Posts: 29
Threads: 12
Joined: Jan 2007
Reputation:
0
With the way that we obsess over sports records and statistics, even in the pre-internet era, I'm sometimes confounded as to why we don't see any gladiator records, i.e. "Verus the Secutor improved his record to 47 victories and no defeats on this day in 759 AUC".
I can't imagine the Romans were any less obsessed about gladiators than we are about football (both kinds), boxing, or MMA. Any theories as to why we can't determine who the best gladiators were?
Real name: Stephen Renico
Posts: 1,189
Threads: 33
Joined: Apr 2005
Reputation:
2
Gladiators were immensely popular with the masses of the Empire, but the literary classes considered them unworthy as a subject. In fact, they considered them downright unclean. Rome had no popular press. There may have been a subculture devoted to the subject of gladiator records, but if so it was oral and never written down. At least, no such works have survived. Among writers of high rank only Martial wrote much about gladiators, and this was mainly sucking up to the Emperor, the giver of the games, from whom he sought patronage.
Pecunia non olet
Posts: 4,218
Threads: 176
Joined: Mar 2003
Reputation:
171
There are such records on the inscriptions of charioteers, I believe. Possibly gladiators too (retired ones!), but the closest we've got, I think, are the graffiti inscriptions left by gladiators themselves at Pompeii.
'Florus' records that he was victorious in Nuceria on July 28, and again on August 15 in the arena of Herculaneum. But the most famous ones describe the arena and amorous exploits of Celadus and Crescens:
Celadus the Thracian, three times victor and three times crowned, adored by young girls!
Celadus the Thracian makes the girls gasp!
Crescens the Retiarius, lord of the girls!
Crescens the Retiarius, doctor to nighttime girls, morning girls, and all the rest!
Not exactly what you were after, but a 'popular culture' alternative perhaps! We might imagine this sort of thing also scrawled on the walls around the amphitheatre, by the gladiators' fans...
Nathan Ross
Posts: 735
Threads: 39
Joined: Jun 2005
Reputation:
1
A source for the record of a gladiator might be the aforementioned graffiti in Pompeii written either by the gladiator himself or by fans who kept record of their favorite fighter.
Another source are the epitaphs on gravestones where the gladiators mentioned proudly their records, very often marked by symbols such as victory crowns and/or palm branches.
Posts: 3,616
Threads: 130
Joined: Apr 2004
Reputation:
52
Quote:Possibly gladiators too (retired ones!) ...
Indeed there are. My favourite is Dessau (ILS) 5115, the gravestone of Urbicus the secutor, qui pugnavit XIII vixsit annis XXII ("who fought 13 times and lived 22 years"), because it ends with this advice: moneo ut quis quem vicerit occidat ("I advise that you should kill whomever you have conquered"). Must've been a sore point in the Urbicus household! :o
Posts: 1,470
Threads: 253
Joined: Sep 2007
Reputation:
3
A wonder there are no surviving written admonishments like "Watch your daughters and wives lest they sneak out at night to the Gladiators barracks.
Posts: 180
Threads: 24
Joined: Aug 2012
Reputation:
0
It could be that gladitorial records were destroyed in the several sacks of Rome and/or when Constantine banned the games.
Tyler
Undergrad student majoring in Social Studies Education with a specialty in world history.
"conare levissimus videri, hostes enimfortasse instrumentis indigeant"
(Try to look unimportant-the enemy might be low on ammunition).
Posts: 29
Threads: 12
Joined: Jan 2007
Reputation:
0
I was thinking the same thing, but stranger things have survived the ages since Rome.
I'm getting the impression that gladiatorial combat was something like minor league baseball or hockey: decentralized, without a large umbrella organization like the UFC, NHL, or MLB. Perhaps if it had gone national (or... imperial?) there would have been better records, and we could know who the Rocky Marciano, Walter Payton, or Anderson Silva of the gladiatorial games would have been.
Real name: Stephen Renico
Posts: 4,318
Threads: 127
Joined: Jan 2004
Reputation:
6
Quote:IPerhaps if it had gone national (or... imperial?)
Well, there was the Imperial Gladiator school in Ravenna. And there also became imperial rights to give a munera later on.
Posts: 180
Threads: 24
Joined: Aug 2012
Reputation:
0
We also know that the emperor jealously guarded the right to be the only the one to hold munus in Rome. I believe, in a way, all ludi were under the imperial umbrella-in the sensible way that any government would want to supervise the status of large numbers of privately owned men training for heavy-duty combat.
Tyler
Undergrad student majoring in Social Studies Education with a specialty in world history.
"conare levissimus videri, hostes enimfortasse instrumentis indigeant"
(Try to look unimportant-the enemy might be low on ammunition).
Posts: 4,218
Threads: 176
Joined: Mar 2003
Reputation:
171
Quote:Perhaps if it had gone national (or... imperial?) there would have been better records
There surely were records - the three big gladiatorial schools in Rome and those in the provinces were imperial concerns, run by imperial procurators, and these men doubtless would have had offices full of records detailing all the fighters under their command.
But how would these records have survived? Of all the vast amount of documents (wax tablets, papyri, codices, letters, laws, potsherds etc) generated by the Roman empire over the centuries only tiny fragments survive today. Excepting chance finds (Vindolanda tablets, papyri from Egyptian rubbish dumps or mummy wrappings, etc), only those things thought valuable or significant by future generations were preserved. The full details of Scorax and his fifty victories (or whatever), however fascinating they might be to us, were apparently not so to the record-keepers of intervening centuries.
Nathan Ross
|