Res Gestae 22: Augustus' Gladiatorial Shows

My upper level Latin students have been working through Augustus' Res Gestae (RG) and Suetonius Divus Augustus this fall. We've finished with the RG and started in on Suetonius with a quick read through his Divus Iulius in English translation. The development of gladiatorial spectacles from Julius Caesar to Augustus is quite important in the transformation of such spectacles from funerary displays to public entertainments. In 65 B.C.E. Caesar staged extravagant gladiatorial combats in honor of his father, who had died in 85 B.C.E.. Suetonius (Div. Iul. 10) reports that Caesar had brought so many gladiators to Rome causing his enemies to fear for their safety that a limit was imposed on the number of gladiators that could be used in a spectacle. Augustus himself imposed further limitations on the number of gladiators, but we see that he must have made exceptions to these limits when staging spectacles himself or on behalf of his heirs. Although limitations were being placed on the number of gladiators, the first permanent amphitheater was constructed in 29 B.C.E. by Statilius Taurus, one of Augustus' most successful generals.

 

In RG 22 Augustus recounts the entertainments he sponsored for the people of Rome, including gladiatorial combats (munus, sing./munera pl.), Greek style athletics, chariot races, and animal hunts. Approximately 10,000 gladiators fought in eight different show, an extremely high number per show no matter how the math is worked out in light of the restrictions that had been placed on the number of gladiators. Presumably Augustus staged at least some of his spectacles in the amphitheater of Statilius Taurus, but this passage suggests that there were other, temporary amphitheaters available as well. A.Cooley (Res Gestae Divi Augusti (2009) 203) identifies four of the five gladiatorial spectacles as follows:

• 16 B.C.E. as part of the rededication of the Temple of Quirinus.
• 12 B.C.E. as part of the Quinquatria, a festival in honor of the goddess Minerva, in the name of his grandsons Gaius and Lucius.
• 7 B.C.E. in memory of Agrippa, possibly in the name of Gaius and Lucius.
• 6 C.E. in memory of Drusus the Elder in the name of his grandsons Germanicus and Claudius.

Here's what Augustus has to say in Res Gestae 22:

"Three times I gave gladiatorial shows in my own name and five times in the name of my sons or grandsons; approximately 10,000 men fought in these shows. Twice I offered the people spectacles of athletes invited from every part of the empire in my own name and for a third time in the name of my grandson. Four times I celebrated games in my own name, twenty-three times more on behalf of other magistrates. As head of the college, together with M. Agrippa, I celebrated the secular games for the College of Fifteen in the consulship of C. Furnius and C. Silanus (17 B.C.E.). In my thirteenth consulship (2 B.C.E.), I first celebrated the games of Mars, which afterward in following years the consuls held successively by senatorial decree and by law. In my own name or in the name of my sons or grandsons, I sponsored hunts of animals from Africa twenty-six times for the people in the circus, in the forum or in amphitheaters, in which approximately 3,500 animals were killed." (My translation.)

 

And the Latin:

"Ter munus gladiatorium dedi meo nomine et quinquiens filiorum meorum aut nepotum nomine, quibus muneribus depugnaverunt hominum circiter decem millia. Bis athletarum undique accitorum spectaculum populo praebui meo nomine et tertium nepotis mei nomine. Ludos feci meo nomine quater, aliorum autem magistratuum vicem ter et viciens. Pro conlegio XV virorum magister conlegii collega M. Agrippa ludos saeclares C. Furnio C. Silano cos. feci. Consul XIII ludos Martiales primus feci quos post id tempus deinceps insequentibus annis s.c. et lege fecerunt consules. Venationes bestiarum Africanarum meo nomine aut filiorum meorum et nepotum in circo aut in foro aut in amphitheatris populo dedi sexiens et viciens, quibus confecta sunt bestiarum circiter tria millia et quingentae."

(From The Latin Library.)

 

More to come on Augustus' gladiatorial shows as my Latin students make their way through Suetonius...

Gladiators & Politic(ian)s (or, Why I Started This Blog)

I've been toying with the idea of developing a course on the cultural history of the Colosseum for several years now. I'd cover the usual amphitheater and gladiator topics from the "origins" of the games, through the building of the Colosseum, and the spread of amphitheater culture throughout the Roman empire. But I'd also dedicate a large chunk of the course to the cultural reception and appropriation of the Colosseum, and gladiators, from antiquity to modern times. Having pondered this idea for almost four years, gathering references here and there, I decided to commit to the idea and make a more concerted effort to developing the course, so that I'd be ready to propose it and teach it when the opportunity arose. And so, last fall, I started Amphitheatrum ad Infinitum. It's been a beginning filled with fits and starts, but now that the academic year is drawing to a close, I am hoping to develop a blogging habit and go somewhere with this course concept.

I started thinking about this Colosseum course four years ago, when we were in the midst of primary elections and political debates. I woke up one morning in February to a rehashing of the Obama-Clinton debate in Cleveland, OH, on NPR. Tom Ashbrook of On Point was getting a local take on the February 26th debate staged at Cleveland State University's Wolstein Center from Mike McIntyre, a columnist for the Cleveland Plain Dealer. The thing that struck me was the way in which Ashbrook and McIntyre identified the debate as a "spectacle" comparable to a fight or a gladiator match. Here's the most relevant part of the analysis:

Ashbrook: "What was the sense in the hall? How did Ohioans respond?"

McIntyre: "... When it actually rolls into your town it just has a bigger spectacle, you know. Some of the folks that were following the campaign were rolling their eyes, like "here we go again," "we've heard all this before."..."

Ashbrook: "Did you have a sense, or was there a sense in the hall of who came out on top? It's neck and neck in Texas. I don't know where it stands in Ohio in the polls right now. Was there a sense of a winner, of two gladiators who have been at it, both admired for sticking at it? How did you read the Ohio response in that microcosm Mike?

McIntyre: "What's interesting about the Wolstein Center at Cleveland State University where this debate was held, is that it is a place where there have been boxing matches, big time wrestling spectacles, there was even something called the "King of the Cage" match, where a kick in the teeth really is a kick in the teeth. And so it was a perfect site for this kind of a debate. I think it, I think people did see it as a couple of people who are really battling for it. In the end I don't think any opinions were changed, I don't think any minds were made up, based on last night's debate.  But I think people really did, they behaved themselves and didn't cheer on television as they were admonished not to, but I think that people really did think that their candidate represented themselves well, whichever side of the aisle they were on." [You can hear the whole broadcast here.] 

The positive identification of Obama and Clinton as gladiators and the suggested parallel between the debate and the other combat sporting events that have been staged at the Wolstein Center illustrate an interesting cultural appropriation of the arena. The image of the gladiator has become a popular one in our modern culture. The gladiator has come to represent the underdog who overthrows the forces of oppression. A hero who will fight to the death for his beliefs or for his "team." This is easily seen in films like Spartacus or Gladiator or in the innumerable identifications of football players as "gridiron gladiators."

While ancient gladiators had a certain celebrity, they were largely considered disreputable (infames), like prostitutes and others who made a living by "selling" their bodies, and were most frequently slaves. And a Roman citizen most assuredly would not identify with a gladiator. In fact, we can see gladiator being used as a slur against one's political opponents in ancient Rome. Perhaps the best of examples of this come from Cicero's defense of Publius Sestius in 56 B.C.E. against charges of using violence for political gain (de vis). Cicero's nemesis, Publius Clodius Pulcher (and probably his brother, Appius Claudius Pulcher), was almost certainly behind the charges brought against Sestius. As the last to speak in Sestius' defense, Cicero does not need to deal the charges or the facts of the trial. Instead he sets out to demonstrate that Sestius was the sort of man who had only the best interests of the republic at heart and to attack those who are wrongly prosecuting him, namely Clodius. Cicero repeatedly refers to Clodius as a gladiator, accusing him of using untrained gladiators to compel political support in the forum by means of violence and bloodshed. Cicero's identification of Clodius with gladiators is clearly antithetical to Ashbrook and McIntyre's identification of Obama and Clinton. [You can read a translation of Cicero's Pro Sestio here. The gladiator references pick up in section 77.]

We are now in the midst of the campaign season, again, and I was quite thrilled to see this on the cover of the February 6th issue of Newsweek.

From what I've seen, this cover as largely met with ridicule, and I suspect that this is a case where it is better to imagine the politician as a gladiator, than to actually see him dressed/photoshopped up like one. Still further comparisons have been drawn between this spring's campaigning and the arena. The debate audiences have even been compared (here and here at 10:36:25) to the unruly spectators at the Colosseum at the CNN debates in January.

The issue of politics and the arena is a topic that I will return to in the future. In fact, there's a lot of interesting stuff to think about in Cicero's Pro Sestio. Gladiatorial games were as much about politics as they were about sporting spectacles. It seems that we have returned to that political idiom again and it will be interesting to see how it recurs as the campaign season continues. We already have images of bruised and battered politicians, as if they have been fighting it out hand to hand (see here).

I had never heard the comparison of a modern political to a gladiator made until the 2008 presidential campaign. Were there earlier comparisons in American politics? Please send them my way if you know of any.