The exhibition of gladiatorial combats, which generally preceded the departure of a general upon a foreign campaign, was part of the soldier’s training (and every citizen was regarded as a soldier), from which he received the last finish of his education, and was taught to regard wounds and death as the natural incidents of his calling. These were probably the most ancient of the military spectacles. The combats of wild beasts, and of men with beasts, were a corruption of the noble science of war which the gladiatorial contests were supposed to teach; they were a concession to the prurient appetite for excitement, engendered by an indulgence which, however natural in a rude and barbarous age, was actually hardening and degrading. The interest these exercises at first naturally excited degenerated into a mere passion for the sight of death; and as the imagination can never be wholly inactive in the face of the barest realities, the Romans learned to feast their thoughts on the deepest mystery of humanity, and to pry with insatiate curiosity into the secrets of the last moments of existence. In proportion as they lost their faith in a future life, they became more restlessly inquisitive into the conditions of the present.
The eagerness with which the great mass of the citizens crowded to witness these bloody shows, on every occasion of their exhibition, became one of the most striking features of Roman society, and none of their customs has, accordingly, attracted more of the notice of the ancient writers who profess to describe the manners of their times. By them they are often represented as an idle and frivolous recreation, unworthy of the great nation of kings; nor do we find the excuse officially offered for the combats of gladiators, as a means of cherishing courage and fostering the ruder virtues of antiquity, generally put forward as their apology by private moralists. Men of reflection, who were far themselves from sharing the vulgar delight in these horrid spectacles (and it should be noticed that no Roman author speaks of them with favour, or gloats with interest on their abominations), acquiesced without an effort in the belief that it was necessary to amuse the multitude, and was better to gratify them with any indulgence they craved for than to risk the more fearful consequences of thwarting and controlling them. The blood thus shed on the arena was the price they calculated on paying for the safety and tranquillity of the realm.
Roman Weights
In theory, at least, the men who were thus thrust forth to engage the wild beasts were condemned criminals; but it was often necessary to resort to the expedient of hiring volunteers to furnish the numbers required, and this seems to prove that the advantage was generally on the side of the human combatant. The gladiators, although their profession might be traced by antiquarians to the combats of armed slaves around the pyre of their master, ending in their mutual destruction in his honour, were devoted to no certain death. They were generally slaves purchased for the purpose, but not unfrequently free men hired with liberal wages; and they were in either case too costly articles to be thrown away with indifference. They were entitled to their discharge after a few years’ service, and their profession was regarded in many respects as a public service, conducted under fixed regulations. Under the emperors, indeed, express laws were required to moderate the ardour even of knights and senators to descend into the arena, where they delighted to exhibit their courage and address in the face of danger. Such was the ferocity engendered by the habitual use of arms, so soothing to the swordsman’s vanity the consciousness of skill and valour, so stimulating to his pride the thunders of applause from a hundred thousand admirers, that the practice of mortal combat, however unsophisticated nature may blench at its horrors, was actually the source perhaps of more pleasure than pain to the Roman prize-fighters. If the companions of Spartacus revolted and slew their trainers and masters, we may set against this instance of despair and hostility the signal devotion of the gladiators of Antonius, who cut their way through so many obstacles in a fruitless effort to succour him. But the effect of such exhibitions upon the spectators themselves was wholly evil; for while they utterly failed in supplying the bastard courage for which they were said to be designed, they destroyed the nerve of sympathy for suffering which distinguishes the human from the brute creation.[c]
TO THE TIGERS
SHEPPARD’S ESTIMATE OF THE GLADIATORIAL CONTEST
The gladiatorial combats were, above all things else, the distinctive characteristics of Rome. Rome, in her fallen days, without virtue, without faith, without trust in her gods or in herself, loved, believed in, deified one idol still—Homicide. The butcheries of the amphitheatre exerted a charm upon the minds of men, for which literature, art, philosophy, religion, and the simple enjoyments of domestic life were flung aside. Existence became a frightful phantasmagoria—an alternation of debauch and blood.