In 105 BC, the ruling consuls offered Rome its first taste of state-sponsored “barbarian combat” demonstrated by gladiators from Capua, as part of a training program for the military. They clearly show how gladiator munera pervaded Pompeiian culture; they provide information pertaining to particular gladiators, and sometimes include their names, status as slaves or freeborn volunteers, and their match records. Some of the best preserved gladiator graffiti are from Pompeii and Herculaneum, in public areas including Pompeii’s Forum and amphitheater, and in the private residences of the upper, middle and lower classes.

• A show of gladiators was to be exhibited before the people in the market-place, and most of the magistrates erected scaffolds round about, with an intention of letting them for advantage.
• Ludi and munera were accompanied by music, played as interludes, or building to a “frenzied crescendo” during combats, perhaps to heighten the suspense during a gladiator’s appeal; blows may have been accompanied by trumpet-blasts.
• Combats between experienced, well trained gladiators demonstrated a considerable degree of stagecraft.
• Thereafter, the gladiator contests formerly restricted to private munera were often included in the state games (ludi) that accompanied the major religious festivals.
• The use of volunteers had a precedent in the Iberian munus of Scipio Africanus; but none of those had been paid.
• Ten years later, Scipio Africanus gave a commemorative munus in Iberia for his father and uncle, casualties in the Punic Wars.

Victory and defeat

Ludi and munera were accompanied by music, played as interludes, or building to a “frenzied crescendo” during combats, perhaps to heighten the suspense during a gladiator’s appeal; blows may have been accompanied by trumpet-blasts. Referees were usually retired gladiators whose decisions, judgement and discretion were, for the most part, respected; they could stop bouts entirely, or pause them to allow the combatants rest, refreshment and a rub-down. Among the cognoscenti, bravado and skill in combat were esteemed over mere hacking and bloodshed; some gladiators made their careers and reputation from bloodless victories. Combats between experienced, well trained gladiators demonstrated a considerable degree of stagecraft.
A match was won by the gladiator who overcame his opponent, or killed him outright. Suetonius describes an exceptional munus by Nero, in which no-one was killed, “not even noxii (enemies of the state).” At the opposite level of the profession, a gladiator reluctant to confront his opponent might be whipped, or goaded with hot irons, until he engaged through sheer desperation.
Those condemned ad ludum were probably branded or marked with a tattoo (stigma, plural stigmata) on the face, legs and/or hands. By Domitian’s time, many had been more or less absorbed by the State, including those at Pergamum, Alexandria, Praeneste and Capua. The Spartacus revolt had originated in a gladiator school privately owned by Lentulus Batiatus, and had been suppressed only after a protracted series of costly, sometimes disastrous campaigns by regular Roman troops. Hopkins and Beard tentatively estimate a total of 400 arenas throughout the Roman Empire at its greatest extent, with a combined total of 8,000 deaths per annum from executions, combats and accidents. Marcus Junkelmann disputes Ville’s calculation for average age at death; the majority would have received no headstone, and would have died early in their careers, at 18–25 years of age. A natural death following retirement is also likely for three individuals who died at 38, 45, and 48 years respectively.

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Courage, dignity, altruism and loyalty were morally redemptive; Lucian idealised this principle in his story of Sisinnes, who voluntarily fought as a gladiator, earned 10,000 drachmas and used it to buy freedom for his friend, Toxaris. Having “neither hope nor illusions”, the gladiator could transcend his own debased nature, and disempower death itself by meeting it face to face. Yet, Cicero could also refer to his popularist opponent Clodius, publicly and scathingly, as a bustuarius—literally, a “funeral-man”, implying that Clodius has shown the moral temperament of the lowest sort of gladiator.

Gladiator

One gladiator’s tomb dedication clearly states that her decisions are not to be trusted. A wealthy editor might commission artwork to celebrate a particularly successful or memorable show, and include named portraits of winners and losers in action; the Borghese Gladiator Mosaic is a notable example. The bodies of noxii, and possibly some damnati, were thrown into rivers or dumped unburied; Denial of funeral rites and memorial condemned the shade (manes) of the deceased to restless wandering upon the earth as a dreadful larva or lemur. Whether the corpse of such a gladiator could be redeemed from further ignominy by friends or familia is not known. Another, dressed as Mercury, tests for life-signs with a heated “wand”; once confirmed as dead, the body is dragged from the arena.

• 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.
• 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”.
• Roman military discipline was ferocious; severe enough to provoke mutiny, despite the consequences.
• Many schools and amphitheatres were sited at or near military barracks, and some provincial army units owned gladiator troupes.
• Some of the best preserved gladiator graffiti are from Pompeii and Herculaneum, in public areas including Pompeii’s Forum and amphitheater, and in the private residences of the upper, middle and lower classes.
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Legal and social status

Many gladiator epitaphs claim Nemesis, fate, deception or treachery as the instrument of their death, never the superior skills of the flesh-and-blood adversary who defeated and killed them. Rather, she seems to have represented a kind of “Imperial Fortuna” who dispensed Imperial retribution on the one hand, and Imperially subsidised gifts on the other—including the munera. Modern scholarship offers little support for the once-prevalent notion that gladiators, venatores and bestiarii were personally or professionally dedicated to the cult of the Graeco-Roman goddess Nemesis. Ordinary citizens, slaves and freedmen were usually buried beyond the town or city limits, to avoid the ritual and physical pollution of the living; professional gladiators had their own, separate cemeteries. Modern pathological examination confirms the probably fatal use of a mallet on some, but not all the gladiator skulls found in a gladiators’ cemetery.
High status non-Romans, and possibly Romans too, volunteered as his gladiators. The gladiator munus became a morally instructive form of historic enactment in which the only honourable option for the gladiator was to fight well, or else die well. Their Campanian allies stage a dinner entertainment using gladiators who may not be Samnites, but play the Samnite role. There is evidence of it in funeral rites during the Punic Wars of the 3rd century BC, and thereafter it rapidly became an essential feature of politics and social life in the Roman world. Irrespective of their origin, gladiators offered spectators an example of Rome’s martial ethics and, in fighting or dying well, they could inspire admiration and popular acclaim.

He was lanista of the gladiators employed by the state circa 105 BC to instruct the legions and simultaneously entertain the public. The contract between editor and his lanista could include compensation for unexpected deaths; this could be “some fifty times higher than the lease price” of the gladiator. From the principate onwards, private citizens could hold munera and own gladiators only with imperial permission, and the role of editor was increasingly tied to state officialdom. Henceforth, an imperial praetor’s official munus was allowed a maximum of 120 gladiators at a ceiling cost of 25,000 denarii; an imperial ludi might cost no less than 180,000 denarii. It involved three days of funeral games, 120 gladiators, and public distribution of meat (visceratio data)—a practice that reflected the gladiatorial fights at Campanian banquets described by Livy and later deplored by Silius Italicus.

Throughout the Roman world, ceramics, lamps, gems and jewellery, mosaics, reliefs, wall paintings and statuary offer evidence, sometimes the best evidence, of the clothing, props, equipment, names, events, prevalence and rules of gladiatorial combat. Mosaics dating from the 2nd through 4th centuries AD have been lanista invaluable in the reconstruction of combat and its rules, gladiator types and the development of the munus. In the later Imperial era, Servius Maurus Honoratus uses the same disparaging term as Cicero—bustuarius—for gladiators.