Download You are to write a personal account of the games from the point of

NAME:____________
PERIOD:__________
You are to write a personal account of the games from the point
of view of a spectator, the emperor, a lanista (an owner of the
gladiators), or a gladiator himself. For information, you can use
the Journey Across Time p. 305 or the Human Heritage
textbook, p. 238-239. You may use the Roman News, the
attached information or any other resource you feel might help
you with this assignment. The accounts must be written in
complete sentences and answer the following questions:
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Describe the Colosseum.
Describe the gladiator. What type of gladiator is he? How
do you know? (What is he wearing? What type of weapons is
he using?)
Describe what happened during the event. Who or what
other than the gladiator was present?
Describe the spectators. How do they react? How many are
in the arena? What role do they play?
Where is the emperor? What role does he play in the
games?
Describe the life and training of the gladiator.
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Roman Colosseum
The Colosseum or Flavian Amphitheater was begun by Vespasian, inaugurated
by Titus in 80 A.D. and completed by Domitian. Located on marshy land
between the Esquiline and Caelian Hills, it was the first permanent
amphitheater to be built in Rome. Its monumental size and grandeur as well
as its practical and efficient organization for producing spectacles and
controlling the large crowds, make it one of the great architectural
monuments achieved by the ancient Romans. The Colosseum was designed to
hold 50,000 spectators, and it had approximately eighty entrances so
crowds could arrive and leave easily and quickly.
The amphitheater is a vast ellipse with tiers of seating for 50,000
spectators around a central elliptical arena. Below the wooden arena floor,
there was a complex set of rooms and passageways for wild beasts and other
provisions for staging the spectacles. Eighty walls radiate from the arena
and support vaults for passageways, stairways and the tiers of seats. At the
outer edge circumferential arcades and the stairways link each level.
The three tiers of arcades are faced by three-quarter columns and
entablatures, Doric in the first story, Ionic in the second, and Corinthian in
the third. Above them is an attic story with Corinthian pilasters and small
square window openings in alternate bays. At the top brackets and sockets
carry the masts from which the velarium, a canopy for shade, was suspended.
The construction utilized a careful combination of types: concrete for the
foundations, travertine for the piers and arcades, tufa infill between piers
for the walls of the lower two levels, and brick-faced concrete used for the
upper levels and for most of the vaults.
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Gladiators1 were usually recruited from criminals, slaves
(especially captured fugitives), and prisoners of war.
Criminals, having lost their citizen rights and slaves and
prisoners of war having none, had no choice about
becoming a gladiator. Some free-born men, however,
although they had not lost their citizen rights, voluntarily
chose the profession and bound themselves body and soul
to the owner of a gladiatorial troupe (lanista) by swearing
an oath "to endure branding, chains, flogging or death by
the sword" and to do whatever the master ordered. It
has been estimated that by the end of the Republic,
about half of the gladiators were volunteers (auctorati),
who took on the status of a slave for an agreed-upon period of time.
The living conditions of gladiators were harsh but, as profitable
investments, they perhaps lived better than many commoners in
terms of food, housing, and medical attention. New or
undisciplined men were shackled and unattended only in the
bathroom, but trained gladiators were not always bound,
imprisoned, or even confined to barracks.2 As a gladiator, he
could achieve the kind of public adulation that modern athletes
enjoy today.
It should also be noted that some emperors were swept away by gladiator
mania, such as Caligula and Commodus (late second century AD). Both of
these emperors actually appeared in the arena as gladiators, no doubt with
opponents who were careful to inflict no harm. Both of these emperors were
mentally unstable and apparently felt no inhibitions in indulging their
gladiatorial fantasies. But gladiator mania affected not only the mentally
unbalanced. At least seven other emperors of sound mind (including Titus
and Hadrian) either practiced as gladiators or fought in gladiatorial
contests.
Gladiators were owned by a person called a lanista and were trained in the
lanista’s school (ludus). Gladiatorial combat was as much a science as modern
boxing (Sen. Ep. 22.1). Training involved the learning of a series of figures,
which were broken down into various phases. Sometimes fans complained
that a gladiator fought too mechanically, according to the numbers. In the
early Empire there were four major gladiatorial schools, but by this time,
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the training of gladiators had been taken over by the state. No doubt it was
thought too dangerous to allow private citizens to own and train gladiators,
who could be easily turned into a private army for revolutionary purposes.
Therefore, with very few exceptions, gladiators were under the control and
ownership of the emperor, although the lantista continued to train and own
gladiators outside of Rome. The lanista made a profit by renting or selling
the troupe. This was a very lucrative business, but on the other hand, he was
viewed as among the lowest of the low on the social scale. The objection was
that these men derived their whole income from treating human beings like
animals.
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