In the republican era, private citizens could own and train gladiators, or lease them from a lanista (owner of a gladiator training school). When a freedman of Nero was giving a gladiatorial show at Antium, the public porticoes were covered with paintings, so we are told, containing life-like portraits of all the gladiators and assistants. The Punic Wars of the late 3rd century BC—in particular the near-catastrophic defeat of Roman arms at Cannae—had long-lasting effects on the Republic, its citizen armies, and the development of the gladiatorial munera.

Games

In the same century, an epigraph praises one of Ostia’s local elite as the first to “arm women” in the history of its games. From the 60s AD female gladiators appear as rare and “exotic markers of exceptionally lavish spectacle”. Tiberius offered several retired gladiators 100,000 sesterces each to return to the arena.

Role in Roman life

• Remains of a Pompeian ludus site attest to developments in supply, demand and discipline; in its earliest phase, the building could accommodate 15–20 gladiators.
• Once a band of five retiarii in tunics, matched against the same number of secutores, yielded without a struggle; but when their death was ordered, one of them caught up his trident and slew all the victors.
• Later games were held by an editor, either identical with the munerator or an official employed by him.
• The gladiator as a specialist fighter, and the ethos and organization of the gladiator schools, would inform the development of the Roman military as the most effective force of its time.
• Devotio (willingness to sacrifice one’s life to the greater good) was central to the Roman military ideal, and was the core of the Roman military oath.
• Gladiatorial games offered their sponsors extravagantly expensive but effective opportunities for self-promotion, and gave their clients and potential voters exciting entertainment at little or no cost to themselves.

Next came the ludi meridiani, which were of variable content but usually involved executions of noxii, some of whom were condemned to be subjects of fatal re-enactments, based on Greek or Roman myths. Official munera of the early Imperial era seem to have followed a standard form (munus legitimum). Left-handed gladiators were advertised as a rarity; they were trained to fight right-handers, which gave them an advantage over most opponents and produced an interestingly unorthodox combination.

Life expectancy

Roman writing as a whole demonstrates a deep ambivalence towards the gladiatoria munera. In 167 AD, troop depletions by plague and desertion may have prompted Marcus Aurelius to draft gladiators at his own expense. Opposite him on the field, Vitellius’s army was swollen by levies of slaves, plebs and gladiators. In AD 69, the Year of the Four Emperors, Otho’s troops at Bedriacum included 2000 gladiators. As the Republic wore on, the term of military service increased from ten to the sixteen years formalised by Augustus in the Principate.
Claudius, characterised by his historians as morbidly cruel and boorish, fought a whale trapped in the harbor in front of a group of spectators. Caligula, Titus, Hadrian, Lucius Verus, Caracalla, Geta and Didius Julianus were all said to have performed in the arena, either in public or private, but risks to themselves were minimal. In 66 AD, Nero had Ethiopian women, men and children fight at a munus to impress the King Tiridates I of Armenia. Nero gave the gladiator Spiculus property and residence “equal to those of men who had celebrated triumphs.” For the poor, and for non-citizens, enrollment in a gladiator school offered a trade, regular food, housing of sorts and a fighting chance of fame and fortune.
In the late Republican era, a fear of similar uprisings, the usefulness of gladiator schools in creating private armies, and the exploitation of munera for political gain led to increased restrictions on gladiator school ownership, siting and organisation. No such stigma was attached to a gladiator owner (munerarius or editor) of good family, high status and independent means; Cicero congratulated his friend Atticus on buying a lanista splendid troop—if he rented them out, he might recover their entire cost after two performances. Between the early and later Imperial periods the risk of death for defeated gladiators rose from 1/5 to 1/4, perhaps because missio was granted less often.

The gladiators

The gladiator games lasted for nearly a thousand years, reaching their peak between the 1st century BC and the 2nd century AD. Licensed in Curacao, Lanista casino provides a wide variety of games including video slots, table games, jackpots, live casino, and a sportsbook. Slots contribute 100%, table games and live casino contribute 10%. These groups usually focus on portraying mock gladiatorial combat in as accurate a manner as possible. Souvenir ceramics were produced depicting named gladiators in combat; similar images of higher quality, were available on more expensive articles in high quality ceramic, glass or silver. The Gladiator Mosaic in the Galleria Borghese displays several gladiator types, and the Bignor Roman Villa mosaic from Provincial Britain shows Cupids as gladiators.

Schools and training

• Another, dressed as Mercury, tests for life-signs with a heated “wand”; once confirmed as dead, the body is dragged from the arena.
• In 216 BC, Marcus Aemilius Lepidus, late consul and augur, was honoured by his sons with three days of munera gladiatoria in the Forum Romanum, using twenty-two pairs of gladiators.
• Their Campanian allies stage a dinner entertainment using gladiators who may not be Samnites, but play the Samnite role.
• From the 60s AD female gladiators appear as rare and “exotic markers of exceptionally lavish spectacle”.
• A single late primary source, the Calendar of Furius Dionysius Philocalus for 354, shows how seldom gladiators featured among a multitude of official festivals.
• Very little evidence survives of the religious beliefs of gladiators as a class, or their expectations of an afterlife.

Under Augustus’ rule, the demand for gladiators began to exceed supply, and matches sine missione were officially banned; an economical, pragmatic development that happened to match popular notions of “natural justice”. During the Imperial era, matches advertised as sine missione (usually understood to mean “without reprieve” for the defeated) suggest that missio (the sparing of a defeated gladiator’s life) had become common practice. A gladiator could acknowledge defeat by raising a finger (ad digitum), in appeal to the referee to stop the combat and refer to the editor, whose decision would usually rest on the crowd’s response. Similar representations (musicians, gladiators and bestiari) are found on a tomb relief in Pompeii.

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He had more available in Capua but the senate, mindful of the recent Spartacus revolt and fearful of Caesar’s burgeoning private armies and rising popularity, imposed a limit of 320 pairs as the maximum number of gladiators any citizen could keep in Rome. In 65 BC, newly elected curule aedile Julius Caesar held games that he justified as munus to his father, who had been dead for 20 years. Where traditional ludi had been dedicated to a deity, such as Jupiter, the munera could be dedicated to an aristocratic sponsor’s divine or heroic ancestor.