The Roman Gladiator
Public Perception
of Gladiators
In ancient Rome, gladiators could earn
the idolized status of a hero, like many modern athletes. Even
though a gladiator's social status was barely better than a slave,
many Roman citizens, knights, and even Roman emperors fought
in the gladiatorial arena because of their love of the bellicose
sport and their desire for adoration. The emperor Commodus boasted
that he himself had fought in over 1,000 gladiatorial duels.
The munerarius of gladiatorial games
gained popularity among Roman citizens and generated political
momentum in doing so. For instance, Julius Caesar pitted 320 ludi of gladiators against one another
in a wooden amphitheater constructed specifically for the event.
Though done under the auspices that the games were a munus for his dead father, Caesar was more than likely seeking political favor to assure his election as praetor.
The Romans seemed ambivalent to the violent
nature of the gladiatorial games and, though we may condemn them,
the games are not unlike modern professional sports like hockey,
rugby, and football. The gladiators were the heroes of their
time, especially during the years of peace under the Augustans
in the first and second centuries. Without war heroes, Roman
needed someone to idolized and this role fell to the gladiators.
There is evidence that Roman women especially idolized gladiators, sometimes to the dismay of their husbands. The mother of Commodus, Faustina, is said to have preferred the gladiator Martianus over her husband, Marcus Aurelius. Juvenal wrote about Eppia, a senator's wife, who is said to have thought so highly of gladiators that she preferred them to her children, country, sister, and husband. There is an inscription on a wall in Pompeii that says the Thracian gladiator Celadus was "suspirum et decus puellarum," literally "the sigh and glory of the girls." In other words, he was a heartthrob.
For a further discussion of the public
perception of Roman gladiators, see Prof. Roger Dunkle's "The Cultural Meaning of Gladiatorial Combat."
