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Auctorati
It's a fallacy to think that all gladiators were condemned criminals, prisoners of war, or slaves bought for the purpose. There is a good amount of evidence to support the idea that many professional gladiators were free men who volunteered to participate in the games. In The Satyricon, Petronius suggested that Roman crowds preferred combat by free men over that of slaves. Certainly free citizens could and did become gladiators, despite the fact that to agree voluntarily to such conditions legally stripped them of all the social benefits of citizenship in the Roman world. It has been estimated that by the end of the Republic, about half of the gladiators were volunteers (auctorati), who sold themselves to lanistae for an agreed-upon period of time.
But why would a free man want to become a gladiator? When he took the gladiator’s oath ("to endure branding, chains, flogging, or death by the sword" - Petronius Satyricon, 117.5), he agreed to be treated as a slave and suffered the ultimate social disgrace (infamia). The reasons may have been many and varied.
Firstly in a society where a lower class citizen would seldom live beyond 30 and hunger, poverty and a life of constant struggle would have been the norm, becoming a gladiator might seem a glamorous alternative. He would not fight more than 2 or 3 times a year and would be ensured three square meals a day and good medical care. And if he was killed, he had a chance of dying with some dignity and glory.
Though low on the social scale, if a professional gladiator was good he could achieve the kind of public adulation and financial rewards that modern athletes enjoy today. A successful fighter might well emerge with a few months or occasionally a few years salary, when compared with a legionary, for just a single fight. Although the risks were high a successful gladiator might be able to only volunteer for four to five years, and then buy his freedom and still have enough money to live on for the rest of his life. When compared to the option of poverty and early death the arena may not have seemed such a bad option.
Another fallacy is that every gladiatorial bout usually ended in a death. This wasn't the case. A fight to the death was rare, at least in the early empire, because of humanitarian concerns and the expense to the editor (the person that had sponsored the games), who had to reimburse the lanista if a gladiator was killed in the arena. Gladiator troupes were run by entrepreneurs, and while a successful troupe could be highly lucrative, it was a very expensive investment. A high mortality rate was the last thing sponsors generally wanted (or could afford), and the discerning crowd was not interested in mere blood so much as good entertainment. If they got a terrific fight, they did not necessarily want to see the loser killed. They wanted to see him fight again. Instead of the bloodbath image given by Hollywood, the best guess is that the death rate may have been about one in six.
But the situation changed somewhat during the 3rd century along with the nature of the Games, and indeed of the Empire itself. Audiences became less concerned with the technical subtleties and the skill of trained professionals, and developed more of a taste for violent death. Gladiators of the later empire were more likely to be condemned criminals or prisoners of war than professional volunteers.
Recommended Reading
Possibly the two best books on gladiators I would recommend are Emperors and Gladiators by Thomas Wiedemann [Routledge 1995] and The Gladiators by Fik Meijer [Souvenir Press, 2004], both of which are well-researched and very readable. Not only do these authors correct Hollywood-style sadism-and-scandal generalities, but they are also objective enough to look at the whole phenomenon of the games without condemning them outright by modern standards of "ethical behaviour" - something even many eminent historians such as Michael Grant are prone to do. |
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