Gladiators
group · 8 works · 8 mentions · 12 anchored passages
gladiators · a Samnite · captives · gladiatores · slaves of bad condition · the guilty · those who hire out their hands to the arena
in the texts
An Essay on Crimes and Punishments
Enslaved combatants of antiquity, cited as the historical performers of the single combats freemen disdained to imitate.
and, perhaps, because single combats were a common spectacle, exhibited to the people by gladiators, who were slaves, and whom freemen disdained to imitate.
Tusculan Disputations
Trained fighters, often condemned men or foreigners, cited as extreme examples of endurance of wounds and death through practice.
Gladiators, either ruined men or barbarians — what blows they bear!
Institutes of Roman Law
Fighters delivered to trainers under contracts whose classification (sale or hire) depended on survival.
Gladiators were either (1) prisoners of war, ‘butchered to make a Roman holiday,’ or slaves who had committed some offence, 1 § 13, or criminals under a capital sentence;
Item [quaeritur] si gladiatores ea lege tibi tradiderim, ut in singulos qui integri exierint pro sudore denarii xx mihi darentur, in eos uero singulos qui occisi aut debilitati fuerint denarii mille, quaeritur utrum emptio et uenditio an locatio et conductio contrahatur.
If a band of gladiators are delivered on the following terms, that is to say, that for the performance of every one who leaves the arena safe and sound there shall be paid twenty denarii, and for every one who is killed or disabled there shall be paid one thousand denarii, it is disputed whether the contract is one of purchase and sale or of letting and hiring;
Letters to Lucilius
Men who fight for pay in the arena, permitted to lower their arms and beg for mercy, contrasted with the philosopher's unconditional endurance.
From those who hire out their hands to the arena, and who eat and drink what they must pay back through their blood, security is taken that they will endure such things even against their will;
On Anger
Combatants referenced both as objects of crowd anger and as an example of skill versus anger in combat effectiveness.
Skill, too, protects the gladiators, anger lays them bare.
why does the crowd grow angry at gladiators, and so unjustly that it counts it an injury when they do not die willingly?
On Tranquillity of Mind
Fighters used as an example of contempt for those who cling to life versus admiration for those who despise it.
Gladiators, as Cicero says, we hold in contempt if they are eager to win their lives by any means at all;
Ad Nationes
Arena fighters, both the objects of mock-divine spectacle and living contemporary examples of contempt of death.
If no Regulus among you has yet engaged with the cross, the machine for fixing the body, yet by now the contempt of fire has come about, since one of you recently hired himself out, to be clothed in the fiery tunic, up to a fixed place throughout.
Plainly you are more religious in the gladiators' arena, where, over human blood, over the filth of penalties, your gods likewise dance — plots and histories devised for paying out the guilty, or the guilty are punished in the very persons of the gods.
De Spectaculis
Men (captives, slaves, condemned persons) forced to fight and die in the amphitheatre for public entertainment.
Certainly innocent gladiators are sold into the school, that they may become victims of the public pleasure.
For of old, since it was believed that the souls of the dead were propitiated by human blood, they used to immolate at funerals captives, or slaves of bad condition, whom they had bought.