Gladiators

by Michael Grant

One of the true paradoxes of Roman civilization is the dichotomy between its contributions to the areas of government, law, literature, philosophy, & art & the brutally savage institution of arena spectacle sports in which human beings killed each other for entertainment. Yet, even at its barbaric worst, some good emerged from the almost unmitigated evil of gladiatorial it produced countless acts of individual courage, created one of the world's greatest architectural forms & inspired a number of men to protest against the overwhelming tide of brutality in Rome. Written by an acknowledged expert in the area of classical civilizations, this account traces the bloody 800-year history of the gladiators, or bustuarii, from their rise during the 3rd century BCE to their eventual abolition at the end of the 5th century CE. Illustrations of mosaics, statues, reliefs & architectural remains illuminate the text.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Ancient History, Roman, Roman History

128 pages, Unknown Binding

First published January 1, 1967

About the author

Michael Grant was an English classisist, numismatist, and author of numerous popular books on ancient history. His 1956 translation of Tacitus’s Annals of Imperial Rome remains a standard of the work. He once described himself as "one of the very few freelances in the field of ancient history: a rare phenomenon". As a popularizer, his hallmarks were his prolific output and his unwillingness to oversimplify or talk down to his readership.

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name. See this thread for more information.

Reviews

[Josephine (Jo) · Rating 3 out of 5]

found this little book to be of great help with the facts of what went on in the life of real gladiators. I enjoy historical fiction and I have no problem when the stories are embroidered or invented. I quite like books where a character is an historical person of whom we know only a little, and the author builds up an imaginary life for them out of our meagre knowledge. I rely on little books like this to keep it real for me. Michael Grant has given me so much information about gladiators in general and particularly about Spartacus, that I can now read fiction books and know where the truth ends and fiction begins. There were descriptions on the different types of gladiator, some I had never heard of, the weapons they used and how they were treated. A great accompaniment to the shelves of anyone who is interested in ancient Rome.

[Trenton McConnell · Rating 3 out of 5]

When I started reading this I had a hard time following Grant's writing mainly due to the way he throws so many quotes and brief stories together but once I began to see the overall picture he was painting everything began to click together. Gladiators were never something that I gave too much thought about prior to reading this as I just accepted them as a part of Roman society but this book shifted my perspective to see how inhumane these death games really were. This wasn't my favorite history book but I did find it interesting.

[Charlie · Rating 4 out of 5]

They really don't write history books like this anymore, which is probably a good thing. Gladiatorial combat remains one of the more sophisticatedly sadistic stains on human history, and Grant does not hold back on his moralising horror for the institution, even though he feels compelled to cushion this with repeated, and rather craven, concessions to the classicist establishment by obligingly noting that they at least led to some nice architecture. These tiresomely creepy caveats put me in mind of an engineering professor feeling pressured by his colleagues to express admiration for the pipe-laying at Birkenau, but hey, it was the 60s. I still appreciated the generally candid aversion to his subject matter, though it probably does skew his study too closely towards my own pre-existing biases.

That said, one does wonder what is the point of extended block quotations if you're not going to include a footnote citing which primary or secondary source the last two pages of regurgitated text actually comes from. Even Lord Byron gets dropped in a couple of times without specifying the line, canto, or even the title wherein the rest of the associated words can be found.

With that gripe out of the way, this book answered basically every single question I had about gladiators, which is pretty good-going for a 120 page book. Grant's argument is that gladitorial games arose from an ancient funeral practice of sacrificing prisoners of war to appease the gorehungry spectres of the wrathful dead. This practice, referenced at least as early as The Iliad, gradually evolved into an Etruscan practice - possibly derrived from their gladiator-hungry dependency, Campania - of forcing POWs to do the deed themselves, tossing swords at some former comrades and telling them that only one would live. In the 6th century BC, Rome was conquered by the Etruscans who left an enduring impact on Roman culture, so that even centuries later the gladitorial games would include slaves dressed as the Etruscan death-demon, Charon, whose job it was to hack apart wounded survivors and drag them away from the arena. (That said, the latter task was sometimes done with less openly ghoulish relish by slaves dressed as Mercury/Hermes to 'guide' dead souls to the underworld, since specific practices varied by region and time period).

It would take an oddly long time for these antecedents to coalesce in Roman culture - a delay which Grant doesn't really explain - since it was only in 264 BC when the sons of Brutas Pera, allegedly inspired by the Etruscan practice, decided to exhibit three gladitorial shows during his funeral. Within fifty years, funerals were now hosting twenty-two games, and ten years later the practice spread to Syria, until, by 174 BC, seventy-four men fought in a three-day funeral display for Flaminius' father. This practice continued to snowball until, in 105BC, two consuls launched the first official gladiatorial games, justified by a mix of religious sentiment and a belief that the games would toughen up the population and push back against the supposed effeminity of imported Greek culture.

Once institutionalised, the brutality of gladiatoral schools gave rise to the heroic slave revolt led by Spartacus, whose spectre was to hover over the practice for the rest of its long history. To prevent another such uprising, the gladiator schools were clamped down on and regulated by the state, though a contradictory impulse lingered wherein rulers fantasised about - and sometimes actually employed - seasoned gladiators as auxillary units for the Roman army, with one such unit being named (optimistically) 'the obedient'. To add to the drama, the senate of the Roman Republic, as it veered into civil war, nervously fretted over the private gladitorial warbands that practically every well-to-do politician seemed to have lying around in their basements, which led to a law disqualifying any candidate from running for office if they had hosted a show in the last two years.

Having outlined the origins of gladiatoral games and their place in the Roman Republic, Grant then settles down in chapter 2 to describing the gladiatoral profession itself, covering who the gladiators were (slaves and criminals mostly, but occasionally volunteers who tended to be social outcasts or freed slaves returning to the profession), the structure of later imperial shows, and the increasingly elaborate hierarchies constructed via the gladiatoral schools, mindful the whole time that differing parts of the Roman Empire had their own practices and interpretations of these terms and structures that muddy a flat, non-processual analysis of its evolution.

Notably, though the emperors became the arch-patrons of the games (including all the famous tropes, with the exception being that 'Thumbs down' probably meant mercy as it signalled putting a sword back in the scabbard, rather than gutting the prisoner on the floor), Grant detects a hint of shame in their sponsorship. Whereas emperors were usually very keen to blazon forth examples of their generosity to the public on coins that publicised military victories, public subsidies, and circus shows of animal hunts and battles, there were some expenses that were notably ommitted from these pictorial representations. The first were the state's embarassingly huge financial handouts to the military, and the second were the elaborate spectacles of human-human gladitorial combats. Emperors, it seemed, did not tend to enjoy boasting about this particular expense.

One unexpected twist in this chapter involved the discussion of gladiatoral women, who tended to invoke Amazonian tropes in their public personas and ellicited scandalised condemnations from moralistic cultural commentators such as Juvenal for their their thick muscles, tomboyish mannerisms, and general defiance of gender norms. That this practice was only banned as late as 200AD is suggestive of how weird and varied gladitorial shows could actually be, which makes sense for such a long-lasting institution.

The third chapter covers the nature of gladitorial combat itself, going through the differing styles of fighting dress (weapons, armour, helmets, tactics) which came to be viewed in the same way as sports teams today, as enthusiastic Romans would favour particular fighting styles and get into aggressive spats with rival supporters. These rivals were grotesque enough already ('which way do you prefer to see slaves forced to murder each other? I like it when they tangle a man in a net then rip out his guts with a trident'), but these rivalries could grow into monstrous depravities, as seen in the example of the emperor Domitian once hearing a citizen say that the 'Thracian' school could outclass Domitian's favoured 'Myrmillones', to which the level-headed ruler responded by having the citizen dragged from his seat and ripped apart by dogs in the arena.

The rest of this chapter is a treasurehouse of horrifying titbits, including the varied attitudes amongst gladiators to the grand meals they were offered before games - some choosing to feast like kings at their potential last meal, whilst others hoped to stay mobile with a lighter dinner, whilst others were too scared to keep their food down. Gladiatoral games were preceeded with non-lethal warmup matches, before choirs and musicians played haunting, warbling tunes over the eventual bloodbath, an unsettling spectacle perhaps worthy of Melniboné for its gleefully imaginative sadism. The final section, on the sea-fights, confirms that they really were as extravagent as you think they were, though most were hosted in pits dug outside of the coloseum, and those in the great ring itself were done before its later burrowing network of underground cages, tunnels, and cells had been built.

So far, so three stars. The triumph of this book comes in the fourth and final chapter, 'The Gladiators and Their Public' which examines the contradictory and ambiguous place that gladiators had in Roman society, which was somewhere between sex-workers and actors in terms of their general social stigma, but they were also valorised for their martial craft and occasional celebratory status. Gladiatoral matches were a frequent topic of conversation. The emperor Nero had gladiator biers decorated with amber. Fans would pay for elaborate tombs and epitaphs for their favourite fighters, gladiators would argue with emperors about jokes they made, and Cicero would even cite the trained bravery of gladiators as an example for all Romans to imitate. Reading this section has made me significantly more impressed with Chain-Gang All-Stars in retrospect for how acutely that novel reimagines in a modern-day context the same paradoxical social attitudes that this chapter catalogues.

This contempt-inflected admiration often took on an erotic charge. Homosexual men and young women were noted for fixating on famous gladiators to the same degree as modern pop-star fandoms do their targets today. A tellingly salacious piece of graffiti at Pompeii describes the 'Thracian' gladiator, Celadus as a girl's hero and heart-throb (suspirum et decus puellarum) as well as a master and healer of girls at night (dominum et medium puparum nocturnarum).

Further muddying the waters were the activities of sanguinous maniac emperors like Caligula and Commodus, who (if the many bizarre and sensational anecdotes are to be believed) partied around in the gladiator pits to the horror of their upper class contemporaries, whilst the latter styled himself as a latter-day Hercules as he slaughtered wounded beasts and maimed men in their hundreds.

More curious than the Roman attitude to gladiators, however, is their attitude towards themselves. Accepting the grim horror of their occupation as a baseline, it is fascinating to see how some especially lucky or talented gladiators, even those enslaved into their service, came to express pride in their newfound identity and celebrity. It's hard to know how much of this was just a survival strategy (internally, to give yourself the will to survive; externally, because no audience likes a downer), but it is notable that some gladiators who earned their freedom promptly signed up again! I can imagine a pride in one's own skill and the thrill of death leading to some embracing this lifestyle, but one suspects that the majority of these people probably had no where else to turn in the face of widespread stigma they endured.

The triumph of this book, however, comes in the second half of chapter 4 where Grant suddenly takes a heel turn into Frankfurt-school criticism of gladiatorial combat's effect on, and expression of, the deeper values of Roman society. This critical turn was so unexpected that I could barely suppress my delight at its arrival as Grant notes how the dual-justification of the games continued to be (a) their encouragement of warlike values in the population, as well as (b) the need to keep the bloodthirsty masses appeased, lest their sadism be unleashed on their rulers instead. This, of course, begs the question of where such sadism actually came from, since Roman rulers tended to assume it was simply an enduring feature of the mob.

Grant, armed with some (at the time) cutting-edge 1960s psychology and critical theory, blasts "the constant recurrance of this unrestrained bloodthirstiness throughout long centuries [as] one of the most appalling manifestations of evil that the world has ever known" (105) and draws on Schopenhauer, Freud, and late psychoanalysis to explore rival theories of its origins. At first, he offers Wilhelm Stekel's suggestion that the violence inherent to Rome's imperalistic political economy necessitated a level of social sadism and persistent brutality across all strata of society which engendered a taste for carnage and power across social, sexual, and public relations. A more feminist interpretation highlights the Roman obsession with patriarchal control over the family, with the near-universal practice of physical child-discipline potentially cultivating an entire civilisation of traumatised, bloodthirsty sociopaths. Eric Fromm is then brought in to offer an account of alienation within Rome's authoritarian social structures that necesitated a plunge into religion or sadism as an outlet for their shiftless boredom.

Grant is agnostic about whether any of these theories is sufficient explanation for the practice, but the attempt to suddenly zoom out from crude moralistic horror to large-scale political-economic critique was certainly a welcome surprise. One is tempted to suggest that perhaps such sadism is more elemental to human psychology than Grant is quite willing to... uhh... grant (consider the morbid fascination so many corners of the internet have today for offering people unfettered access to real-life images of terror and mayhem), but the essentialist argument for sadism is always a rather curt one, so I appreciated the attempt to go deeper before the book's final section.

This consists of a whistlestop tour of what Roman writers said about the games, with Grant sneering at Rome's moral malaise for how inadequate these responses were. He highlights Pliny the younger's support for their ennervating example on criminals and slaves, and remarks that, "Nowhere do we see more clearly than in the inadequate comments of this usually kind-hearted man what it was to live in a society where some people had no rights at all; and where policy and tradition had institutionalized the brutalities inherent in this situation." (109)

For once, I don't care that this is anachronistic. I had too much fun with this, particularly as he blasts Christian apologists for ignoring the fact that the gladitorial games were at their most numerous during the reign of Constantine the Great, whilst the Roman philosophers most likely to criticise the games were those most open to Hellenistic influences. Seneca's grand screed against the games as rotting the hearts of their audiences stands out as a beautiful example of humanistic rage against the institution. This is greatly complimented by a passage from Augustine's Confessions where Augustine describes, with great empathy and insight, how a friend of his was corrupted by the experience of watching the games with his friends and becoming seduced by the exhultant thrill of the crowd's roars, which normalised and enriched the display of bloodshed before him.

It's always odd chatting to classicists. By their nature they are passionate for a world gone by, and they have a frustrating tendency to idealise their chosen cultures at the expense of a more hollistic account of the shadows behind their temples. For that reason, I had a great time reading this work by a classicist so openly angry at, and repulsed by, his subject-matter. I am aware that as an introductory volume there must be further shades he does not cover, particularly with regards to gladiators' own attitudes towards their enslavement, but even a longer volume would struggle to parse out such ambiguous complexities at this distance, and across such awful silences.

Overall, the final chapter alone would be a five star read, so completely did it cover my original curiosities on the topic, but I have to deduct a star for the lack of citations. It's hard to take one's research further when your introductory volume sets up such a frustrating hurdle for future exploration.

[Shawn Thrasher · Rating 3 out of 5]

Straightforward, unromantic portrait of gladiators from ancient Rome. Who they were, why they existed, who they lived and fought. Grant, who was a renowned historian and writer about the ancient world, is neither spectacular nor underwhelming in this short book - although there is more here than report fodder and an almanac of factoids. Grant several times reminds the reader that although gladiators were the rock stars of their time, their profession was cruel, bloody and brutal. Gladiators only disappeared from public life because "those who believed in the Gospel of Christ could not, and did not, for ever tolerate the fighting of gladiators for public entertainment." Christianity did indeed change the Roman world and morals, and thinking about men hacking one another to death for the public enjoyment of the crowd, I'd have to say I'm glad. There's nothing even remotely romantic about that.

[Marijo · Rating 5 out of 5]

First, a disclosure: I've loved Michael Grant's writing ever since I read Cleopatra, the first one of his books that I cracked open on a long airline flight. Gladiators did not disappoint.

In the book, Dr. Grant focuses on the history of the gladiatorial system of Rome. Successful gladiators could become superstars, and the occasional citizen would train to gain admiration. Although it also functioned as entertainment, the practice evolved from early funeral rites that connected life, death, and the afterlife. Long after their separation from funeral rites, the competitions continued to symbolize core values such as endurance, fatalism, and discipline. Gladiators were typically enslaved people or condemned criminals who studied at gladiatorial schools (ludi) to play specific roles in highly choreographed displays. (Note: Public executions, such as being devoured by wild animals, were NOT part of gladiatorial combat. These were distinct, though they could appear in the same extravaganza.)

The book goes beyond the movies to explore the organization and structure of the games, the choreography of the fights (WWW style), and other characters, such as referees and the arenas themselves. One of the most interesting things I learned was the true meaning of thumbs up or thumbs down. (Spoiler: It's probably not what you're thinking.) Once you read about the pompa (procession of the gladiators), you'll never again hear Elgar's music the same way at a graduation.

[Jim Cook · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was an interesting examination of a barbaric institution that existed for several centuries, an institution that fed from - and at the same time stoked - our basest emotions.

Typically consisting of prisoners of war, criminals, and slaves, Gladiators were sent out in amphitheatres across the Roman world to kill each other throughout the entire day, sometimes for months at a time. Whether they were battling each other or they were slaughtering imported wild animals from throughout the Roman Empire - or being torn to pieces by these animals - their vicious audiences were enthralled.

When the crowd became bored of the usual “entertainments”, as sometimes occurred, groups of very elderly people, or cripples or, sometimes, even women and children, would be rounded up (usually in the poorer districts of the city) and forced to fight each other (usually, but not always, with wooden weapons) for the audiences’ amusement.

This mass form of brutality continued for a century or more after Rome officially became Christian, so this evil institution was not just a creature of paganism.

Grant tries, unsuccessfully in my view, to explain the persistence and popularity of this unique form of evil in psychoanalytic terms. I think, on the other hand, brutality on this scale and for this long is, ultimately, inexplicable.

Grant’s very readable little book was first published in 1967; I read the 1971 lightly revised edition. Recommended!

[Eddie · Rating 1 out of 5]

1.5 Stars. It was written in 1967 when publishing wasn't as proliferate and an 'academic' term paper-like book could be published. Hard to read and I was looking forward to finishing it. Many times I wanted to put the book down and say "I can't finish it" but the book was so short that I pushed through it. I don't want to keep my copy and will donate it to a local little neighborhood library. This is the mark of a bad book.

There was no continuity and the book jumped around with no flow. It was like reading someone's college thesis that would get a passing grade bc there were enough pages of facts. But not fun to read at all, very boring in fact. Sure, there were some good parts that flowed and made sense like how the brutal violence and cruelty (and some Christianity near the end) caused the demise in Gladitorial games. There was very little reference, but not enough, to how Gladiators was part of the 'bread and circuses' to appease the public and keep them distracted, but not nearly enough. Just one sentence on it. Book would have been far more interesting if this subject was delved into more.

There are probably far better works on Gladiators (along with documentaries and the movie) that will be better reads than this. I can't say I am worse for reading it bc it was so short. If it was longer I would have put the book down. I can't recommend it.

[Gregory Jones · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is exactly what I was looking for regarding gladiators. Everything I had read was either overly romantic or just a short account in a textbook. This book does a brilliant job of de-romanticizing gladiator life.

I was most impressed by the rootedness of the places in the book. Of course these fights occurred in Rome itself in the famous Colloseum. But they took place in other places across the empire. The book describes the people, equipment, and places of these "games." It can be difficult to read some of the gory realities of the subject, but it's worth encountering.

I would recommend this book to readers at any level interested in gladiators. I would definitely recommend it for a World Civilization course as a "hook" for students who may not be interested in conventional military history. Through this study, the instructor can develop themes of empire, class, militarism, violence, masculinity, and many more.

I'll be keeping this one in my collection to reference in future work.

[Joe Sabet · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good, brief overview of gladiators that touched upon many aspects of their custom. To me his writing isn’t clever, lucid, or very fascinating, but it did keep me turning the pages and finally finish it. I’m glad he at least mentioned numismatics at least once. If you’re well-read, you probably are aware of most things discussed here, but it’s nice to have it all together in one place

[William Sariego · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed this, as I do all of Grant's books. Unlike many academics, he is readable and not pompous. The book is a small work, but packed with info on the subject. I recommend it to anyone interested in ancient Rome.

[R. · Rating 4 out of 5]

An expansive account of the subject in a small package. As one reads therein that luminaries of that epoch like Cicero and Pliny equivocated in condemning this social phenomenon, one wonders what accepted truths of our time will be equally found abhorrent by future history enthusiasts.

[Doris Raines · Rating 5 out of 5]

I LOVE THIS BOOK. I ALSO LIKED THE MOVIE 🍿 🎥 GLADIATORS 🤙.

[Patrick Porras · Rating 3 out of 5]

Unengaging but fascinating and well-researched

[Aleksandra Ulatowska · Rating 5 out of 5]

Momentami ciezko sie czyta ale ogolnie super bardzo duzo przykladow i problem ukazany na wielu plaszczyznach
Super ze byla nawet analiza sadyzmu pod koniec i + za obrazki

[Erik Graff · Rating 3 out of 5]

Michael Grant is a dependable, though pedestrian, source for accessible surveys of aspects of the ancient world. I've been reading him since school days, finding him to be a good starting point when approaching new areas of study and a disappointment when read as regards a topic with which I've already some familiarity.

I picked this volume up at the EBay consignment store in East Dundee, Illinois, along with a number of other volumes dealing with classical history, many of them Barnes and Noble republications. The price was reasonable, Grant a known quantity and I was in a hurry.

This is the third book I've read about the ancient Roman games. Unlike the others this one is focused almost entirely on the gladitorial games. Like most of Grant's books it's basically an overview of what we know about their history and practice, with no overarching thesis beyond the mere business of description. Fluidly written and short, the reading of the thing was accomplished in one sitting.

[Julia Simpson-Urrutia · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good book, basic but interesting information on life as a gladiator.

[Linda Harkins · Rating 3 out of 5]

Again, any work by Michael Grant can be trusted. He has always done his homework. I perused it bfore my July trip to Italy, but read it upon my return to substantiate what I had learned. I guess my only citicism is that the illutrations in black and white do not do justice to the actual artifacts, many of which I saw in museums in Rome and Naples.

[Ballpeendash · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a really cool, really short, really informative book. It goes into surprising detail about the different classes of gladiators, lifestyles, fighting styles...even the abolition of them. I personally find it a chapter of history that should just be read up on. It's too horrible/cool not to.

[Christian Graham · Rating 3 out of 5]

Slim non-fiction volume detailing the origins, ways and final abolition of the gladiators of ancient Rome. Writing probably a little dated in attitudes but highly informative with plenty of contemporaneous quotes which add colour (perhaps a little too much at times).

[Ellee · Rating 3 out of 5]

FYI, this is one of the books recommended by Wislawa Symborkska (Nobel Laureate) in her book of book reviews called _Nonrequired Reading_. Good book! Books! :D

[Little Timmy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very good history book. Good illustrations and chapters on the may aspects of the gladiators. Recommended