Roman Gladiators Essay Research Paper Pads

Roman Gladiators Essay, Research Paper

Pads.…We Don t Need No Stinkin Pads. Men give them their souls, women their bodies too…On one and the same account, they glorify and degrade and diminish them-indeed, they openly condemn them to ignominy and the loss of civil rights, excluding them from the senate house and rostrum, the senatorial and equestrian orders, and all other honors or distinctions of any type. The perversity of it! Yet, they love whom they punish; they belittle whom they esteem; the are they glorify, the artist they debase. What judgment is this: on account of that for which he is vilified, he is deemed worthy or merit! (Tertullian, De spectaculis 22). The gate opens and you run out into the huge circle, into the view of 50,000 cheering or jeering spectators, all around you people are dying, and if you are not quick with your wits and your actions, you will be next. You are not in some rugby game gone terribly wrong, you are in the Coliseum in ancient Rome and you are a gladiator. Perhaps you are a slave, a captured warrior from a rival nation, or a convicted criminal, but there is no time to categorize now, you must use every ounce of your being to not be killed. This was the scene for many thousands of people who either chose or were forced into the gladiatorial arena to fight for glory and for their lives. However, there was much more to these games than just the fighting, although the fighting was the main event of the proceedings. One important aspect that is often overlooked when discussing gladiatorial games, are the actual arenas. Many small towns had their own arenas where they may have held their own games, but no arena in the world could compare to the Flavian Amphitheater, later known as the Coliseum. The building of the coliseum was began by the emperor Vespasian, and the emperor Titus completed the third and fourth stories and celebrated the completion of the amphitheater with the games that lasted for 100 days in 80 CE. The coliseum had seating for around 50, 000 people with special seats for the people who held higher positions. It was kind of like any sporting event today, you get your celebrities and political figures closer to the floor and your commoners in the nosebleed seats, and four stories up could give you a bit of a nosebleed. The floor of the coliseum hid special cages and pens for animals or people who could appear at any time and give the effect of coming out of thin air and add yet another deadly element for the combatants to negotiate.There were different types of gladiators, each with different types of weapons and armor. A Thracian gladiator had a wide-brimmed crested helmet and a short curved sword, in addition to high leg armor. A Secutor gladiator, had an egg shaped helmet with round eye hole, armor on one leg, and a legionary style sword and shield. The Retiarius style of gladiators, had an arm protector, a large net, a trident, and no helmet. Another interesting type of gladiator was known as the Bestiarius, and this type of gladiator specialized in fighting animals, although these gladiators were the lowest of all gladiators in rank and popularity. The gladiatorial games were much more than just a bunch of guys fighting each other, they were an extravagant celebration of the power of the emperor and the success of the empire. The day would usually begin with a procession led by the emperor that would include all of the combatants and condemned to be dealt with that day. The first thing that one would witness would be mock fights or animal displays featuring trained animals or fights that pitted animals against animals or animals against the Beastiarius. After this your lunch would be complemented by witnessing the death of criminals accused of the most heinous of crimes such as arson, murder or being a Christian, which is considered a combination of treason and sacrilege, so you kind of cover more ground with that one. Sometimes these executions would be in the form of animal versus unarmed man, or a re-enactment of a mythological tale in which the star really dies. These rituals were extremely popular events and were rivaled in magnificence only by the triumphs that were celebrated after great success in battle. The extravagance of these events was one of the aspects that makes them so interesting. Every gladiator swore an oath solemn oath called the sacramentum gladitorium, which was a bit similar to the oath that all legionaries took, but much more dire: I will endure to be burned, to be bound, to be beaten, and to be killed by the sword. Everyone who became a gladiator was automatically infamis, or below the law and by definition not a respectable citizen. A small number of upper class men chose to fight in the arena as a gladiator, but this was generally looked down upon, as a higher class citizen lowering himself to a lower level. Another interesting aspect of the gladiators was the way that they were viewed by the Roman people. Basically people fell into one of two sides when it came to gladiators, one side that thought that gladiators were noble and a brilliant display of bravery and courage , and others that believed the gladiators and the gladiatorial games to be butchery and a ever too realistic sign of the times, regarding the lack of importance placed on human life. The first group who believed the gladiators to be noble believed that there was nothing more noble than for a man to fight to prevent his own death and if