Books on Gladiators

[Paullus Scipio]

Svenja,I think you are being a little ( well, a lot really! ) harsh on Michael Grant.
His book recounts the facts, and quotes his sources in detail, but rather than debate its merits, I'll let Michael himself reply!

Also he mixed it up if he was talking about gladiators or the condemned criminals who had to fight in the arena, for him it's all the same

" Most Gladiators, at Rome and elsewhere, were slaves; but in addition there were always some free men who became gladiators because they wanted to.The profession was a refuge for social outcasts. The poet Manilius early in the first century A.D., and Tertullian two centuries later, bear witness that desperate and violent men would take to this career; and so did adventurers made restless by the monotony of the pax romana.............Moreover, as we learn from numerous inscriptions, it was quite customary for retired gladiators to return to the profession. They must have been in considerable demand, since Tiberius had to pay 1000 gold pieces in order to persuade such veterans to make a single appearance."
He then goes on to discuss proportions of freedmen to slaves, from inscriptions, so I don't think he confuses gladiators and condemned criminals.

He tries to put our today's moral upon the Romans but does not make an attempt to see why the Roman thought so differently.

I don't think that is a fair criticism either, Svenja. He makes it clear that what sounds harsh to modern ears was not so to Romans,for example this when talking of one of Trajan's responses to a question from Pliny about what to do with convicts 'on parole' as it were....
"The Imperial voice of Rome which replied was, as usual, chilling, harshsounding, yet (given the state of contemporary society and thought) not unjust" ( my emphasis)

he detests gladiatorial games so much I'm wondering why he wrote about it at all.

.....I don't think this is true either...no-one would deny that the games were brutal and horrific, but they must be seen in the context of their time, and Grant does this, for example pointing out;
" As a consolation to those horrifed by the gladiators, it has been suggested that these orgies of cruelty were bound to produce the Christian Gospel of Love to counteract and in the end abolish them.....This is a somewhat two-edged argument....some of the most bloodthirsty holocausts in the arena were perpetrated by Constantine the Great, who made the Empire officially Christian...." - I'd call that fairly neutral.Perhaps it is because he uses the words 'grisly',' murderous' etc to describe combats in the arena that you think he detests the games? Well, they were, and if we should not be too horrified by them (after all, modern action films 'kill' dozens of people in spectacular and grisly ways in slow-motion, and graphic close-up - people's tastes in entertainment don't seem to have changed much, they still like to see blood and gore!!! :oops: :oops: )...then equally we should not 'romanticise' what was a brutal form of entertainment, Grant allows the people of the time to speak for themselves; Petronius' Echion the rag merchant; '...we're going to have a holiday with a three day show that's going to be the best ever - and not just a hack troupe of gladiators but freedmen for the most part..'
Cicero, not liking Caesar's 'modern ' games; "This type of display is apt to seem cruel and brutal to some eyes, and I incline to think it so as now conducted. ( i.e. by professional gladiators) But in the days when it was criminals who crossed swords in the death struggle, there could be no better schooling against pain and death"
...or Seneca, Nero's tutor, who was in the minority in seeing the games as immoral;
" Man is a thing sacred to mankind. But nowadays, he is killed in play, for fun! It was once a sin to teach him how to inflict wounds or receive them. But now he is led out naked and defenceless - and provides a sufficient show by his death" ( he is talking of the lunchtime entre-acts between animals in the morning, and gladiators in the afternoon).

By letting the people of the time speak, I think Grant does a good job of NOT inflicting modern morals on the reader.His work is the best on the subject I know of ( in English). 8)