The Lives and Contests of the Gladiators
One form of entertainment in the Roman world was gladiatorial
contests. In these, the Roman citizens would go to watch gladiators
fight, often to the death. Today, these contests seem brutal and
cruel, but at the time it was very popular and widely accepted. The
Roman people would quite happily judge over whether a man would live
or die. Why were the contests so entertaining that they would cost a
man his life over it.
There were different types of gladiators and different types of
contests to keep the citizens interested. The gladiators were
traditionally slaves or convicts and therefore very low in the social
hierarchy. We also know that they were low down in the hierarchy
because they were sold and given between masters, for example one
advertisement said: "Twenty pairs of gladiators, given by Lucretius
Satrius Valens, priest of Nero, and ten pairs of gladiators will
fight". However, despite this apparent lack of social standing,
gladiators could become very popular and famous and could eventually
be freed.
Gladiator is taken from the term "gladius", which means sword. They
were originally used during funeral services for dead heroes. Fights
between them would be held during the funeral to celebrate the hero.
This tradition was taken from the Etruscans. Although today we would
see such a custom as cruel, it was in fact made less so than it
originally was. Festus wrote - "it was the custom to sacrifice
prisoners on the tombs of valorous warriors; when the cruelty of this
custom became evident, it was decided to make gladiators fight before
the tomb. It seems strange to modern people that somebody would want
to have people die at their funeral, but then it was seen as
"appeasing the spirit" of the dead man, by honouring them with as big
a thing as the life of a man. The Romans would not have seen the loss
of a gladiator as too much anyway, as the slaves or convicts that
became gladiators were generally considered unimportant anyway.
"Nike." Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, 6th Edition 1. Academic Search Premier, EBSCOhost (accessed November 6, 2009).
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