Roman History Books and More

the metropolitan museum online: roman games: playing with animals

Tangentially related to our current book chats, i.e., games and gladiators, this was posted on the Met Museum's Facebook page today:

Roman Games: Playing with Animals

Public games were a major part of Roman culture, playing an important role in the social and political life of the city and its empire. Although the games had their roots in funeral or religious rites, by the late Republican period (ca. 70–31 B.C.), they had become a hugely popular form of public entertainment. They took several forms but all were essentially either races or fights. Known as ludi and munera, games could be staged in purpose-made arenas, most notably the Colosseum (L.2007.9.46) and Circus Maximus (L.2007.9.68) in Rome, either separately or combined in lengthy festivals.

Above Image: Gladiator cup, ca. 50–80 a.d.; Neronian–Early Flavianic; Roman; Found at Montagnole, suthern France Glass

From the Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History.

Enjoy!

fabulous gladiator mosaic in north africa, telling the story of games

at livius.org via New at LacusCurtius & Livius:

Villa Dar Buc Ammera, a Roman villa near Lepcis Magna, is famous for its mosaics, which can be seen today in the Archaeological Museum of Tripoli. Especially fine is the Gladiator Mosaic, which shows an entire day of games.

Jona writes:

The most famous of the mosaics of the Villa Buc Ammera is the Mosaic of the Gladiators, which consists of a set of sixteen square fields decorated with geometric designs or representations of several kinds of fish. The edge is decorated with pictures of gladiatorial contests.  It was the floor of a dinner room (triclinium).  It offers important evidence for the way the ancient Romans organized gladiatoral contests in the circus.   read on

I was intrigued by the Musicians panel:

 
click to enlarge

My own photos of a gladiator mosaic from Bad Kreuznach, a completely different take on the subject.

Image courtesy livius.org

gladiators – once more

A request for information at the Ancient/Classical History Forum at About.com about morituri te salutant – and yes, it's most likely an urban legend and you also can read about it in the above forum – sent me to my books.

Here are the two most informative ones:

Emperors and Gladiators by Thomas Wiedemann (with an Amazon preview)
fairly expensive, but there are some used copies
well worth reading, dispensing with ancient myths and modern prejudices
Emperors and Gladiators preview in Google Books

JSTOR, limited access, has three reviews.

Spectacles of Death in Ancient Rome (Approaching the Ancient World) by Donald Kyle (with an Amazon preview)
unfortunately even more expensive
Spectacles Death preview in Google Books

JSTOR, limited access, has five reviews, including one by the above author Wiedemann, plus three smaller ones as part of related groups of books.

More books and posts on gladiators

book review – the fight for rome: a gladiators of the empire novel

“ Time stopped. Quintus was suddenly in some hellish painting from the hand of a demented artist.  The image was too brutal to be real. Had he really contributed to this catastrophe?  Could he have possibly fought this battle even more savagely than the battle-hardened barbarians in his ranks?  Could he possibly have taken so many lives?  He had thought he knew the power of Taurus, but he had never considered him capable of killing on such a massive scale.”€

The Fight for Rome, the second novel in the Gladiators of the Empire series by James Duffy takes the story of Quintus Honorius Romanus, the gladiator going by the name of Taurus, to a new level and involves both protagonist and antagonist in the politics of civil war.

gladiators' graveyard discovered in ephesus

The BBC has an article on a recent discovery of gladiator remains in Ephesus:

Gladiators' graveyard discovered
By Monika Kupper and Huw Jones
2 May 2007
BBC Timewatch

Scientists believe they have for the first time identified an ancient graveyard for gladiators.
Analysis of their bones and injuries has given new insight into how they lived, fought and died.  Read on

There is also an earlier article:  Gladiators 'fought in Cheshire' (17 February 2007).  “Gladiatorial games, the bloodiest of ancient Rome's traditions, were probably held in the heart of genteel Cheshire, archaeologists say.”

The above image, courtesy BBC,  is titled Gravestones helped identify the site as a gladiator graveyard.

View all blog entries on Gladiators

the amphitheatre at pompeii

The amphitheatre at Pompeii (Photo © Mary Ann Sullivan, see below) was the first Roman stone amphitheatre, built around 80 BC according to the OCD, probably soon after Sulla imposed a colonia on the ancient city.  It was called spectacula by its builders.  It seated around 20,000 people.  It was closed by the Senate in AD 59 after a riot.

Tacitus, in Annals 14.17 reports:

[14.17] About the same time a trifling beginning led to frightful bloodshed between the inhabitants of Nuceria and Pompeii, at a gladiatorial show exhibited by Livineius Regulus, who had been, as I have related, expelled from the Senate.  With the unruly spirit of townsfolk, they began with abusive language of each other;  then they took up stones and at last weapons, the advantage resting with the populace of Pompeii, where the show was being exhibited. 

gladiators: the thracian (thraex)

Quintus Honorius Romanus aka Taurus, our hero in James Duffy's Sand of the Arena, mostly fights as a Thracian.  This fighter is described in Duffy's introduction to his book (Download duffy_intro.pdf), as

A lightly armored fighter carrying a small square shield (parmula) and curved sword (sica). His helmet crest often bore the image of a griffin fixed to the front.

Roman Gladiatorial Games from CUNY shows an image on this page, the third one down on the right.  If you click on it, you can clearly see the crested helmet.  This image is also on the informative  Culture I page at the same website.

google books on gladiators & the roman amphitheatre

Cruelty and Civilization: The Roman Games By Roland Auguet

Blurb:  "Cruelty and Civilization" offers an in-depth look at the Roman games as a force vital to the functioning of an Empire. Gladiatorial combats, chariot races and other spectacles were a kind of public opiate for the citizens of Ancient Rome. These rites gave rhythm and excitement to daily life in the Empire. From one year to the next, the Roman citizen lived in anticipation of the next games; through them he was able to forget the mediocrity of his own condition as well as his political enslavement. The most minutely organized productions were staged at vast expense, and Rome developed cults for arena champions, who were simultaneously idols and outcasts, doomed to a bloody death. Roland Auguet not only reconstructs in detail the conduct of these spectacles (gladiatorial combats, the sacrifice of prisoners to wild beasts, the chariot races, the combats between man and beast or beast and beast), but also analyzes the feelings of the crowd and the calculations of its rulers. He explainswhy the games dominated the life of the city. Examining the games in the context of a broader study of Roman customs, this book provides a synthesized view of how Roman civilization was to a large degree based on the games.

A review

a book on gladiators: the sorrow of the ancient romans

An interesting read, both as Google Book and in print: The Sorrows of the Ancient Romans: The Gladiator and the Monster.

“This inquiry into the collective psychology of the ancient Romans speaks not about military conquest, sober law, and practical politics, but about extremes of despair, desire, and envy. Carlin Barton makes us uncomfortably familiar with a society struggling at or beyond the limits of human endurance. To probe the tensions of the Roman world in the period from the first century b.c.e. through the first two centuries c.e., Barton picks two images: the gladiator and the ‘monster’. ”

the amphitheatre in rome at the time of nero

In his Sand of the Arena, James Duffy commits two anachronisms, backwards and forwards, when, in AD 67, he has the now combined Pompeian and Glevian gladiator troupe fight the Roman Imperial School in the Amphitheatrum Statilii Tauri, and has them reside in the barracks of the Ludus Magnus.

The amphitheatre of Taurus was destroyed in the Great Fire of 64, and the Ludus Magnus was built adjacent to the Amphitheatrum Flavium, the Colosseum, by the the Flavian emperors.

The question arises:  Was the amphitheatre of Taurus replaced before the Colosseum was built, and did Nero built one before or after the fire?  The information is somewhat conflicting.

gladiatorial posters & souvenirs

In the book Sand of the Arena, when the Quintus’ group comes for the “North-South” games to Pompeii, there are advertisement notices all over the place.  Here is a  transcript of notice posters from Pompeii, such as

Twenty pairs of gladiators belonging to Decimus Lucretius Satrius Valens perpetual flamen of Nero Caesar son of Augustus and ten pairs of gladiators belonging to the son of Decimus Lucretius Valens will fight at Pompeii on April 8,9,10, 11 and 12, there will be a beast hunt and there will be awnings. Aemilius Celer wrote this on his own by moonlight.  (from LVDVS GLADIATORVS)

venatio, venator, bestiarius

In our current read, Sand of the Arena, the Ethiopian venator Lindani spectacularly saves the lives of the proconsul’s family in the arena at Londinium, after an antelope buck crashes into the audience.

[As it so happens, Mary Beard today reports on a field trip with her Roman Britain class to London and links to a nice page of the London amphitheatre.]

The venatio (hunt) was a popular spectacle during gladiatorial games, usually as a warm-up to the main event.  The trained hunter, like our Lindani, was called venator, as opposed to the bestiarus, who was mainly animal fodder.

a footnote to my earlier post on the colosseum

A footnote to my post on the Colosseum last year: 

JL pointed out in a comment today that Mary Beard has co-authored a book on the Colosseum:

The Colosseum (Wonders of the World)
by Keith Hopkins & Mary Beard

morituri te salutamus – not

morituri te salutant or morituri te salutamus is commonly described as the opening rite of a gladiatorial fight.

However, I came across the following in JSTOR (limited access):

Morituri Te Salutamus, H. J. Leon
Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association Vol. 70 (1939), pp. 46-50, about the salute, Claudius'€™ Naumachia on Lake Fucinus, and naumachiae in general.

According to the author, the descriptions of the salute in the Claudian event by Suetonius (morituri de salutant) and Cassius Dio (moriture te salutamus)  are the only ancient references to the salute of the gladiators, and it was actually uttered by the naumacharii, as an appeal in the hope of winning the emperor's sympathy.  Tacitus is silent on the salute.

naumachia

A naumachia was the reenactment of a naval battle in a basin or on a lake, a popular albeit costly – and for the participants deadly – entertainment of the masses in ancient Rome.  The term naumachia was also used for the location at which the games took place.

Our current read, Sand of the Arena, opens with an imaginative happening of the naumachia of Nero – “…he also exhibited a naval battle in salt water with sea monsters swimming about in it”  according to Suetonius’ Life of Nero.

author chat with james duffy, “sand of the arena”, march 21

Please join us us on March 21 for a chat with Jim Duffy, author of  Sand of the Arena, an action packed novel set in the Neronian era.

Sand   of the Arena is a “€œprince and the pauper” story that plays out in the arenas of ancient Rome.  A rich Roman, Quintus Romanus, has his identity stolen by a conniving slave, Lucius Calidius, after a disaster at sea.  The epic adventure that follows sends Quintus across the Roman Empire in search of a new life and a new family.  He finds both in the gladiatorial schools and arenas of Britannia, Rome, and Pompeii.  His rise to primus palus status “the best of the best among gladiators” €“is paralleled by the rise of his archrival, Lucius, in Imperial politics.  As both reach the top of their game, they clash once again in a final battle that settles all scores.  Set against the turbulent and erotic setting of Nero'€™s Empire, Sand of the Arena is an action-packed  tale of graphic arena battles, family devotion, friendship, and   vengeance.

commodus and hercules

M. P. Speidel, in Commodus the God-Emperor and the Army, (on the Tittianus Altar in Dura-Europos), The Journal of Roman Studies  Vol. 83 (1993), pp. 109-114, illustrated.  (JSTOR, limited access), writes:

In A.D. 192, the last year of his reign, Commodus threw restraint to the winds and had the senate declare him a god.  He assumed such titles as Conqueror of the World, Roman Hercules, and All-Surpasser and named the twelve months of the year after himself. Founding Rome anew, he gave it the name Colonia Commodiana and ordered the legions likewise to be called Commodianae.  Before the year was out, on 3rd December, he was murdered, his memory cursed.

and later:

While Commodus was declared Caesar on 27 November 176 and reckoned his rule from that day, he became sole ruler only on 17 March 180, when Marcus Aurelius died.  He therefore established 17 March as a second anniversary day of his reign to be celebrated.  After Commodus' death, 17 March was abolished as a holiday and, unlike his birthday, not revived when Septimius Severus restored Commodus' good name.

mosaic makers and their craft

Longinus Flavius Libertus, the freedman sleuth of Rosemary Rowe’s  The Legatus Mystery (from the Libertus Mysteries Series), is a pavement maker, a designer and maker of mosaics.

Roman mosaics were usually made of small square tesserae of 10mm x 10mm (3/8" x 3/8") size.

Below are a number of links/images of extant Roman mosaics, most of them quite elaborate.  It seems doubtful that our Libertus did much more than geometric patterns –which could be very intricate though – but may have had other design templates.  Occasionally, the mosaicist would sign his work, for example, The artist at work. 

In my travels in 1999 through Germany, I went to Bad Kreuznach near Mainz, where two mosaic floors were discovered in the remains of a Roman villa, in 1893 and 1966, and are now preserved in a museum barn.  They are presumed to be from the 2nd century AD, the period in which the Libertus mysteries are set.  So they are quite appropriate for our upcoming chat on February 7.

The better known is the Gladiator Mosaic, the other the Oceanus Mosaic, a favored theme.  (Click on the images below. Oh dear, old software, I have to re-edit those!)

gaius ofonius (sophonius) tigellinus

In The Kingdom of the Wicked, Gaius Ofonius Tigellinus is the most vicious enabler of the emperor Nero. 

Tigellinus was indeed a historical figure.  He became Praetorian Prefect in AD 62, survived the initial civil war after Nero’s death, but was eventually forced to commit suicide in 69 by Otho. 

 Jona Lendering (livius.org) maintains that “history has been unkind towards Tigellinus, who was one of the closest and most loyal advisers of the emperor Nero (54-68) during the second half of his reign” – read more.

the colosseum

Gibbon, in Chapter XII of Decline & Fall, provides us with an eloquent description – but whenever is he not eloquent? –  of the games and the colosseum  (Spectacles of  Rome and The amphitheatre).

"...Posterity admires, and will long admire, the awful remains of the amphitheatre of Titus who so well deserved the epithet of Colossal..."

In a footnote, he refers to Maffei, Verona Illustrata, p. iv. l. i. c. 2.  I could not find this online, but instead, there is a Piranesi illustration, c.1760.

For detailed information on the Colosseum, one can go to Lacus Curtius, which has both Amphitheatrum Flavium (Platner's) and a more general Amphitheatrum (Smith's Dictionary), the latter with drawings and photos.

There is also a paper (pdf format) titled The Amphitheatre Construction Problem.

--> A March 2007 postscript