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Gladiator tales
00:39:58
Guy de la Bédoyère shares some surprising stories from the history of gladiatorial games
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- [00:01]
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- [00:34]
Podcast Host
Welcome to the History Extra Podcast. Fascinating historical conversations from the makers of BBC History Magazine. How did gladiators supercharge the rise of Julius Caesar? What can we learn about arena fighters from the petrified remains at Pompeii? And why did gladiatorial bouts get banned there for a whole decade? Guy de la Bdoyer has written a feature for BBC History Magazine sharing some lesser known aspects of the history of gladiators. And as Gladiator 2 arrives in cinemas later this week, he shares some of these stories with Kev Lottchen for today's episode.
- [01:16]
Kev Lottchen
I think there's a common perception that gladiators and gladiatorial games are like a Roman phenomenon. But one thing I learned from your piece is the Romans borrowed it. I wonder if you tell us where they got it from and where Julius Caesar comes into this story.
- [01:30]
Guy de la Bdoyer
Okay, the gladiator story is very largely Roman, but the phenomenon, as you correctly say, goes back somewhat further. But let's just put it into a wider context. There isn't any tradition of this type of public entertainment in the ancient world. Before the Etruscans, an earlier group of people in Italy from whom the Romans got a lot of their ideas, the Greeks, for example, had all sorts of contests. They had the Olympic Games, they had various other, other games. If you go back to ancient Egypt, there's no tradition of public entertainment like this at all. But a lot of Etruscan traditions found their way into Roman society. One of those traditions was a strange form of, if you will, kind of human sacrifice that was acted out at funerals. You would have bouts between armed fighters at Etruscan funerals. And this is something that seems to have been absorbed into Roman tradition. And in Rome, with this seething, growing city, there's an appetite for public entertainment. There's an appetite for all sorts of things that are going to keep the people happy and quiet. And I'd just like to throw in here before we get sort of, you know, on our high horse about all of this. We've got the Gladiator 2 movie coming out shortly And I've looked at the trailers. It's full of horrendous amounts of violence. It looks completely real. I'm totally confident that exactly the same would happen today. If you started up live gladiator fights, you'd have no shortage of people lining up to go. There'd be lots of people outraged. But I can assure you there probably wouldn't be a single empty seat the first time round. And that's the horrendous truth. Now, with Rome there, early Rome, the city's growing, but by the 2nd 1st century BC, the power in Rome, the political power, is incredibly tense, with more and more ambitious people, and they are trying to make themselves popular.
- [03:27]
Kev Lottchen
So the Etruscans treated them very much as funerary rites. Whereas now we're moving into the Roman interpretation is becoming much more of a blood sport.
- [03:37]
Guy de la Bdoyer
It's completely correct. What happens is that Julius Caesar, now, Julius Caesar is a young and incredibly ambitious politician. This is a man who is prepared to borrow vast amounts of money. Let's just give you one simple anecdote about Julius Caesar. He said later he would rather be the head man in an Alpine village in Gaul than second in Rome. He was absolutely determined to be top dog. Now, in the year 65, his political career is taking off and Caesar knew that it really mattered, that he got as much popularity as possible. So what he does is he lays on 320 gladiators at his own expense, and it's money he's borrowed. And what he's banking on is that this is going to buy him a massive level of popularity. And this is in the process of gladiatorial games. The whole funerary right thing has just drifted into the past. Now it's sheer brazen entertainment and vote buying amongst Roman citizens. This is extremely extravagant. Much more importantly for Caesar, he's now got an armed bunch of thugs on his payroll in Rome. And during this period of time, that becomes an essential part of political violence. Rome in the late Republic is an incredibly violent place and politicians have armed gangs every time there was an election. That's what it was like in late Republican Rome. For Caesar, there is absolutely no compromising. He's determined to get to the top and he rides a wave of public popularity. And the whole point now is that Julius Caesar looked to everyone as if he was trying to make himself king of Rome. In the end, Caesar kind of rather overregued it. He went too far, it cost him his life, and that was the end of that. But it's his great nephew Octavian, of course, who becomes Augustus Caesar first emperor. And it's Augustus who establishes, well, cements you like, if you like, the tradition of the Roman emperor laying on public entertainment for the benefit of the masses on an unprecedented level, using all the resources at his disposal to put on hundreds, if not thousands, of these displays and to start the construction and provision of, and that this is important of permanent installations in order to lay on these entertainments. And let's not forget that Pompeii, that very famous city, already had the first stone amphitheater in Italy, which was built in the early 1st century BC, before Caesar even began his career. Rome's not going to get one for another 160 years. Not a permanent one, but they had.
- [06:22]
Kev Lottchen
Temporary installations where there gladiatorial games in Pompeii, before Caesar kind of brought them into Rome.
- [06:29]
Guy de la Bdoyer
There must have been gladiatorial games in Rome going on in the first century bc, because it's manifestly obvious that that is what it was built for, what their amphitheatre was built for. They didn't really have a word for it at the time. It's called the place of the spectacles. So it's not just gladiatorial bouts, but it's also animal fights. The thing about Pompeii is that most of the written evidence for gladiatorial bouts, for the impresarios who laid it on, not surprisingly, belong to the last few years before the city's destruction in 79, because that's what survives earlier advertisements. Earlier graffiti would have just been erased or covered up by later ones over that period of time. But it was built by Marcus Porcius and Quinctius Valgus. Those are a couple of magistrates in Pompeii just after Pompeii becomes a Roman colony around that time. And they clearly know that by sinking their own money into erecting that building, they are going to be buying popularity and status for their families. So you can see it's already integral. And in fact, the mere installation of that amphitheatre at that date suggests that already the Pompeians would have been accustomed to those activities. Formerly, they'd probably taken place in the Forum. They were in public, open spaces. The big change is building dedicated arenas for them to be laid on.
- [07:50]
Kev Lottchen
We're going to talk a little more about Pompeii in a moment. In terms of the gladiators themselves. Who becomes a gladiator?
- [07:57]
Guy de la Bdoyer
Gladiators are drawn from all walks of life, although the vast majority of them are prisoners, prisoners of war. People who had no choice but to go into that. I mean, they would have been selected for that. They might have been prepared to go along with it as prisoners because there was always the chance that they might survive and even earn their freedom. It's clear that some people who had no other choice might have gone into it. And, you know, one thing that we do know is that it goes all the way up to some emperors who voluntarily go into it, because there's something actually surprisingly glamorous about it. But is it surprising? Look at how important sports people are today. There's a huge amount of glamour attracted to all of this. And in the Roman world, where they don't have our hang ups about violence, they're not bothered about violence being a bad thing. As far as they're concerned, violence is just part of life. They live in a. Their lives are bloody and short. The distance, the gap from everyday life to the violence of the arena is nothing like as great as it would be today. But one of the unpalatable realities about human beings is that human beings actually get off on violence and the glamour part of it. You can see that from the graffiti in Pompeii where gladiators are written up as being the girl's heartthrob. You know, they get all the girls. And famously at Pompeii, we don't know the background to this exactly, but the gladiatorial barracks in Pompeii, when they were excavated, there were the bodies of a couple of gladiators in there and also an upper class woman who had been to visit them, no doubt just for a casual social visit, or maybe she was just seeking refuge. But, you know, there's no question about the fact that it was a very potent way to conduct your career. I mean, obviously an incredibly dangerous one. There was a very high likelihood that you'd be severely injured or killed. And that is evident from the cemeteries of bodies that had been identified as those as gladiators. But, you know, somehow living on the edge, it's perhaps for some of them, thrilling, invigorating, and for the rest of the population, a certain amount of envy and excitement. It's titillating. And that is why I'm sure if we had it today, there'd be a portion of the population who'd be only too happy to turn up and watch it.
- [10:25]
Kev Lottchen
You mentioned cemeteries there. What have the cemeteries been able to tell us about gladiators?
- [10:32]
Guy de la Bdoyer
One of the cemeteries that's been excavated is at a place called Griffiel Terrace in York. And there's about 80 bodies there and 60 of them certainly bore enough evidence to suggest that these are all adult males. They bear signs of considerable injuries. And this shows you that the people who were working as gladiators aren't necessarily going to be killed. Killed in about. But they are. Well, they will probably will be eventually. That's how most of their careers are going to come to an end. But along the way, they are going to incur very serious injuries in one way or another. This isn't bullets, this is blades and tridents. So, you know, there's a lot of blood and a lot of damage and despite the protection that they wore. So there's a whole kind of medical structure to go with this, to patch these men up, and that's how they're going to make their way through their lives. But the danger is, that's part of the frisson of it, you know, that's. That's it. As I said earlier, it's exciting.
- [11:29]
Kev Lottchen
Something I learned, and through your piece and you just alluded to that is the kind of like the medical structure behind it, which isn't something that really does get portrayed very much. Could you tell us a little bit.
- [11:38]
Guy de la Bdoyer
About that for a start? Gladiatorial bodies, believe it or not, were regarded by some medical practitioners as a perfect means of being able to look at anatomical details, so they could do dissections on dead gladiators. But also the injuries would provide a great deal of evidence for the internal workings of a human body. There's a chap called Gaius Futius Phylagirus. Now he's a doctor or an instructor of the gladiators. Now he's partly to do with training, but he may well also have had some involvement in the physical welfare. One of my favorite stories comes from the Roman poet Martial, who is quite sure clear how this chap's career has developed. But he seems to have started off as an ophthalmicus, which is somebody who treated eye conditions. But anyway, this chapter who goes unnamed, rather annoyingly, his career had obviously gone wrong because he ends up as an oplamarchus, which is a type of gladiator, and that's Marshall having a pun on ophthalmicus and opus on the basis that a chap who used to be an eye doctor, and an incompetent one at that, poking their eyes out, is now actually poking their eyes out as a gladiator in the arena. So we have an example there of somebody who's advanced for a very strange career progression. I can't really imagine a doctor today or an optician thinking, I'm fed up with testing people's eyes or looking for eye infections. I think I'm going to go and become a gladiator and spear people to death in the arena. But that's what this chap seems to have done.
- [13:05]
Kev Lottchen
It's quite a midlife crisis.
- [13:08]
Guy de la Bdoyer
Well, yes, you know, perhaps he had no choice, but he may have banked on the fact that he could become, if he was successful, although apparently Marshall says he wasn't, he could have made a huge amount of money and retired on it. And, you know, some of them did. So the lucky few became the sporting superstars of their era.
- [13:25]
Kev Lottchen
We've come a long way from our first story, but to recap, gladiatorial games borrowed from Etruscans, moved away from funeral rights, Julius Caesar popularizes it, and finally, Augustus cements them as these kind of major events. For our second story, I'd like to take us to Pompeii, which we mentioned a couple of times already. Gladiatorial games, as far as I understood them at least, were a way of controlling the mob, rather than perhaps inciting one. Could you perhaps tell us what's going on here?
- [13:58]
Guy de la Bdoyer
It's the year 59 AD, during the reign of the Emperor Nero, who is still a relatively young emperor. Pompeii has had a gladiatorial arena now for well over 150 years. It's an integral part of everyday Pompeian society. And we know from the graffiti in the town that there were regular gladiat gladiatorial bouts laid on here. These are things that the local magistrates would have invested their own money. You were obliged as a local magistrate, any magistrate, to put your own money into these events because it was a sort of noblesse oblige. But it's also the way that you bought votes, the way you bought status for your family, and it was expected. In this particular case, it's not quite clear what's happened. Somebody called Lavinius Regulus, who was a dissolute Roman senator from Rome, he is somebody who lays on a gladiatorial event. Now, there's a more complicated backdrop to this. Pompeii is full of all sorts of commercial guilds, local trade organizations, if you will. It's sort of a cross between Masonic outfits and trade unions. So whatever kind of business you were in, you would probably belong to a trade organization. They are extremely influential in local politics. Some of these are legal, these outfits, some of them are illegal. So Pompeii has its gladiatorial event. The local people turn up, thousands of them, to watch this. There's all sorts of holidays and events in the Roman calendar when these people turn up and they are joined by some supporters from the neighboring city of Newkyria. And like all self respecting neighboring towns and cities, they hated each other's guts. And that starts to be manifested through the teams of gladiators, just as they are through teams of football supporters. So it starts off with the Pompeians chucking verbal insults at the new Curians and other insults the other way. Before you know it, knives have been pulled. And then a hideous and spectacular riot breaks out. Let's not forget the Romans didn't have an everyday police force, so there aren't a bunch of burly coppers standing around the arena ready to weigh in before everything gets out of control. It does indeed get totally out of control. Lots of the new Kyrians are killed or very severely injured. The whole thing is a catastrophic disaster. Some of the injured people have to be taken to Rome. That draws the Senate's attention to this disaster and the Emperor's. And the result is that Pompeii is banned from having any more gladiatorial bouts. For a whole 10 years now they are allowed to have animal fights and athletic contests and that's what the local politicians have to resort to. So this shameful incident is recorded by the Roman historian Tacitus. And in one of the houses of Pompeii, incredibly, there is a painting of the riot taking place and you can see people in the arena, the various rival supporters laying into each other with knives and swords. So the violence has spilled out from the arena into the mob, which is a reminder of just how whizzed up the crowd was. They are going there in the first instant, they're filled with excitement. They're going to see lots of people dying, they're going to see blood, they're very excited. It doesn't take much to whip them up in this incident. So there we are, that's the celebrated Pompeii riot and it takes place 20 years before the eruption of Vesuvius destroys the city.
- [17:37]
Kev Lottchen
That's incredible, isn't it? I love that analogy you gave about linking it to kind of sports teams. I feel like this point is kind of implicit, but could you just really hammer home for us, like how big a deal is it to like Pompeian society, complete political society, not being able to stage games?
- [17:55]
Guy de la Bdoyer
It would be like banning the Premier League for 10 years in ancient Rome. There is no alternative. You know, they haven't got cinemas to go to, they haven't got ready access, the books and downloadable things. Public entertainment is the state's responsibility, or in a local city, it's the local government's responsibility. And if they don't lay it on, if they don't provide it, they risk far more everyday violence. It's a way of concentrating and focusing people's energies and activities. However, as I've just explained, in Pompeii, with that riot, it can get completely out of control, just as it has done for us. But it also cuts a swathe right through the whole political structure of a town like Pompeii, because that is how magistrates earned their popularity, it's how they competed with one another. It's not the only thing they do. They hand out free bread, there's all sorts of various favours. I might point out that Pompeii is also as corrupt as hell. It is riven with corruption in local politics. So, you know, they're not at all averse to sending out molds of their supporters to trash their rival, you know, daub all sorts of insulting slogans over their political rivals, houses, you know, it's all kind of a fever pitch. And the gladiators, they're just an integral part of that. And if you say, you know, guy, you're talking nonsense. It can't have been that important. You know, you only have to look at the extent of the graffiti in Pompeii. There are scratch drawings of gladiators in full sway, fighting on the walls in certain houses. And I love this one. This is Celadus the Thracian, and it says suspirium puelarum. Suspirium means gasp, loss of breath. Puelarum is of the girls. So Calladus the Thracian actually causes, if you like it, in colloquial. Colloquial English, Caladus the Thracian causes all the girls to lose their breath. They almost asphyxiated with excitement at Collada's the Thracian. And there's also Cresens Puperarum Dominus. Now, puparum is very pejorative term and I'm sorry to use it, it's the Latin equivalent of popsies or dolly birds. So crescents puparum Dominus crescents is the lord of the dolly birds. So, you know, I think you get the picture. That's what it was like in Pompeii. And these graffiti belonged to the last few years before the city's destruction, you would have found them all over the city every year. Before that, you would have found them all over the streets of Rome. It is simply the case that obviously Rome has had a much more dynamic history and they are not legible or visible today.
- [20:32]
Kev Lottchen
So we picked this particular example of Pompeii. But is the kind of the sanction of banning games ever used elsewhere in the empire? Is this a very isolated incident?
- [20:43]
Guy de la Bdoyer
It can't have been an isolated incident, but the Pompeii one is the only one we really know about explicitly where we've got detail of it. I think one would have to recognize that by the 4th century AD, the whole habit of gladiatorial bouts is beginning to diminish. The emperors are almost all Christians at that date. And Britain, which has a number of amphitheatres, it's quite interesting to note that many of them seem to fall into disuse. So that's an indication that it's not quite as popular as it was before. And I think in Rome, it's not until the early 6th century, I think, that it finally phases out. And then the Colosseum, the most famous amphitheater in the Roman world, dedicated in the year 80 during the reign of Titus. In fact, just a year after Pompeii was destroyed, that just becomes disused and eventually a medieval quarry. Luckily for us, not entirely. Quite a large part of the Colosseum survives today.
- [21:42]
Kev Lottchen
Lucky indeed. One thing we talked around that I'd like to pick up on is who funds these events? We talked about Caesar doing it before he was Caesar, why he's done Adar Regulus in Pompeii. Is it a case that anyone with money can put on a show?
- [21:59]
Guy de la Bdoyer
Gladiatorial bouts cost a great deal of money because you've not only got to fund the event itself, you may actually even be funding the training of gladiators themselves. The source of that money can be loans or it can be family wealth. Let's be clear about Roman society. There are essentially three tiers. There's the free citizens. At the bottom there are the slaves, and in between there are the freed men. These are ex slaves. Now, amongst the citizens, there are the aristocratic elite. Now in Rome, that's the senators and the second tier of aristocracy called the equestrians. In a town like Pompeii, you've got the local magistrate families. They're not going to be senators usually, and they're not even going to be equestrians for the most part. They're going to be the Local, wealthy. If you live in a small country town in England, there's going to be a local council and businessmen and sort of things involved in that. The people who seek election onto local councils. In the Roman world, you can only have that sort of status if you've got enough money to fulfill a property qualification to reach a certain level in society. And you're simply not going to be able to get elected unless you've got the money to put on these public events. So it either comes from existing wealth in the family, it comes from. Or it comes from loans, or you're being bankrolled by freedmen. Now, some freedmen, they go into business because, believe it or not, the Roman aristocracy doesn't want to get its hands dirty by going into business. That's too grubby. What they do is they free some of their slaves and they help some of their slaves into businesses. And those businesses are run for the families that sort of indirectly for the families that have freed them. They expect the freedmen to support them politically. The freedmen, however, have another thing up their sleeves. The sons of a freedman could go into political office. They could vote, they could stand for office. So for a freedman has a vested interest of becoming embroiled in local politics, making himself prominent and influential. And when his son comes of age, what he may well do is dig deep to pay for gladiatorial bouts which will then buy their sons into political office. At Pompeii, outside one of the gates is the tomb of Gaius Festorius Priscus, and it's a tragic little story, really, because he died in his early 20s and his mother had to erect the grave for him. But if you look inside the grave, which is quite difficult to do so, but inside there are paintings. Well, I know, because I had a look, but that involved having to jump up on the side wall and looking over the top, and inside is a remarkable painting of a gladiatorial bout. Now, it is almost certainly the case that Festorius Priscus had put on gladiatorial bouts at family expense, but it's quite likely that his father had been a freedman, because we find a lot of these politicians in Pompeii had parents who had been freedmen, and they would have stumped up the readys in order to get their sons into local politics. That's not true of all of them. Some of them were. My famous is Gnaeus Elias Nigidius Maius, which a great rhyming name, but he was one of Pompey's most important impresarios, but even he may ultimately have come from freedmen origins.
- [25:21]
Kev Lottchen
I love that name.
- [25:22]
Guy de la Bdoyer
Gnaeus Elias Nigidius Myers. I used to get my classical civilization students to stand up and chant it in rhythm, and that's how they remembered it. Ganias Elias Nigidius Myers. There you are.
- [25:32]
Kev Lottchen
So we've talked about people who put on games all the way up to emperors, so I'd like to flip that into our third tale, which is the emperor in the arena, Commodus. Yes, I mean, we know about Commodus, I think, in popular culture from Gladiator 1, the original. But that's not what really happened, is it?
- [25:54]
Guy de la Bdoyer
If you watch the trailers for Gladiator and certainly the new Gladiator, it says it's based on historical personalities. And that's about the best you're going to get with any of these movies. Anyone who's seen the original Gladiator is going to remember Joaquin Phoenix as Commodus. Absolutely brilliant depiction of an utterly degenerate character, but it really barely scrapes the surface. Commodus came towards the end of the second century ad. Let's just put it into a broader historical context. At the end of the 1st century AD, the Emperor Domitian is killed. And what happens after that is we have a series of what are called the adoptive emperors. And this is a fortuitous sequence of events, because what essentially it amounts to is that these emperors don't have sons of their own, which means that they can't just hand it on to a son, they have to nominate a successor. And that means that they look for the best person for the job. But Marcus Aurelius, famously played by Richard Harris in the Gladiator movie, that's a fairly accurate part of it. The philosopher Emperor. It is just one of those remarkable things in history that he had the misfortune to have a son, in this case, Commodus, a living son, a son that survived. And Commodus therefore becomes Emperor. And the strange thing about Marcus Aurelius is that he was brilliantly intelligent, but because he was a Stoic philosopher, that meant accepting things as the way they are. So even though he knew his son was absolutely hopeless, nevertheless, that was the way things were. And so Commodus becomes Emperor. And what Commodus proves in power is that he is totally unsuited to the job. He was not remotely interested in ruling the Roman Empire. He was just there to have a laugh, really. He seconded all the work onto other officials. Most of whom were corrupt and degenerate themselves. And what he really wanted to do was to be an arena star. And so Commodus makes himself into a gladiator. Now, there are various stories, horrendous stories, but I think it's actually quite interesting. I'm looking here at Cassius Dio, who was the Roman historian and wrote about it, but he actually makes. That's the point. I was present myself and took part in everything seen, heard and spoken. I have thought proper to suppress none of the details, but to hand them down, trivial as they are, to the memory of those who shall live hereafter. He was there. He was a senator. He saw Commodus dress up as Mercury. He saw Commodus go into the arena, swaggering around. He saw Commodus accepting money from the gladiatorial fund to pay for his career. He was particularly keen on being one of the Secudores, as they were called. He held the shield in the right hand and the wooden sword in the other. That was for his practice once in the palace, but he undoubtedly took part in real bouts and killed quite a lot of men. He remembered one occasion because Commodus also went around merrily, chopping the heads off animals. He took part in animal hunts as well. He also rode chariots, I might point out, but he actually brings the head of an ostrich that he cut off all the way up to these senators, waves it in their face to show, I could do this to you, too. That's what I. You know, this is a young man really essentially totally out of control, and also concludes that he's some kind of reincarnation of Hercules. There's a bear hunt, for example, once, when the amphitheater has to be divided up into sections with walkways so that commodores can whiz up and down, killing the bears even more quickly. I mean, it's just grotesque display of total and sheer self indulgence. It's no great surprise to learn that Commodus got assassinated on the last day of the year 192. Now, those of you who watch Gladiator 1, and if you didn't know your Roman history, you might just have concluded, despite Maximus death, that everything was going to turn good. Well, it actually turned monumentally bad. And what follows is a catastrophic civil war over the year 193, with several emperors, first of all, Pertinax, who got killed for being too much of a disciplinarian, Didius Julianus, who had just bid for becoming Roman Emperor, and the praetorian Guard gave him the job. And then the ultimate victor of the civil war is Septimius Severus. And Septimius Severus comes to power. He's a pretty fierce emperor, he comes from North Africa and he has two sons called Caracalla and Gaeta. And as far as I can see from the gladiator, two trailers that I've seen, they appear to be the family backdrop to the new movie. In fact, Commodus is the first stage in the best part of a century of mostly short lived emperors, military emperors, coups and murders. So that whole wonderful era of the adoptive emperors is thoroughly forgotten about and abandoned in the wake of all this catastrophe.
- [30:46]
Kev Lottchen
Regarding Commodus gladiatorial career, is it fair to say that it's performative? He is Emperor, he is going to win. Or is he ever actually challenged for his life?
- [30:56]
Guy de la Bdoyer
The whole gladiatorial experience is as much about theater as it is about real killing. So that's why you've got the various different types of gladiators. The Mermelo for example, who's named after a type of fish because he's got a crest on his helmet. You've got the Thracian, you've got the retiarius, the Secutor, all these various different types, various different weapons that they use in the arena. The killing is absolutely real. When an emperor goes into the arena, of course no gladiator is going to be stupid enough to kill him. So there is clearly a certain amount of theatricality involved there. And of course he's always the victor, he's always going to do better than anybody else. This is a way of amplifying his superiority over everyone else. And because he thought he was a reincarnation of Hercules. And let's not forget Hercules was semi divine. And so it's a way of making yourself seem like you are above all others, you are a superman. And that's certainly what Commodus wanted to promote. And undoubtedly the various acolytes and hangers on around him were only too happy to flatter his vanity. Until of course it all got too much. And it is indeed a palace conspiracy that sees him being bumped off. So you know, it's a risky job being an insane despot.
- [32:17]
Kev Lottchen
I suppose the acid test is, did Commodus get any graffiti? Did he take anyone's breath away?
- [32:23]
Guy de la Bdoyer
We simply don't know what we know from Cassius Dio, the historian, this Roman senator, he's. That he was utterly disgusted. No wonder that he said that this was the age in which the Roman world turned to one of rust.
- [32:40]
Kev Lottchen
I think that's a good place to draw our stories to a close. Guy, there are six tales from the arena in this piece of Bieber's History Magazine. But if there was a seventh on your mind, what would it be?
- [32:50]
Guy de la Bdoyer
We're talking about this in Britain today, you and I. I'd just like to draw attention to the fact that we are in what was the province of Britannia, and Britain was no stranger to gladiatorial bouts. We've got gladiatorial arenas in Britain now, the 20th Legion, which was based at Chester and Chester, is at the northeast corner of Wales. One of the soldiers there was a centurion called Sextus Marcianus, and he seems to have had a vision because he put that on an inscription and some sort of vision, a hallucination or a dream. And he set up an altar in the amphitheater to the goddess of fate, who was called Nemesis. And it's obvious that he participated in gladiatorial bouts. So we've talked about various types of gladiators. This is a working centurion, but he's also being a gladiator on his afternoons off. But it's obviously pretty dangerous because he wanted to make sure that Fate, Nemesis was going to be on his side. It's just a little vignette of the life of gladiators here, right out in this remote northwestern part of the Roman Empire. Gladiators were everywhere, pretty much in the Roman world, an everyday thing for most people anywhere they lived. And so I like the sexless Marciana story because it just reminds us that it was here too. It's grisly, it's horrible, but it was just the way they lived.
- [34:20]
Podcast Host
That was Guy de la Bdoyer. You can read Guy's feature sharing more stories from gladiator history on our website, historyextra.com and gladiator2 is released in UK cinemas this Friday, 15th November. Thanks for listening. This podcast was produced by Jack Bateman.