In the text below Tertullian, a Christian author from the late 2nd/early 3rd century CE, explains the origins of munera, though given his vehement disgust of the practice (including the fact that he equated the exhibitions to the invocation of demons), the reliability of his history can be questioned. As private games, the expense was borne entirely by the person holding them: unlike chariot racing or theatre you could not access public funds (you also did not need to have a current position as an elected magistrate). While we are uncertain of their true beginnings, we do know that our first records of gladiators in Rome show that gladiatorial fights were given as part of munera, games vowed by private individuals, usually to mark the death of a close male relative. Gladiators held – or were at least expected to hold – those values, putting the Romans in an odd position of both disparaging certain people for being a lower social class, while at the same time admiring them for representing what it meant to be a great Roman. In fact, it is ironic to note that in some ways, gladiators were very Roman: the ideal Roman man had virtus, a Latin word that contained connotations of strength, courage and general manliness (vir is the Latin word for man). Despite opposition from some quarters (there were multiple laws passed that attempted to restrict elites from “disgracing themselves” in arenas), the allure of gladiators evidently outshone the general concepts of Romanness for many. And perhaps most damning of all were the number of senators, equestrians and other elites who wanted to fight as gladiators in the arena. Outside of the arena, a group of gladiators started the Third Servile War (also known as the War of Spartacus), a rebellion in the south of Italy from 73-71 BCE that took the proud, powerful Roman military nearly three years to put down. As said above, women – and women of high status – also fought as gladiators, further upsetting more traditional members of the Roman public. Gladiator games and the fighters themselves could be wildly popular, and multiple Roman writers critiqued their fellow citizens for loving the games too much – letting them incite unRoman-like passion.
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But while gladiators were, in the words of Roman historian Lucius Annaeus Florus, as “the worst sort of men”, they could have a disproportionally large impact on Rome. Most gladiators were slaves, prisoners of war or condemned criminals, and like actors, prostitutes and all others who were considered to “sell their bodies” for entertainment, gladiators were infamis – if freed or free, they were Roman citizens, but stripped of most of their civic rights. Originally held as part of munera (private games to mark the death of a relative), these fights quickly became widespread and grew in size, eventually becoming spectacles in their own right. Gladiators were not always part of the fabric of Roman life: the first fights we have record of took place in 264 BCE, when three pairs of gladiators fought at a funeral for the father of a former consul (see below).
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Thus gladiators could be used as a mirror for Roman manhood, and as an example of how to behave, even as at the same time the Romans passed laws against elites and ‘respectable’ men and women fighting as gladiators. Gladiators were complex symbols to the Romans, showing both degradation and honour at the same time: they might be slaves, freed, or disgraced citizens, but at the same time it took courage and bravery to look death in the face and accept it without flinching and that quality the Romans valued. While not possessing the same popularity as charioteers or mime, gladiators were an essential part both of Roman spectacles and of how Romans articulated and celebrated their own identity and power (it takes a lot of power to have the ability to command two men to fight to the death as part of mass entertainment).
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how gladiators could be seen both as unRoman and as symbolizing Roman values of courage and unflinching bravery.the presentation of gladiators from a range of (nearly all) elite source.the social and legal status of gladiators.