition of modern moralising; we're so busy being vocally disgusted by bloodsports that we don't spend the time seeking to understand them. It's easier, and lazier, to declare that Romans were bloodthirsty savages. That they exposed their children to guts and gore merely cements this idea in our imagination. But if we look deeper into why gladiators existed, it's a different picture altogether. 

The arena wasn't a conveyor belt of mindless violence; it was a teaching tool. Gladiators existed to teach Romans how to be Roman. Think of it as ideology by stealth - 'edutainment.' In the amphitheatre, gladiators taught Romans several things:
  • Martial excellence. Rome loved a bit of war, and needed a huge amount of soldiers to feed its habit. In the early days, they were citizen soldiers who'd leave their farms and workshops to pick up a sword and go on campaign for a couple of months each year. Before long, the army was a bona fide force of professional soldiers. Gladiators were a how-to display of all the skills that came in handy on a battlefield, and a reminder to all Romans of exactly how a small town in Latium had turned into a massive empire. Gladiators were even used to train troops on occasion, teaching them tactics and tricks that gave them an edge over enemies. If you think that the American military obsession is OTT, they ain't got nothing on Rome. And think about it - to keep that pro-war sentiment going and recruitment high, you need to do a couple of things - one is to make war look like a grand adventure, and to instill that thirst for glory in the kids you want to fight your wars for you. I had a full set of Playmobil knights when I was a kid, my brother had Action Men, you may have had a G.I. Joe, Pixar included that bucket of soldier figurines in the Toy Story movies. My daughter has quite the armoury of foam medieval weapons purchased from various castle giftshops... for Romans, gladiators made combat look cool.
  • Masculinity. We'd call this toxic masculinity now and it definitely is to our (incredibly recent) modern sensibilities, but then again we'd be considered pansies by most Romans. Gladiators also functioned as a demonstration of expected gender roles. There were a couple of personality traits that Romans wanted to instil in little boys and grown men alike, and the term virtus was an umbrella term for all of them: courage in the face of danger, self discipline, martial prowess, et cetera. Virtus wasn't just applicable to battlefields but to all facets of life, and gladiators were the live demonstration of putting virtus into practice. They were brave, they were skilled, they were tough. Most importantly, as a lot of them were enslaved, prisoners of war or criminals, they provided a convenient low bar for which spectators. If the scum of the earth could demonstrate such excellence inside the arena, well then ordinary Romans had no excuse not to be even more excellent outside of it.
  • Domination. Gladiators in the early days were styled and named after 'barbarian' enemies of Rome. One type was the Samnite, was a facsimile of a defeated foe indigenous to the region Pompeii was in. Pompeii wasn't a Roman town, it was taken over after the Romans pummelled the bejeezus out of it in a massive siege. Samnites were phased out to avoid offence, and became a new type of gladiator with an innocuous name. However, the point still stands, particularly when we remember that gladiators were largely purchased or recruited by the lowest of society, that gladiators were a demonstration that Rome always, always won. Not only did it enjoy reminding itself of its own military and imperial domination, it liked reminding those it dominated of their place. Rome filled its arenas with men and animals from lands as far as it could reach, and had final say over their fates. The moral of the story? Don't question Rome's authority, they're large and in charge and they will absolutely squash you like an ant. Pompeii's amphitheatre was built only a decade after that siege, a visual reminder and demonstration of Roman imperialism.  

For centuries, people have been and are still instilling nonsense into their young boys. For us, this is a pretty shocking example of it, but I can think of far worse examples from more recent history, like the Hitler Youth, or watching young Israeli children gleefully destroying aid shipments on lorries bound for the Gaza strip. These two examples are extreme, but they're examples that hopefully prompt us to try and understand the ideology that produced them rather than merely shake our heads. Nazis and Zionists aren't 'mindlessly' bloodthirsty, and most of them consider themselves civilised and morally sound. The Romans did too. 

Perhaps knowing a little more about the ideology of the arena makes you more horrified that these children in Pompeii might have been watching real combats from the age of five. But when you think about it, children of all ages absorb or are explicitly taught some questionable stuff in every era, and that's how prejudice seeps into every new generation. Again, I'm not saying this is a good thing, but it's something that we need to delve deeper into in order to understand.

Perhaps, rather than clutching our pearls at the 'barbarity' of the past, we can use this to pause for a moment and consider what we're instilling into our own children in the 21st century, explicitly or otherwise. What messages are we giving them about our own concepts of gender roles? What are the virtues we urge them to foster? How are we answering the questions they are asking about life and death? What forms of entertainment do we deem appropriate? What levels of violence and dehumanisation do we deem socially acceptable? Who are we teaching our children to trust, whose authority to unquestionably accept? And this one is particularly relevant right now: whose deaths are we saying it is OK to witness or even cause? 


wly discovered Pompeii graffiti reveals horrifying secret about brutal and bloody gladiator fights 2,000 years ago






 Note: this post was originally published on 10/05/2023

​This past weekend I have once again not been able to attend Les Grands Jeux Romains at Nîmes in France. I'm not happy about it. Attending for the first time six years ago set me on a course of specialising in spectacle, and my BA diss would not exist without it. So, if I cannot go, allow me to reminisce and ruminate a little.

The amphitheatre at Nîmes is wonderfully intact, and the annual event each spring puts on a show to give a wonderful sense of what it must have been like to attend the games of antiquity. It starts with a pompa, the procession of participants, and includes a chariot race (with 3 bigae, two horse chariots - a small taste of the Circus Maximus races with 12 four horse chariots,) gladiator fights and a mock battle representing a historical event (this year was the exploits of Vercingetorix.) There are even, on occasion, mock naumachiae with moving warships! I've managed to visit 3 times, and the attention to detail never fails to astound. I know that for one-on-one fights, the very front rows are the best place to sit. You can see the whites of the retiarius' eyes. For larger events like the big set pieces and chariot races, it's actually the 'cheap seats' in the higher levels that are best, that were reserved for women, the poor and the enslaved. I know this because I've been experimenting with sitting in different sections each time I attend, and I've come to the conclusion that the larger the display, the further back one should sit. The front rows are just too close for the eye to take in the entire arena, and much of the 'scenes' are lost.

I had the games at Nîmes in mind when I started reading in earnest about the seating plan of the Colosseum, which was not randomly assigned in antiquity. The cavea, or seating area, was split into three horizontal bands:
  • The ima cavea - 'ima' means lowest, and this level of seating was closest to the arena. Think the 'Splash Zone' at Seaworld, if the splashes were a little more sanguine.
  • The media cavea - 'media' - think medium - it's the middle band of seating.
  • The summa cavea - 'summa' means upper or highest. In modern theatres these seats are known as 'The Gods' because of the breathtakingly high perpective they give. At the very top was a colonnade called the summum maenianum in ligneis, where ladies sat, shielded from the urban poor.
Each of these horizontal bands, or maeniana, were usually separated from each other by a walkway (praecinctio) backed by a podium wall, or maybe a high balustrade. Each of the levels were cut into distinct vertical wedges called cunei, like a pizza. Stairways from the seating to the warren of passages below made for convenient gaps, but richer amphitheatres also had wonderfully decorated balustrades between cunei. It's not so easy to see at what's left of the Colosseum, but it's still clear at Nîmes that trying to switch seats from summa to ima without using several staircases or jumping over a wall is deliberately difficult. Where each person sat mattered a great deal, and each seat had societal structuring as a built in feature.

The seven front rows of the ima cavea were called the podium and was reserved for senators, priests, military heroes and foreign dignitaries. This most prestigious seating was carefully organised by rank. Senators of patrician status with consuls among their ancestors were given better seats away from senators with plebeian ancestry. 14 wedges separated the uppermost crust from the homines novi.

The top of the lowest band had 12 rows split into 16 wedges, and were allocated to men of equestrian rank. Equestrian rank had strata of its own, and Bomgardner makes a suggestion that one might chart highs and lows of a knight's career by noting his changing seat allocation over time. Tacitus suggests that older knights were sat in lower rows whilst the eager young upstarts had higher seats.

The middle bank of seating had 19 rows in 16 wedges. Male citizens would be seated here if they had enough wealth to wear a toga. The subdivisions here were categorised by profession, wealth, and age. The summa cavea was for plebs, slaves, poor immigrants and women. Whilst individual seats may not have been as closely allocated here as below, separation was still the order of the day. At the very top, there were boxes for rich women. All women were relegated to the top, but god forbid a senator's wife got within sniffing distance of a tanner's wife. It's been suggested that the punishing hike to the top (if you've ever visited an amphitheatre, you'll know how steep those staircases are!) and a poor view were a subtle deterrent, for respectable women weren't really encouraged to enjoy bloodsports. Sat at the top, a roman matron wouldn't be able to see a gladiator closely enough to lust over them. Besides, after 220 steps to your seat, who has the energy to fantasise about eloping with a warrior?

And so the spectators weren't a faceless, anonymous mass as they are in movies. Spectators were sat according to a myriad of social factors, and most of them were sat with their peers, in close(ish) proximity to those ahead and behind them on the social ladder. Potentially, one could look at a seat by tier (maenianum,) wedge (cuneus,) and row (gradus,) and be able to tell you a dizzying amount of information about who was to sit there. Your seat was your identity. It's the kind of info Zuckerberg would kill for, and a very public indication of your place in society. Half of the amphitheatre experience was seeing, and half on being seen. This element of spectacle is lacking at the recreated shows in Nîmes, where your seat is chosen by the size of your budget. The modern spectators are now a homogenous mass, save for the performers dressed as Hadrian and his retinue in the VIP imperial box called the pulvinar.

So much of Les Grands Jeux Romains gives glimpses into the past: the collective gasps when a chariot 'crashes' and its charioteer/stuntman is dragged behind the wreckage, the visceral roar of thousands of people calling for mercy or (simulated) death, the charismatic pull of a particularly talented performer... On one particularly windy day, the MVP turned out to be the sparsor, whose job is was to sprinkle water on the arena sand to prevent the dust being swept up into the faces of the crowd. I'd read about these employees only in the context of chariot racing, depicted carrying their bowls and jugs of water in various circus mosaics, but as far as I was aware their main role was to use the water to cool down the horses (Varnica 2015). Having experienced the arena sand blown into our faces even in the higher seats, I now understand how dampening the sand on windy days would have been crucial for spectator comfort, and sparsores must surely have been as valuable at amphitheatres as they were at race tracks. Even watching the labyrinthine corridors and stairways beneath the seating fill up as spectators file in, watching how seamlessly the building design allows them to get to their seats quickly without getting stuck or lost. Experiencing a day at the amphitheatre as a spectator has given me a new appreciation of what it means to be a spectator.

That doesn't mean that I can't ponder what's lost in translation. I wrote here about why the games were the consumption of state ideology by stealth, and here about what I consider to be the nearest modern equivalent. Les Grands Jeux Romains is not, for me, that equivalent regarding ideology. At Nîmes, particularly as a Brit who can pretty much only order a ham sandwich in French, I did not feel like part of a group. I was able to chat with my family, but I do wonder what it would be like to watch the entertainments sat in a peer group as the Romans would have done. As Edmonson puts it, the seating promoted social cohesion despite being strictly hierarchical (1996), but, particularly as a foreigner, I was unable to see the cavea as a 'map' of the city's populace as it would have been in antiquity. In the Colosseum, the lowest two tiers, the ima and media, would have been a thick white belt around the arena, populated with men in togas. The senators at the bottom added a dash of colour with the broad purple band that marked their rank, whilst the summa was a hodgepodge of workaday tunics in various muted colours topped with a rainbow of ladies' gowns. The overwhelming prevalence of black and navy raincoats at Nîmes doesn't exactly serve to separate us by rank according to power (albeit nominal) and prestige.

Gunderson wrote something that I think about often, and I'll paraphrase here: Rome was a tiny speck surrounded by her empire. The difference in size threatened to be overwhelming, both geographically and in terms of people. Rome was surrounded by territories she had conquered, some more docile than others, and beyond them are territories she had yet to conquer, always in danger of antagonising her borders. Her gaze must necessarily be outward. In the Colosseum, all of this is reversed. The arena was home to the lowliest, the conquered, and the enslaved. The arena, large as it is from a gladiator's perspective, is tiny in comparison to the enormous cavea. The Colosseum is where Rome gazed in, where Rome surrounded and outnumbered the empire.
This is to consider the Colosseum as the world inverted: the cavea as Rome and the empire, and the arena as Beyond. I wonder how the striped stratigraphy of the cavea appeared to the men standing on the sand. Proximity to aristocracy, to (again, pretty nominal) power. For the have-a-go plebs that signed away what little social status they had to perform as gladiators in a risky bid for much-needed financial rewards, their friends and former peers sat high above the band of white respectability. The white band of wealth separated plebs and performers whose lived experiences of hardship meant that they had much in common.The gladiator represented, and were dressed akin to the historical foes of Rome, barbarian warriors who required subjugation or elimination. The white band represented the upper echelon of the Imperial heap, the conquerors. It didn't really matter which gladiator won; the real winners were the men in crisp, white togas.

Nîmes doesn't have that element of ruthless imperialism as state ideology built in, and really it's a blessing that we've excised the contempt previously so rigidly held and openly demonstrated for the poorer in society, women and particularly the performers, for whom applause was always tempered with abhorrence. The ideology of the arena was borne of collective anxiety and promoted virtues that now should have no place in a functioning society

As experimental archaeology goes, Les Grands Jeux Romains creates plenty to think about without engaging with the complicated ideological nature of ancient spectacle. For now, scratching the surface is more than satisfactory. The 21st century cavea is no longer Rome, but the arena is still Beyond, only now distinction is temporal. The cavea is now a modern society fascinated with a past that ordinarily surrounds us, and, once a year, celebrating it in the centre of the sand. All this pondering in this post proves that spectacle still provokes thought. Whilst I am spurred to consider what it took to be Roman, I'm also thinking about what it means to be considering that from my position as a historian of antiquity living in a modern society. Save me a seat for next year...


Further reading, inc scholars mentioned above:
Bomgardner, The Story of the Roman Amphitheatre, 2002
Edmondson, 'Dynamic Arenas: Gladiatorial Presentations in the City of Rome and the Construction of Roman Society During the Early Empire' 1996
Fagan, The Lure of the Arena, 2011
Gunderson, 'Ideology of the Arena' 1996 available at JSTOR - tweet me for access!
Newlands, 'Urban Pastoral: The Seventh "Eclogue" of Calpurnius Siculus', 1987
Welch, The Roman Amphitheatre, 2007

Author

Alexandra Sills