HistoryExtra Home of Britain’s bestselling history magazine and award-winning podcast 2025-12-22T12:07:28.000Z https://www.historyextra.com/tag/gladiators/feed/atom HistoryExtra <![CDATA[Think you know everything about ancient Rome? These 25 facts will prove otherwise]]> https://www.historyextra.com/membership/think-you-know-everything-about-ancient-rome-these-25-facts-will-prove-otherwise/ 2025-12-22T12:07:28.000Z 2025-11-28T13:02:32.000Z 1. The Romans lived in an independent state for more than 2,200 years

According to tradition, Rome was founded in 753 BC, shortly after the beginning of the Italian Iron Age. Its inhabitants were Latin-speaking pagans who lived along the river Tiber in what is now central Italy. The empire of Trebizond, the last independent Roman kingdom descended from that state, was captured in 1461 by an Ottoman army equipped with gunpowder weapons. The people living in Trebizond also called themselves ‘Roman’, but they were Christians who lived in a city on the Black Sea coast of modern Turkey and spoke a language they called Romeika (which translates as 'Roman', but which we now call Greek).

2. The Roman empire once included all, or part of, nearly 50 countries

At the empire’s greatest extent in AD 117, Roman territory stretched from what is now the Atlantic coast of Portugal to the Persian Gulf beaches in Kuwait, from southern Egypt near the current Sudanese border to northern England, and from just south of Casablanca in Morocco to the Caspian Sea shores of Azerbaijan. The land area of the Roman empire was smaller than Australia, but if one included the territorial waters controlled by Rome (as is customary with modern states) the empire would rank as the fifth-largest country on earth if it existed today.

3. As much as one-third of the world’s population lived under Roman control

Late during the reign of the emperor Trajan (ruled AD 98–117), it is thought that the Roman empire reached a population of 80 million, out of a total world population of around 230 million. In modern terms, Rome’s share of the world population at that moment would be nearly equivalent to a country with the combined populations of India and China.

4. Rome was the first city in the world with a million residents

Rome reached a population of 1 million during the first century BC, and aside from temporary population decreases caused by plagues or natural disasters, did not fall below that level until the end of the fourth century AD. This is even more remarkable considering that poor sanitation and crowded conditions meant that the city lost as much as 3 per cent of its population each year to disease – a number far greater than the birthrate. Rome’s massive population was sustained through large-scale migration from other parts of the empire, nearly every year, for five centuries.

5. Hadrian’s Wall was NOT the longest Roman wall – and nor was it the most northern

Almost everyone has heard of Hadrian’s Wall, the defensive structure that once stretched 73 miles across what is now northern England. However, an even longer fortification built under Hadrian and his successor, Antoninus Pius, extended nearly 190 miles across southern Germany. It began roughly where the Rhine turns west at Mainz, and extended to meet the Danube near Regensburg.

Antoninus Pius also ordered the construction of the empire’s northernmost wall – the eponymous Antonine Wall – which stretched 39 miles across what is now Scotland, from the Firth of Clyde to the Firth of Forth.

6. The Romans produced more than 25 million coins each year

Following a reform instituted by joint emperors Diocletian and Maximian in AD 294, the Romans established a network of 15 mints across the empire – all the way from Londinium (London) to the Egyptian city of Alexandria. Although production slowed around 100 years later, no state in the world would again match Rome’s numismatic productivity until the 19th century.

• Read more | How the Romans "reversed circumcision" and 5 other shocking medical realities from the ancient empire

7. Rome’s ‘eighth hill’ is a load of old rubbish… literally

The Testaccio region of Rome is now famous for its nightlife, but it takes its name from Monte Testaccio, an artificial hill that is 35 metres tall and created from the remains of ceramic shipping containers offloaded from barges along the Tiber. Most of the pottery has been dated to the period between AD 140 and 250, though the base of the hill may be much older.

Despite its unusual provenance, Monte Testaccio is sometimes described as Rome’s ‘eighth hill’, in addition to the seven other hills within the city walls: the Aventine, Caelian, Capitoline, Esquiline, Palatine, Quirinal and Viminal hills.

WATCH | Dr David Musgrove finds out what the Romans really got up to on the loo

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8. The Pantheon is the oldest intact, continually used building in the world

Originally created in the style of a conventional Roman temple in the first century BC, the Pantheon was rebuilt under the direction of the emperor Hadrian in the AD 120s. The ground level was originally much lower than it is today, and when one approached the structure from the front, it appeared to be a normal temple because the structure’s 43-metre-wide dome was obscured by its triangular pediment (gable).

Nearly two millennia later, the Pantheon’s dome remains the largest of its kind in the world – its survival no doubt linked to the decision to convert the building into a Christian church in AD 609.

9. There was once a giant city plan, carved on marble blocks, that showed every street and building in Rome

Between AD 203 and 211, the emperor Septimius Severus ordered the creation of a 234-metre-square map of the city of Rome that included accurate renderings of the ground-floor architectural plans for every building in the city. Carved on marble blocks, the map was hung on a wall of the Temple of Peace, which now forms the northern exterior of the Basilica of St Cosmas and Damian.

As of 2025, more than a thousand fragments of the Severan Marble Plan have been discovered since the Renaissance, representing around 10 per cent of the original map. Because many of these include the name of the building they represent, it has been extremely useful for archaeologists looking to identify newly discovered architectural remains. Today, the fragments are on display in the new Museo della Forma Urbis on Rome’s Caelian Hill.

10. Rome is still surrounded by its ancient walls

The Aurelian Walls that surround the city of Rome were built in the AD 270s, but they continued to be used by the city’s defenders until the late 19th century. The breaching of the walls by the army of the Kingdom of Italy in September of 1870 represented the final step in Italian unification.

11. You can find an ancient wall in McDonald’s

The Servian Walls of the fourth century BC may be less famous than the Aurelian Walls, but they have much more character. Stretching around 12 miles, multiple fragments of the walls still speckle the modern city of Rome. The largest fragment can be found next to Termini Station, but the most memorable remains are now found in the McDonald’s restaurant on the train station’s lower level.

12. Rome’s walls were formidable… but Constantinople’s were MUCH more difficult to breach

Rome has been captured numerous times since the Aurelian Walls were built, but the city of Constantinople (modern Istanbul, Turkey) – which became the Roman empire’s eastern capital in AD 330 – has fallen to invaders on just three occasions. The city remained under Roman control for nearly 900 years until its walls were breached by the soldiers of the Fourth Crusade in 1204, before being recaptured by the Romans in 1261. It then fell to the Ottomans in 1453, but has not been seized since.

13. The Roman empire was home to one of the most fought-over cities in the world

Although only 134 miles from Constantinople, Adrianople (modern Edirne, Turkey) has been the site of at least 15 different battles and sieges. The last two occurred in 1913 when Bulgaria captured the city from the Ottoman empire before losing it again later that year.

14. The Colosseum was the largest (but not the only) amphitheatre

Rome’s Flavian Amphitheatre, or Colosseum, was once capable of seating 50,000 people, making it almost 30 per cent larger than the empire’s next-largest arena in Capua. But the Colosseum was unique because of its remarkable size, not because amphitheatres were rare. In fact, the remains of more than 230 amphitheatres have been found in former Roman cities, stretching all the way from Britain to Israel. One such example in Cahors, France, was discovered during the construction of a car park that is now aptly named the Parking Amphithéâtre. Another, found in suburban Paris, now serves as the courtyard for a high school.

15. Arenas weren’t just for gladiator fights

Thanks in part to the 2000 movie Gladiator and its recent sequel, Roman amphitheatres are now commonly associated with clashes between sandal-wearing warriors. However, gladiator battles weren’t the only events to take place in these ancient arenas. In fact, spectators were as interested in events that displayed exotic wild animals like rhinos, lions and ‘camel-leopards’ (giraffes). The largest games on record – the 100 days of spectacles marking the opening of the Colosseum in AD 81 – saw upwards of 9,000 animals killed.

• Read more | Sharks in the arena? Gladiator II's real history and historical accuracy explained

16. Commodus was a much better fighter than Hollywood would have us believe

In comparison to Maximus (Russell Crowe), Gladiator’s main antagonist, Commodus (Joaquin Phoenix), is depicted as an unremarkable fighter – but this is a distortion of the truth. Following a failed assassination plot orchestrated by his sister Lucilla, the real-life Commodus sent for instructors from around the world to teach him how to shoot arrows, throw javelins, and excel in hand-to-hand combat. As his skills increased, Commodus wanted to show his subjects what he could do. In one memorable display in the Colosseum, the senator Cassius Dio witnessed the emperor “dispatching, with his own hands, five hippos and two elephants in two days. He also killed rhinos and a camel-leopard”.

Another time, Commodus arranged for “a hundred lions to appear in one group” and then “killed the entire hundred with exactly one hundred javelins” so that “no one saw a single extra javelin.” While Dio did not approve of these displays, even Commodus’s worst critics could not deny his talent.

WATCH | Historian Alison Futrell discusses the real history behind Gladiator II

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17. Chariot racing was HUGELY popular

The Circus Maximus in Rome, the main site for chariot races, adjoined the imperial palace and had seating for at least 150,000 people. On competition days, 800 horses could race in as many as 24 different contests. The last races held in the Circus Maximus took place in AD 549, but racing continued at Constantinople’s 100,000-seater Hippodrome into the 13th century.

18. Chariot racing was the football of its day

Rome originally had four charioteer teams: the Reds, Whites, Greens and Blues. The Reds and Whites were the most historic, but they were surpassed in prominence by the Greens and Blues during the first century AD. The teams had franchises that competed in major cities across the empire and even boasted organised groups of supporters (akin to modern football ultras) prone to riotous behaviour.

Star drivers, who could often change teams during their careers, frequently earned enormous amounts of money. The tombstone of Gaius Appuleius Diocles, one of the greatest charioteers of the second century AD, mentions that he won 1,462 races and earned 35,863,120 sesterces in prizes across a 24-year career spent racing for the Reds, Whites and Greens. Although he is believed to have died at the age of 42 and would have kept only a portion of his winnings, his career earnings exceeded the fortunes of most Roman senators.

19. Rome became the first large empire to enact universal citizenship

In AD 212, the emperor Marcus Aurelius Antoninus – better known by his nickname, Caracalla – issued a law making all free people in the empire Roman citizens. The new citizens had to legally change their names to honour their new benefactor, flooding the Roman bureaucracy with tens of millions of people now bearing the name ‘Aurelius’.

The reason for Caracalla’s generosity? He wanted everyone in the empire to celebrate the murder of Geta, Caracalla’s brother and co-emperor who was killed in his mother’s arms.

20. Roman trade across the Indian Ocean was hugely lucrative

When we think of ancient trade, the Silk Road – the sprawling network of trade routes stretching some 4,000 miles between China and the Mediterranean – often springs to mind. Yet, it wasn’t the only source of wealth for the Romans. Merchants also travelled across the Indian Ocean to Kerala, Tamil Nadu and Sri Lanka, carrying gold coins and bringing back spices and exotic animals.

At times, the demand for Roman coins in India and Sri Lanka so exceeded the supply that Indian mints struck their own coins featuring the portraits of Roman imperial figures and legends written in Latin.

21. The Romans developed a sophisticated financial system

From the second century BC, Roman bankers managed investment accounts that their clients could use for depositing money and making transfers. The system was so sophisticated that emperor Trajan used subsidised government loans to fund social welfare programmes in the second century AD.

22. The Romans invented some truly terrifying military technology

The Romans developed a napalm-like substance commonly known as ‘Greek fire’ which was placed in hand grenades or sprayed from hoses equipped with special nozzles – usually against enemy naval forces. When the substance ignited, it even burned on water.

The technology was first deployed in AD 672 and was used for more than 500 years against the navies of the Bulgars, Rus’ and Arabs. The empire lost the ability to manufacture Greek fire just before AD 1200, although no one really knows why.

23. The longest-serving Roman emperor was actually pretty unremarkable

He ruled for 66 years between AD 962–1028, but Constantine VIII’s passions for fine food and horses meant that he took little interest in state affairs until the last three years of his life. He instead trusted his older brother and co-emperor – the much more famous and capable emperor Basil II – to govern the empire for most of their lives. Coincidentally, Basil’s term in office (AD 960–1025), is the second-longest in Roman history.

• Read more | Step inside the ancient Roman empire's gladiatorial arenas, and witness 24 hours of shocking violence

24. TWO emperors share the record for the shortest reign

Father-and-son duo Gordian I and Gordian II ruled for a mere 22 days in AD 238. The Gordians, who were governing a province in north Africa without an army stationed there, foolishly rebelled against Maximinus Thrax – one of four other men who also claimed to be emperor that year. Although the Gordians received senatorial support in Rome, they were quickly dispatched by a general loyal to Maximinus.

As for the second-shortest reign, the emperor Nepotian barely outlasted the two Gordians by holding Rome for 28 days in June of AD 350.

25. It took a VERY long time for the Romans to adopt Christianity

When Constantine I famously converted to Christianity in AD 312, the territory he ruled was only around 10 per cent Christian. In fact, the Roman empire did not become a Christian-majority state until the AD 390s, and some pagan-majority communities lasted long enough that they negotiated the surrender of their cities to Muslim generals in the AD 630s. The Syrian city of Harran (now part of modern Turkey) even maintained temples dedicated to its moon god into the 11th century AD.

Edward J Watts is Alkiviadis Vassiliadis Endowed Chair and Distinguished Professor of History at the University of California, San Diego. He is the author of the The Romans: A 2,000-Year History (John Murray Press/Basic Books, 2025)

]]> HistoryExtra <![CDATA[Rome's worst nightmare: the story of Spartacus]]> https://www.historyextra.com/membership/romes-worst-nightmare/ 2025-06-05T08:01:12.000Z 2025-06-05T08:00:30.000Z It’s a measure of the enduring appeal of Stanley Kubrick’s 1960 swords-and-sandals epic that, when most of us hear the name Spartacus, a dimple-chinned Kirk Douglas springs immediately to mind. Heroic. Noble. Doomed. Roman citizens, it’s safe to say, saw Spartacus rather differently – as a rebellious slave who threatened the future of the Roman Republic. Violent. Disobedient. Dangerous.

Though writing in the imperial Roman era long after the defeat of Spartacus, the words of the author Plutarch (AD 46–c120) capture something of the dread the warrior inspired. “It is said that, when he was first brought to Rome to be sold, a serpent was seen coiled about his face as he slept,” noted Plutarch, “and his wife, who was of the same tribe as Spartacus, a prophetess, and subject to visitations of the Dionysiac frenzy, declared it the sign of a great and formidable power which would end in misfortune.”

So what’s the truth behind these very different legends? Why did Spartacus take up arms outside the gladiatorial arena? And why was the uprising he led – the third of the so-called Servile Wars, following rebellions in 135–132 BC and 104–c100 BC – perceived as being so threatening to Rome?

Brutal degradations

To answer these questions, it first helps to remember just how reliant upon slaves Rome had become by 73 BC, when the renegade band of trainee gladiators led by Spartacus burst out of their barracks in southern Italy. Their rebellion exposed the terrifying truth: that every city, every village and every villa estate was at risk from the slaves on whom every aspect of Roman life depended.

Paradoxically, this reliance on slave labour had grown from Rome’s success. Having seen off the naval trading power of Carthage in three Punic Wars (264–241 BC, 218–201 BC and 149–146 BC), and having seized Greece in 146 BC, Rome had vastly increased its reach and territory. The Romans had also defeated Macedon and, in 133 BC, been granted the kingdom of Attalus III of Pergamon (spanning much of western Anatolia, now in Turkey) by the terms of his will.

Booty poured into Rome. In an era when slavery was ubiquitous, this included the trafficking of human beings – a practice Rome industrialised on an unimaginably vast scale. Its generals brought back hundreds of thousands of slaves – people who were sold in its markets and put to work on tasks that ranged from looking after wealthy men and women in fine homes to labouring on plantations. For some of the least fortunate, the brutal degradations of the mines awaited.

The streets of Rome heaved with slaves scuttling about on the business of their masters and mistresses. Then there were the gladiators. This profession had grown out of a funerary custom of the Etruscans (the people of central Italy from whom the Romans borrowed many traditions) to evolve into a central component of crowd-pleasing Roman entertainment, funded by the elite as part of their political competitiveness.

Among those gladiators was Spartacus. Born in Thrace, an area in the south-eastern Balkans spanning parts of modern Turkey, Greece and Bulgaria, Spartacus had, according to one translation of the historian Appian (c95–c165 AD), “once served as a soldier with the Romans”. Not unlike the fictional Maximus Decimus Meridius in Ridley Scott’s 2000 blockbuster Gladiator, he had somehow been enslaved and eventually sold to a school run by the lanista (gladiator trainer) Lentulus Batiatus in Capua, southern Italy.

It seems that Spartacus’s military training stood him in good stead when, outraged by Batiatus’s treatment of his fighters, mostly Gauls and Thracians, he took part in a rebellion to overpower the training-school guards. Surviving accounts of the revolt written by Plutarch and Appian some 200 years later unsurprisingly don’t quite tally – an all too common problem with ancient sources. Nevertheless, it seems that around 200 gladiators planned a breakout, and that 78 did manage to escape. Only then did they elect Spartacus as leader. He had a reputation for being unusually wise and cultured for someone of his background. He was also exceptionally courageous and strong.

Whatever the precise details of those events, the Third Servile (or Spartacus) War had begun. Spartacus and his rebels made for the nearby slopes of Vesuvius, and were joined by runaway slaves and even some free peasants. Any loot gathered along the way was shared out equally – an egalitarian gesture that attracted others. They defeated soldiers sent from Capua and helped themselves to their equipment, discarding their own less-effective gladiatorial weapons.

Around 140 years later, Pliny the Elder (c23-79 AD) recorded how Spartacus had allegedly forbidden any of his followers to possess gold or silver. Pliny interpreted this rule as showing that slaves in Rome’s recent past had more moral fibre than Romans themselves.

Opportunity missed

At the start of the rebellion, few took Spartacus and his followers too seriously. Initially, the praetor (commander) Clodius was sent from Rome with 3,000 troops to trap the rebels on the volcano. The renegades, though, made ladders from vines and shinned down sheer cliffs to make their escape. Even then, arrogance and complacency prevailed in Rome, where no one appreciated quite how dangerous the revolt was becoming. Once more, only a scratch force was sent against Spartacus, who repeatedly beat off attacks. His army grew larger, stronger and better equipped day by day: with his military experience, Spartacus was able to oversee training and the manufacture of weapons.

Appian estimated the number of rebels at 70,000; however, such rounded figures are meaningless, especially when they involve Rome’s enemies. Not only was there no way of accurately measuring the strength of armies but, by exaggerating the strength of opponents, Roman victories were given additional sheen – a powerful incentive to tell tall tales after the event.

Only belatedly was a proper consular army of two legions sent out by the Senate. In 72 BC, they defeated a force of ‘30,000’ rebels led by another gladiator, the Gallic Crixus, killing “20,000” including Crixus himself.

• Read more | What were the lives of gladiators like in ancient Rome?

According to Plutarch, this defeat made Spartacus more cautious. “Spartacus was soon great and formidable,” he wrote, “but he took a proper view of the situation. Since he could not expect to overcome the Roman power, he began to lead his army toward the Alps, thinking it necessary for them to cross the mountains and go to their respective homes – some to Thrace and some to Gaul. But his men were now strong in numbers and full of confidence, and would not listen to him, but went ravaging over Italy.”

Determined to pursue his escape plan, Spartacus persevered with his march north – but was cut off by one of the consuls (Rome’s highest elected officials), while the other blocked his retreat. However, the consular army amounted to only about 10,000–12,000 men, so splitting them up was a mistake. Spartacus attacked each half of the Roman army in separate engagements: his force having now grown to (supposedly) 120,000, he defeated both, sending the consuls fleeing in separate directions.

Buoyed up, Spartacus headed towards Gaul, defeating the 10,000-strong army of the governor of Gallia Cisalpina (in the north of what’s now Italy). Spartacus executed 300 Roman prisoners as a sacrifice in honour of Crixus. He then marched on Rome and – acting as brutally as his former Roman masters – killed all of his remaining prisoners and his pack animals so that he could move as quickly as possible. By now, the consuls had regrouped and together tried to block Spartacus. He defeated them again.

Terrifying humiliation

That highly trained Roman troops were being repeatedly overcome by an army led by an ex-slave was a devastating and terrifying humiliation for the Roman military. Spartacus, though, understood that his force, for all its size, lacked the equipment and training to take Rome. Instead, he captured the city of Thurii (on the Gulf of Taranto in southern Italy) and traded with merchants for iron and brass to manufacture more arms. Another victory over a Roman army followed.

The Spartacus War was now in its third year, and the revolt represented an unmatched opportunity for any Roman general who could crush it. Rome had two great military leaders at the time. One was the fabulously wealthy Marcus Licinius Crassus (c115–53 BC), who had fought on the side of the dictator Sulla in the civil war of the 80s BC. The other was Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus (106–48 BC), commonly known as Pompey, who had recently crushed the rebellion of the senator Sertorius in Spain.

The Senate placed Crassus in charge of the war. Determined to win at all costs, and desperate to do so before Pompey was called upon to help, he raised an army of six legions and added the consular army of two legions – except those men he executed as punishment for their failure to defeat Spartacus previously.

In one ancient account of what followed, Crassus sent Mummius, one of his legates, with two of the legions to fight Spartacus. Mummius was defeated, and some of the survivors fled. Crassus regrouped them, but took the 500 most cowardly and decimated them – executing one in 10. Though brutal, his methods worked: facing 10,000 of Spartacus’s men, who were encamped some way from the main force, Crassus’s force killed two-thirds. With that victory under his belt, he led his men to rout the rest.

Spartacus’s army fled south to the sea, hoping to cross to Sicily, but was thwarted when Cilician pirates, who had agreed to help him with sea transport, double-crossed the rebels. He and his men were now trapped in what’s now Calabria, on the far south-western tip of Italy’s toe.

Plutarch described how any chance of the rebels escaping from southern Italy was thwarted: “[Crassus] determined to build a wall across the isthmus, thereby at once keeping his soldiers from idleness, and his enemies from provisions. The task was a huge one and difficult, but he accomplished and finished it, contrary to all expectations, in a short time, running a ditch from sea to sea through the neck of land 300 furlongs [about 37 miles] in length and 15 [Roman] feet [about 4.4 metres] in width and depth alike. Above the ditch he also built a wall of astonishing height and strength.”

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Whatever the justice of his cause, we should be under no illusions about Spartacus’s capacity for brutality. According to Appian, “He crucified a Roman prisoner in the space between the two armies to show his own men what fate awaited them if they did not conquer.”

Spartacus ignored the fortifications for a while but, as his food supplies dwindled, he was forced to break out with some of his men – and Crassus became worried that Spartacus might now decide to march on Rome. The events that followed are confused in the accounts, and difficult to follow. However, it seems that, though Spartacus suffered the defection of some of his army, he enjoyed some success, too.

The last battle

Back in Rome, concern that the siege might drag on even longer drove the Senate to invite Pompey and his army, recently returned from Spain, to head south and help defeat Spartacus. This infuriated Crassus, who believed that Pompey would take all the glory from such a victory, and was desperate to fight Spartacus before his rival arrived. So when the rebel leader tried to negotiate terms with Crassus, the Roman bluntly refused.

Nevertheless, Crassus seemed to have lost his chance of glory when Spartacus escaped and headed for Brundisium (now Brindisi) on the Adriatic coast in another attempt to flee by sea. The rebel leader, though, abandoned that plan when he heard that Lucullus, proconsul (governor) of Macedonia, had arrived back in Brundisium after defeating supporters of Mithridates, king of Pontus.

Crucially, at that point Spartacus defeated a force sent against him under the command of Quintus, one of Crassus’s officers. Until then, Spartacus had kept his head – but now “this success turned out to be the undoing of Spartacus, because it filled his slaves with overconfidence”, said Plutarch. Those rebels attacked the Roman soldiers as they were digging fortifications, and that confrontation forced Spartacus into preparing for a full-blown showdown with Crassus.

The story goes that Spartacus was brought his horse, ready to carry him into battle – but instead he pulled out his sword and killed it, saying that if he won this day, he would have many fine horses from the enemy – but if he lost, he would want none. The Roman and rebel armies finally met in open conflict in the clash that became known as the battle of the Silarius River – where, Plutarch and Appian affirm, Spartacus died on the field. Appian wrote that the renegade’s body was never found, but that he “was wounded in the knee, holding his shield in front of him and contending this way against his assailants until he and the great mass of those with him were surrounded and slain”.

Revenge and recrimination

The Romans fell on the remainder of Spartacus’s men, who were now floundering around in leaderless confusion. Crassus had won, but Pompey rolled up in time for his men to cut down the surviving rebels as they tried to escape. Some fled into the mountains, and Crassus pursued them.

According to Appian, the last 6,000 fugitives were captured and crucified by Crassus along the Via Appia between Capua and Rome. Pompey, though, claimed that it was he who, by mopping up the vestiges of the rebel forces, had brought the war to an end.

The following year, 70 BC, the two men were joint consuls – but disagreed on almost everything. Even worse for Crassus, Pompey was able to hold a magnificent triumph in Rome to celebrate his defeat of Sertorius in Spain, while Crassus was too ashamed to hold one for merely winning a slave war.

The Third Servile War had put Rome in a precarious position. Spartacus had dented the military prestige won by Rome over several centuries of expansion, and made a mockery of the military system that the Greek historian Polybius, writing in his Histories, had so feted only 80 years earlier.

The Roman historian Florus, writing almost two centuries later, summed up Roman disgust at what had happened: “I know not what name to give to the war which was stirred up at the instigation of Spartacus, for the common soldiers being slaves and their leaders being gladiators … added insult to injury which they inflicted upon Rome.”

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Never again?

Considering the damage to Rome’s prestige, one of the most remarkable aspects of the Spartacus War is that there was no repeat in later years. This certainly wasn’t because Rome changed its stance on slaves: untold numbers continued to be acquired in, for example, Caesar’s Gallic Wars.

This reliance on slaves had a profound impact on Roman society. Under the emperors from Augustus (27 BC–AD 14) onwards, historians habitually bemoaned how wealth and power were turning the Romans into feeble, luxury-loving layabouts. With slaves on hand to do almost everything for them – carrying them in litters, cooking, labouring, flapping away flies and even telling them the time – Romans who could afford these unpaid servants were, it was said, no equals of their ancestors, hardy farmers and soldiers.

Perhaps one of the reasons nothing like the Spartacus rebellion happened again was because the Romans, once the bloodshed and retribution were over, managed to find a way to give slaves a form of hope. The Romans were as barbaric as any other ancient civilisation – more so, in terms of the sheer scale of their dominance – but there was one crucial difference: they were endlessly pragmatic
and adaptable.

Not only did the Romans develop a system of manumission, giving slaves the opportunity to gain their liberty, but freedmen and freedwomen were able to run businesses, accumulate savings and see their children grow up not just free but eligible to vote and hold office. That did nothing to overturn the cruelty and injustice of slavery, but the tombstones of freedmen and freedwomen in the cemeteries of Rome, the port at Ostia and at Pompeii bear witness to the lives that some of the more successful built for themselves. It was certainly better than risking crucifixion along the Appian Way by rebelling.

Despite the risks they faced in the arena, gladiators, too, could become popular heroes and celebrated heartthrobs – they might even be freed, some becoming wealthy along the way. The truth, of course, was that most of them ended up dead or disabled long before that happened, but the fact is that there was no second Spartacus, nor anyone like him. No gladiator-led slave rebellion ever threatened Rome’s existence again.

A slave to the truth?

How accurate is Kubrick's 1960 blockbuster, Spartacus?

It’s one of the most famous films of the 20th century. When the Stanley Kubrick-directed Spartacus was released in 1960, its scale and ambition caught the imagination of cinema-goers everywhere. But how true to real events is it?  The answer is: more than you might think. The central narrative in the film is the conflict between Spartacus (Kirk Douglas) and Crassus (Laurence Olivier), reflecting historical accounts. In the movie, Crassus encounters Spartacus while watching a private bout at Batiatus’s gladiator training school, though is unaware of his identity. In fact, it seems that Crassus never knowingly saw Spartacus in real life.  Pompey does not appear in the film, though is mentioned. The success of the rebels’ breakout and defeat of Roman armies is essentially accurate, as is Spartacus being wrong-footed by the duplicity of the Cilician pirates. The brilliant Peter Ustinov played the real lanista Batiatus, shamelessly stealing every scene in which he appeared. Who could forget his pompous arrival with his entourage in search of new gladiators, spying a bedraggled Spartacus being punished for hamstringing a guard? “Hamstrung? How marvellous,” he says, “I wish I’d been here! I’ll take him.” Some key characters in the film are fictitious, including Spartacus’s ex-slave wife from the gladiator barracks, Varinia (Jean Simmons), and Crassus’s slave Antoninus (Tony Curtis), who joins the revolt. In fact, Spartacus’s wife, name unknown, was said to have been Thracian.  The screenplay did capture vividly the notion of Rome as a living force beyond the insignificance of human beings. As Crassus, Olivier proclaims that Rome, “that bestrides the known world like a colossus”, cannot be withstood by any man. The city must be served, and all must abase themselves and grovel before Rome, he declares: “You must love her.” The final, celebrated “I’m Spartacus” scene, in which every one of the surviving rebels stands up to claim to be the eponymous hero, is of course pure movie make-believe. The mass execution along the Appian Way was not – this was Rome’s way of deterring any slaves from attempting such a venture in future.  In the movie, Varinia shows the dying Spartacus his son, promising that the boy would grow up in liberty: “He is free Spartacus, free.” Yet slavery lasted as long as the Roman empire and beyond.

Guy de la Bédoyère is a historian and broadcaster. His latest book is Populus: Living and Dying in the Wealth, Smoke and Din of Ancient Rome (Abacus, 2024)

]]> HistoryExtra <![CDATA[Blood, guts and spectacle: 6 shocking events from the history of ancient Roman gladiators]]> https://www.historyextra.com/membership/ancient-rome-gladiators-amphitheatres-who-history-julius-caesar-spartacus/ 2025-01-06T17:27:11.000Z 2024-11-14T17:12:59.000Z  

Julius Caesar turns death into mass entertainment

Of all Roman pastimes, gladiators excite the most fascination and horror to this day – not least because of the sneaking suspicion that, if revived, they would rapidly pick up a fervent following.

Yet, ironically, this most Roman of entertainments wasn’t the brainchild of the Romans. That dubious honour goes to the Etruscans, an ancient Italian people that emerged near the beginning of the first millennium BC. Gladiators used to fight in bouts to the death at Etruscan funerals – in short, they served as a form of human sacrifice.

The Romans derived many of their customs from the Etruscans. And so it was perhaps inevitable that, as they grew into the dominant force on the Italian peninsula, they would adopt gladiatorial combat with gusto. Decimus Junius Brutus, later a consul, was said to have been the first to lay on a gladiatorial show – in honour of his deceased father, in c264–262 BC.

Yet, as was the case with so many aspects of ancient Roman history, the concept of fighting to the death as mass entertainment was profoundly shaped by one Julius Caesar.

In 65 BC, Caesar used his position as aedile (junior magistrate) to initiate a programme of public shows to secure, in the words of the historian Suetonius, “the good will of the masses”. He laid on 320 gladiatorial bouts and animal fights – and did so both in his name and in association with the other aedile, Marcus Bibulus, but in a way that ensured it was widely assumed the occasions were all his work. That, of course, was precisely his intention.

Curiously, the 320 gladiatorial bouts represented a reduction of Caesar’s intentions. He had organised such a large number that his political opponents in the senate were terrified by the thought of so many armed men in Rome on Caesar’s payroll. And so they passed a law putting a cap on the numbers.

The fears were well-grounded. Gladiators supplied muscle for thug politicians in the late Republic. By the 50s BC, when Roman politics was becoming increasingly polarised during the age of the imperators Caesar, Pompey and Crassus, violence was routinely used to further political agendas. In 57 BC, the notorious senator Publius Clodius Pulcher rounded up a gang of gladiators to rush those assembled to vote on a measure. They attacked and killed some of the crowd.

In Rome, gladiatorial events later became the preserve of the emperors. The first, Augustus (Caesar’s heir and great-nephew), set the trend with multiple gladiatorial events, involving around 10,000 combatants. It was a sign of things to come.

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Spartacus gives his captors the fright of their lives

As bizarre as it may appear today, some gladiators were drawn to the profession by the violent glamour, and actually volunteered to lay their lives on the line. The vast majority, however, were there under duress, drawn mainly from the ranks of criminals and prisoners-of-war.

That’s not to say that they were thrown into the arena without a second’s preparation. Gladiators often spent long hours honing their martial expertise. Top-notch training may have made for better entertainment but, for the Roman authorities, it involved a huge element of risk. The most famous of all slave revolts was, of course, led by Spartacus, a former soldier in the Roman army who had been enslaved and sold for gladiatorial training at a school in Capua.

That training, allied with their leader’s natural intelligence, made Spartacus’s army of professional gladiators a formidable fighting force. It took two years (73–71 BC) and two armies to crush the rebellion, the Third Servile War, followed by the crucifixion of the rebels along the Appian Way (the road from Rome to Brundisium, now Brindisi).

Part of the reason that Spartacus’s army proved such an effective fighting force was that gladiators were skilled in the use of numerous weapons, such as swords, tridents and nets. They were also taught to employ a range of defensive equipment, including helmets, shields and guards.

There were many different types of gladiator who fought in the arena. One was the retiarius (from rete = ‘net’), who had no helmet and darted about the arena equipped with a net, dagger and trident. The murmillo, armed with a sword and small shield, was named after the Greek saltwater fish mormylos because of the long, high crest on his helmet. The secutor (‘pursuer’) had a plain helmet with two eyeholes and no crest, protecting him from being snagged by the net of a retiarius, and was armed with a sword and large shield.

• Read more | What were the lives of gladiators like in ancient Rome?

Gladiator specialisation was based on physical attributes. The most heavily armed had to be strong, while the retiarii needed to be agile and swift. Ethnicity was probably also a factor, because part of the entertainment was role-playing. Gladiatorial bouts were as much about theatrics as violence.

That brew of brutality and performance could earn gladiators fame – and the admiration of the opposite sex. “Celadus the Thracian, the gasp of all the girls!” shrieked one piece of graffiti from Pompeii. “Crescens is the lord of the dolly birds!” boasted another.

Not only could gladiators win hearts, they could also win their freedom. Some even went on to run their own gladiatorial schools, picking slaves and prisoners for their physique, educating them in the art of combat, and renting them out for shows. As the case of Spartacus proves, it was that education that made gladiators so potentially dangerous.

• Take the quiz | What type of Gladiator would you be?

Mob violence rages through Pompeii over a gladiatorial show

In the early decades AD, Emperor Tiberius had to send in two cohorts of soldiers to place Pollentia (now Pollenzo) in northern Italy under martial law. Just for good measure, his troops imprisoned many people, including the town councillors. The reason for these extreme measures was a gladiator show – or lack of it.

The people of Pollentia wanted a prominent centurion to stump up the funds to put on a show at the arena. He failed to oblige so the mob killed him and then refused to give up his body until, reported Suetonius, “Their violence had extorted money from his heirs for a gladiatorial show.”

Things got even worse in Pompeii later in the first century AD. The town was home to one of the Roman world’s oldest stone amphitheatres, built around 80–70 BC. Generations of Pompeian magistrates had lined up to compete with one another as impresarios, ingratiating themselves with the population by putting on gladiatorial combat. All that came to an ugly end in AD 59.

The problems started when a troublemaker called Livineius Regulus – who had been expelled from the senate – decided to put on a gladiatorial show. Supporters gathered at the arena in Pompeii and so did rival supporters from neighbouring Nuceria. They started hurling insults at each other in a way the Roman historian Tacitus described as being “typical of the petulance of country towns”.

• Read more | What was Pompeii like before the eruption of AD 79?

Unfortunately, the supporters started throwing stones at each other, and then blades were pulled. There being more Pompeians than Nucerians, the Pompeians soon overwhelmed their enemies. “As a result,” said Tacitus, “many of the Nucerians were carried maimed and wounded to the capital, while a large number mourned the deaths of children or of parents.”

Pompeii was severely punished for the outrage. Gladiatorial bouts were banned there for 10 years. As for the troublesome Livineius and his cronies, they were all sent into exile.

Nero delights the public by forcing his senators to fight

One of the problems with gladiatorial bouts was that there were only so many ways the Romans could be treated to the sight of human beings hacking each other to death. Boredom was inevitable.

During the reign of Nero (AD 54–68), the blood and gore had descended into repetitive tedium. Weary audiences watched the brutality barely half-awake. Impresarios trotted out the same old shows. Part of the problem was trying to please fussy audiences.

Petronius, Nero’s style guru, had one character in his Satyricon novel moaning about a lousy show in which only old and worn-out gladiators “who would have fallen over flat if you’d breathed on them” were sent out to battle. So bad were they that they were all flogged at the end to punish them for a lack of enthusiasm to fight.

Nero’s tutor, the Stoic philosopher Seneca, wrote a letter to a friend recounting how disappointed he’d been by a midday event: “I happened to stop off at a lunchtime show, hoping to enjoy myself with some wit and relaxation, where a man’s eyes can rest at the sight of the death of their fellow men.”

Yet it was just the opposite, he lamented. “The fights that used to take place were merciful by comparison. Now any mucking about is set aside and this is just plain murder. The fighters wear no armour, and their entire bodies are exposed to blows – and none of these are wasted.”

• Read more | Rethinking Nero: was the Roman emperor really so bad?

So how could Nero liven up the action? According to Suetonius, one solution was to force “400 senators and 600 equestrians, some of who were affluent and of excellent repute, to compete in the arena. Even those who battled with wild animals and carried out the various service duties were senators and equestrians.” That was one of the reasons many in the Roman crowd loved Nero. He had the common touch. Humiliating the aristocracy was perfect entertainment.

Nero wasn’t the only emperor to employ a little creativity when it came to putting on gladiator shows. Domitian (reigned AD 81–96) introduced an extra frisson with bouts between female gladiators, known as Amazons, while in AD 107 Trajan organised 123 days of games. Eleven thousand animals died this time, and 10,000 gladiators fought one another. Excess was becoming an end in itself.

Around 80 years later, the Roman mob was treated to a new type of spectacle: a gladiator-emperor. Commodus, whom you might remember was the emperor in the movie Gladiator, was in love with the glamour of the arena.

He acquired special chariot horses and dressed as a charioteer (as well as living with gladiators). According to the historian Cassius Dio, who witnessed Commodus’s antics, “He would enter the arena in the garb of Mercury, and casting aside all his other garments, would begin his exhibition wearing only a tunic and unshod.”

Another historian of the time called Herodian said: “It was easy for him to defeat his opponents in gladiatorial bouts, just by wounding them, because they regarded him as emperor instead of a gladiator, and allowed him to win.”

Britannia catches the bug for bloodsports

Gladiatorial bouts may have begun life as a niche activity at Etruscan funerals, yet, over the following centuries, they were to spread to all corners of the mighty Roman empire – and that includes to the north-western outpost of Britannia. We know this because the physical remains of amphitheatres have been found in places such as London, Silchester, Cirencester, Dorchester and Caerleon.

The famous Colchester vase depicts two gladiators, Memnon and Valentinus, in action. They were probably notable local gladiators in their day (the late second century). Meanwhile, the Roman villa at Rudston in Yorkshire had a mosaic featuring scenes from the arena, and gladiators are depicted on another at Bignor in Sussex.

• Read more | Bread and circuses: what happened in the amphitheatres of the Roman empire?

For the most part, amphitheatres of Roman Britain were built by creating turf embankments and digging out the arena. At Cirencester the amphitheatre was formed by digging out and adapting a quarry on the south-west side of the town (by the early second century). Stone walls were used to create revetments, entrance passageways and the arena wall. Despite natural erosion, the earthen embankments still rise to a height of about 8 metres.

At Dorchester the amphitheatre was built by adapting a Neolithic henge monument that conveniently supplied ready-made earth embankments around an arena-shaped and sized enclosure. London’s amphitheatre lay close to the fort of the governor’s garrison, and is open to the public today.

At the VI legion’s fortress and military colony at York a man called Victor was buried with a small bone label laid on his chest. It said: “Lord Victor, may you have a lucky win!”, an exhortation normally applied either to gladiators or charioteers.

The glory of the remains of the II legion Augusta’s base at Caerleon in south Wales is its amphitheatre. Today visitors can wander around the arena where gladiators fought and among the stone-revetted earthen embankments for the wooden seats that have long since rotted away. It had seats for around 5,000 or 6,000 spectators – enough for the legion – and probably doubled up as a venue for speeches to the troops and formal military displays.

A doctor embarks on an eye-catching change of career

Gladiators needed some looking after, despite the fact that they might end their lives mutilated and bloody on the arena floor.

One man employed to offer medical care to fighters was Gaius Futius Philargyrus, a freedman doctor of Rome’s gladiators in the first century AD. (His name was appropriately descriptive. It means ‘lover of the horse-training circuit’, but was probably used here in a more general sense to refer to a training arena.) We also know that the Greek doctor Claudius Galen’s first professional appointment was as a surgeon to gladiators.

• Read more | Roman medicine: 6 ways people stayed healthy in ancient Rome

Of course, often there was nothing a doctor could do to save gladiators from the injuries they sustained in the arena – a fact that is made grimly apparent by the contents of a cemetery at Ephesus in modern-day Turkey. Here, the graves were accompanied by inscriptions and tombstones that name and depict the dead as gladiators. The skeletons featured major bone injuries, some even demonstrably from blows made by a trident.

Another Roman-period cemetery – this time in Driffield Terrace in York – contains 80 or so skeletons, many of which may have been gladiators. Crucially, about 75 were adult men, which of course couldn’t possibly be representative of the population. A little taller than average and well-built, many of them bore the signs of injuries, some healed and some unhealed. It’s possible that before they were buried, some of the corpses were studied by doctors in post-mortems that could also be used for anatomical lessons.

The scientific writer Celsus thought gladiators provided useful evidence for anatomists. “Occasionally,” he wrote, “a gladiator in the arena, a soldier in battle, or a traveller attacked by highwaymen, is wounded so that some part of his insides is exposed.”

Interestingly, we know of at least one man whose life straddled the worlds of both medicine and fighting, earning a living as an eye doctor before, following a dramatic change of career, entering the arena as a gladiator. Unfortunately, it seems that this anonymous individual wasn’t a very good doctor – and that made him the target of one of the Roman poet Martial’s jokes. “You are now a hoplomachus [a type of gladiator],” quipped Martial. “Before you were an opthalmicus [an eye doctor]. You did as a doctor what you now do as a gladiator.”

In other words, the offending individual’s career had consisted of poking out people’s eyes.

Guy de la Bédoyère is a historian, broadcaster and author of Populus: Living and Dying in the Wealth, Smoke and Din of Ancient Rome (Abacus, 2024)

This article was first published in the December 2024 issue of BBC History Magazine

]]> Lauren Good <![CDATA[What gladiator would you be?]]> https://www.historyextra.com/period/roman/gladiator-quiz/ 2024-11-13T07:31:04.000Z 2024-11-13T07:30:58.000Z View Riddle on the source website]]> Tony Wilmott <![CDATA[What were the lives of gladiators like in ancient Rome?]]> https://www.historyextra.com/membership/gladiators-in-ancient-rome-how-did-they-live-and-die/ 2024-10-12T16:00:19.000Z 2024-01-15T12:10:28.000Z In 1993 Austrian archaeologists working at the Roman city of Ephesus in Turkey made a spectacular discovery – a cemetery marked by the tombstones of gladiators. The stones gave the names of the men and showed their equipment – helmets, shields, the palm fronds of victory.

With the tombstones were the skeletal remains of the fighters themselves, many of which bore the marks of healed wounds as well as the injuries that caused their deaths. Perhaps the most spectacular find was a skull pierced with three neat, evenly spaced holes. This man had been slain with the barbed trident wielded by a type of gladiator called a retiarius, who also fought with a weighted net.

The gladiator has long been an iconic symbol of ancient Rome, and a popular element in any Roman epic movie, but what do we really know about the lives and deaths of these men?

How much is known about the lives of gladiators?

Until the discovery of the cities of Vesuvius in the 18th century, virtually everything we knew about gladiators came from references in ancient texts, from random finds of stone sculptures and inscriptions, and the impressive structures of the amphitheatres dotted about all over the Roman empire.

It is difficult now to quite comprehend the impact that the discovery of Pompeii and Herculaneum (both in the 18th century) had on the classically educated of Europe, who suddenly saw the reality of Roman lives in a bewildering array of objects, graffiti and paintings.

• Read more about the discoveries of Pompeii and Herculaneum

The reality could be spectacular, and in some cases seemed to confirm the more lurid stories in the sources. In 1764 the temple of Isis at Pompeii confirmed the practise of mysterious and esoteric eastern religions. Two years later, in rooms around the courtyard of the theatre, a number of skeletons were found together with a large quantity of gladiatorial armour, identifying the rooms as a gladiator barracks. Among the dead was a woman adorned with bracelets, rings and an emerald necklace.

Ever since, this discovery has become part of the mythology not only of Pompeii, but of the arena. At the time, it seemed to confirm scandalous stories in ancient sources of wealthy and aristocratic women having sexual adventures with brawny gladiators – though we now see the 18 skeletons in this room as a group of frightened fugitives sheltering from the disaster of the volcanic eruption.

Gladiators' weapons and armour: how were they armed?

From the point of view of reconstructing the gladiator, the most important discovery was the bronze gladiatorial armour and weaponry. This included 15 helmets richly ornamented with mythological scenes, and six of the curious shoulder guards known as galerus.

Gladiators were divided into categories – each armed and attired in a characteristic manner – and were then pitched against one another in pairings designed to show a variety of forms of combat. Each different type of equipment provided varying levels of protection to the body, deliberately giving the opponent the opportunity to aim for specific points of vulnerability.

All gladiator categories wore a basic subligaculm and balteus (a loincloth and broad belt). Among the most heavily armed gladiators were the thraex (Thracian) and the hoplomachus (inspired by Greek hoplite soldiers). Both wore padded leg-guards with bronze greaves (a form of armour) strapped over them on their legs (14 of such greaves were found in Pompeii).

Each carried a small shield: rectangular for the thraex, who was armed with a short, curved sword; round for the hoplomachus, who carried a spear and short sword. Both wore a padded arm-guard or manica, but only on the sword/spear arm. The shield arm was unprotected, as was the torso.

The thraex and hoplomachus wore heavy bronze helmets of the type found in Pompeii. These had broad brims, high crests and face guards. Visibility was limited to what he could see through a pair of bronze grilles.

As gladiatorial re-enactors have discovered, breathing in these helmets isn’t easy, as the wearer is forced to inhale the air trapped in the face guard. Factor in fear and exertion – which would inevitably shorten the breath anyway – and you’ve got the makings of a lung-busting experience.

Another type of gladiator to wear a large helmet and carry a short sword was the murmillo. He was also armed with a large rectangular shield, which he used to defend his legs. He only wore armour on one leg – though the leg on the shield side was protected with padding and greave.

Two other gladiators – the provocator and secutor – also fought with one vulnerable leg, and only carried a manica on the weapon arm. While they also carried a short sword and large shield, they wore lighter helmets than the thraex, hoplomachus and murmillo.

The secutor’s helmet fitted close to his head. Visibility was restricted to two small eye-holes, and there was no decoration. The helmet was shaped like the head of a fish – for the simple reason that the secutor’s opponent, the retiarius, was equipped as a fisherman.

Gladiators in Britain

Compared with most other provinces of the Roman empire, Roman Britain has surprisingly little evidence for gladiators. The differences between Britain’s amphitheatres may help to explain this. Those sited at the legionary fortresses of Chester and Caerleon were built in the AD 70s to serve legionaries – the citizen-soldiers of Rome. Drawn from all over the empire, they would have expected to be provided with an amphitheatre – both for entertainment and to enact games on festivals associated with the imperial cult. The legionary amphitheatres were stone-built like many across the empire. However, at the British tribal capitals the Romans built earthwork amphitheatres. There is evidence to show that these were infrequently used, and it appears that the native population didn’t wholly embrace the Mediterranean concept of the Roman games. Despite this, there is evidence for the presence of gladiators. In 1738, a stone relief was found near Chester amphitheatre showing a left-handed retiarius – the only such depiction from the empire. And at Caerleon, a graffito on a stone shows the trident and galerus of a retiarius flanked by victory palms. These are the only references to gladiators from any British amphitheatre, and both are from the legionary sites. In Britain there is but a single gladiator wall painting. Of the three gladiator mosaics left to us, the best is a frieze of cupid-gladiators at the villa of Bignor in Sussex. This features a secutor, a retiarius, and the summa rudis (referee) in a comic strip of an arena event. Knife handles in bone and bronze are also found in the form of gladiators. An evocative piece is a potsherd discovered in Leicester in 1851, on which was scratched the words “VERECVNDA LVDIA : LVCIVS GLADIATOR”, or “Verecunda the actress, Lucius the gladiator”. This love token may relate to a couple in Britain but there is ambiguity. The pottery is of a type imported from Italy, and the graffito may have been made there as well.

The retiarius is perhaps the most extraordinary of all the gladiator classes, and his equipment shows most clearly the carefully choreographed balance between strength and vulnerability that ensured a degree of fairness and balance in gladiatorial combat.

The retiarius was almost wholly unprotected. If he was right-handed, his left arm would be protected by a padded manica, and on his left shoulder would be strapped a high shoulder-guard, the galerus. An example of a galerus was found in the Pompeii barracks, decorated with a dolphin and a trident, a crab and the anchor and rudder of a ship.

The retiarius wore no helmet, but he was armed with a long-handled trident, a short knife and a lead-weighted net or rete, after which he was named. The net could be used as a flail, but it is clear that the job of the retiarius was to throw the net over his opponent, catching the fish-like secutor, and then dispatching him with the trident.

• On the podcast | Gladiators: everything you wanted to know

Once he’d thrown the net the retiarius could use the trident as a pole arm. This is when the galerus comes into play: when using the trident two-handed, the left shoulder would be forward, and the galerus would prove an effective head-guard.

One tomb relief of a retiarius from Romania shows him holding what seems to be a four-bladed knife. The identity of this weapon remained a mystery until archaeologists discovered a femur at the Ephesus cemetery. This showed a healed wound just above the knee consisting of four punctures in the pattern of a four on dice.

The effectiveness of the retiarius is gruesomely revealed by the punctured skull discovered in Ephesus, but he did not always get his own way. A mosaic from Rome, now in Madrid, shows two scenes from a fight between a secutor named Astanax and the retiarius Kalendio. Kalendio threw his net over Astanax, but when he caught his trident in the folds of the net, Astanax could cut his way out and defeat Kalendio, who was then killed.

The same mosaic features another figure – an unarmed man in a tunic carrying a light wand. He is the summa rudis, the referee, reminding us that this was not a free-for-all, but a fight that must be carried out within a framework of rules and rituals. These rules would clearly be understood by the audience, who would have been at least as appreciative of the fighters’ skills as excited by pure blood-lust.

Gladiators as entertainment

The audience would also have been fully aware who was putting on such entertainment for them. Gladiatorial shows were almost always staged by leading citizens – often to enhance their political careers by currying favour with the electorate. Thus the walls of Pompeii are daubed with painted election notices, alongside advertisements for gladiatorial spectacles.

One of many examples, found near the forum, reads: “The gladiatorial troupe of Aulus Suettius Certus will fight at Pompeii on 31 May. There will be a hunt and awnings. Good fortune to all Neronian games.”

There is little doubt about the popularity of the combats. Even tombs are covered with scratched graffiti showing the results of particular fights. A cartoon of two gladiators fighting in neighbouring Nola is captioned “Marcus Attius, novice, victor; Hilarius, Neronian, fought 14, 12 victories, reprieved.”

This says a lot. Attius unexpectedly beat a veteran, but, like most of the combats recorded at Pompeii, the loser was spared. Being a gladiator was not an automatic sentence of violent death. The person funding the games (the editor) would commission a troupe (familia) of gladiators run by a proprietor/trainer (lanista). One such lanista, recorded in Pompeian graffiti,was Marcus Mesonius. He would acquire gladiators from the slave market. Legally, gladiators were the lowest of the low in Roman society, but a trained gladiator was a valuable commodity to a lanista, representing a considerable investment of time and money, and it would be in his interest to keep his stable well and to minimise the death rate.

Commodus: the emperor who loved to fight

The relationship between the emperor and the arena was complex. Emperors could get a bad reputation for showing too much enthusiasm for spectacles of death. Claudius, for example, was reputed to have keenly watched the faces of gladiators as they died, favouring the killing of the helmetless retiarii. For a member of the elite to fight in the arena was shameful – which was why Caligula, Nero and Commodus forced well-born Romans to do so. Special contempt was reserved for those emperors who chose to fight as gladiators in the arena. Caligula liked to appear as a thraex. Commodus, however, was the most notorious for his arena appearances. He fought as a secutor, and was a scaeva – a left hander. According to Cassius Dio he substituted the head of the Colossus by the Colosseum with his own, gave it a club and bronze lion to make it look like Hercules (with whom he identified himself). He inscribed his own titles upon it, ending “champion of secutores – the only left-handed gladiator to conquer 12 times one thousand men”. Interestingly, Aurelius Victor relates a story of Commodus refusing to fight a gladiator in the arena. The gladiator’s name was Scaeva. Perhaps Commodus was afraid to lose his usual natural advantage in fighting a fellow southpaw. In AD 192, intending to assume the consulship of Rome in gladiatorial guise, he was strangled by an athlete. Thus he died in shame without the opportunity to take the coup de grâce with dignity like a true gladiator.

What were the survival rates for gladiators in ancient Rome?

A graffito now in Naples Museum gives the results of a show put on by Mesonius. Of 18 gladiators who fought, we know of eight victors, five defeated and reprieved, and three killed. This kind of ratio may be typical given the records in graffiti and on tombstones. There were veterans; an unnamed retiarius on a tombstone in Rome boasted 14 victories, but few survived more than a dozen fights.

The painstaking forensic work on the Ephesus gladiator skeletons has provided startling and intimate insights into the way these men lived and died. Of the 68 bodies found, 66 were of adult males in their 20s. A rigorous training programme was attested by the enlarged muscle attachments of arms and legs. These were strong, athletic men, whose diet was dominated by grains and pulses, exactly as reported in classical texts. Yet as well as muscle and stamina, gladiators needed a good layer of fat to protect them from cuts.

The Ephesus skeletons also provided evidence for good medical treatment. Many well-healed wounds were found on the bodies, including 11 head wounds, a well-set broken arm and a professional leg amputation. On the other hand, 39 individuals exhibited single wounds sustained at or around the time of death. This suggests that these men did not die from multiple injuries but a lone wound. This provides further evidence for the enforcement of strict rules in the arena, and the delivery of a coup de grâce.

At the end of a bout a defeated gladiator was required to wait for the life or death decision of the editor of the games. If the vote was for death, he was expected to accept it unflinchingly and calmly. It would be delivered as swiftly and effectively as possible. Cicero speaks of this: “What even mediocre gladiator ever groans, ever alters the expression on his face. And which of them, even when he does succumb, ever contracts his neck when ordered to receive the blow?”

As we have seen, gladiators were at the bottom of the heap in Roman society. This remained the case no matter how much they were feted by the people. Above most qualities, the Romans valued ‘virtus’, which meant, first and foremost, acting in a brave and soldierly fashion. In the manner of his fighting, and above all in his quiet and courageous acceptance of death, even a gladiator, a despised slave, could display this.

This article was first published in the May 2013 issue of BBC History Magazine

]]> HistoryExtra <![CDATA[Bread and circuses: what happened in the amphitheatres of the Roman empire?]]> https://www.historyextra.com/membership/bread-circus-roman-amphitheatres-where-what-happened-colosseum/ 2025-02-14T14:32:01.000Z 2020-08-17T05:47:25.000Z The secutor Astanax watched warily from beneath his heavy bronze helmet, his shield held tightly, his sword clenched in his hand. His opponent, the retiarius Kalendio circled him – unencumbered by heavy equipment, Kalendio was very light on his feet. The retiarius flailed with his net, holding the trident in reserve in his left hand. Suddenly, to a huge swelling cheer from the crowd who packed the amphitheatre, Kalendio threw the net and Astanax was enfolded. Now free to use the trident two-handed, Kalendio thrust home. Astanax stepped aside, and the trident caught in the net. The referee signalled to continue. Astanax pulled Kalendio close with the net, unbalancing him. A quick thrust and the retiarius was down, his blood staining the sand. The crowd bayed, iugula!, iugula! Despite Kalendio’s gesture of surrender, the mob wanted death. A hush descended, and the coup de grace was delivered and received with professional quiet dignity…

This, or something very like it, actually happened in a Roman amphitheatre. The fight between Kalendio (a retiarius – who fought with a net and a trident) and Astanax (a secutor – his chaser) was commemorated on a mosaic in Rome (now in the Madrid museum). Despite Hollywood portrayals, the Roman amphitheatre was far more than a blood-drenched killing ground. It had symbolic, religious and political significance which went far beyond mere entertainment, important though this was. Spectacles were a part of Roman life before the amphitheatre was invented. Wild beast spectacles and gladiatorial combat had different origins and developed in different ways. The first recorded example of a venatio, in which ferocious wild animals fought together and were killed in Rome was during votive games in 186 BC, and featured leopards and lions. Not only did these spectacles demonstrate the domination of man over nature, but by the introduction of new and unfamiliar species from strange places, the geographical extent of Rome’s dominion was also symbolised.

• Who were the gladiators of ancient Rome? Plus Spartacus, Crixus and 8 more fighters you should know

Gladiatorial displays were known as munera, meaning “duty” or “obligation”, originally the duty of relatives to provide funeral commemoration. The first known reference to a gladiatorial munus dates to 264 BC, at the funeral in Rome of Decimus Brutus Pera, whose sons put on a spectacle at which three pairs of gladiators fought simultaneously.

During the last century of the Roman Republic, rival political figures used ever more lavish venationes and munera to court popularity, and in 63 BC, Cicero introduced a law to forbid those in public life from holding munera during the two years prior to standing for office, in order to divorce the spectacles from the campaigning.

It was the primacy of Augustus (27 BC–AD 14) and the establishment of the Imperial system that drew spectacles under control and created the kind of event that we associate with Imperial Rome. It was Augustus who brought the strands together to create the day-long spectacles known as the munus legitimum, with venationes in the morning, execution of criminals, sometimes in the form of damnatio ad bestias, or exposure to wild beasts, at midday, and gladiatorial munera in the afternoon. Purpose-built amphitheatres did exist before the time of Augustus, the earliest known being that at Pompeii, built c 70 BC, but a stone-built amphitheatre did not appear in Rome until the reign of Augustus. He placed strict limits on the scale and frequency of events, while his were the most lavish ever seen. By 22 BC the spectacles were basically under Imperial control.

• Your guide to the Roman empire: when it was formed, why it split and how it failed, plus its most colourful emperors

The chaos of the Year of Four Emperors (AD 69), which followed Nero’s assassination in AD 68, ended in the accession of Vespasian and the beginning of the Flavian dynasty, which lasted until the death of Domitian in AD 96. Vespasian was the first emperor to lack the legitimacy conferred by descent from Augustus, and needed to establish his rule and the stability of the succession. The supreme symbol of this need was the construction of the greatest stone-built amphitheatre of all – the Flavian amphitheatre, known to us as the Colosseum.

Following the great fire of Rome, Nero had planned a great palace across much of the fire-damaged city. Nero’s artificial lake, part of his ornamental park, was used by Vespasian as the site of the Colosseum, symbolically turning appropriated land back to public use. In Rome, the building of the Colosseum was a break with tradition, but became an instant symbol of being Roman across the whole empire, as it remains in many ways to this day. By the time of Domitian (AD 81–96) no gladiatorial games could be produced except by the emperor, or on his behalf. From this point, in Rome, it was the ruler who determined the scope, date and duration of the games, which generally would be celebrated on exceptional festivals and occasions.

Control of spectacles allowed the emperor to be certain that no opponent might attempt to win popularity by such means. The chaos of the late Republic was not to be repeated. Funerary munera had always been intended to draw attention to the virtues and importance of the dead man and the heritage of the family. This tradition was appropriated by making munera into celebrations of the Imperial family, and of the virtues of the deified emperors, those who had become gods in their own right.

By this means, the Imperial munera were essential aspects of the celebration of the Imperial cult. Although the traditional distinction between public and private benefaction was blurred by this system, it remained the case that the ruler gave munera as a personal gift using his own resources. They did not strictly speaking come from the public purse.

• The Praetorian Guard: the emperors’ fatal servants

The power of the emperor

In Rome, the Colosseum was where the ruler demonstrated his power to the people and where the Roman people could sense their own power and the glory of their empire. It was a model of Roman society, with seating arranged hierarchically, the wealthy and powerful in the lower front seats, and the masses, segregated by class, in the higher tiers. The order imposed on the arena, the control of the organiser (editor) of the games, and the ritualisation of a chaotic and bloody process was symbolic of the order imposed on the empire and upon society by the Imperial system.

Outside Rome the provincial elites, first of Italy, then of the Empire at large, anxious to demonstrate their alignment with the Roman world and their loyalty, built amphitheatres and provided games. In eastern provinces the spectacles spread, while amphitheatres did not, as the Greek world already had buildings such as stadia and theatres, which could be adapted. Throughout the western Empire, however, amphitheatres spread, particularly as part of the establishment of cities. In the western provinces the form of the amphitheatre appears to have been adapted to meet local needs and interpretations. This was nowhere more apparent than in Britain, where a small number of fairly humble amphitheatres divide into two main groups, the legionary amphitheatres, and the urban structures. In the latter group the London amphitheatre is a special case.

The two known amphitheatres at permanent legionary bases were at Chester and Caerleon, from the 80s–90s AD. Recent studies of the Roman army have stressed it formed a community apart. The legions were fundamental to the expansion of the Empire and spread of Roman ideas, and were linked with the imperial system. They were manned by Roman citizens – in first century Britain these were drawn from all over the Empire, from Italy, Gaul and the Danube provinces, but were not Britons.  Their two stone built amphitheatres (the only ones with stone outer walls in Britain) were built by citizens, for citizens, and to celebrate the kind of festivals associated with the participation of the army in the Imperial cult. There is no doubt that this included munera; these are the only two amphitheatres in Britain to produce gladiatorial imagery in any form. Here soldiers would see military virtue enacted, the ability to fight and die well.

In this way the military amphitheatre performed a didactic function, reinforcing the requirement in the Roman legionary for courage, skill at arms, and the ability to die in combat without complaint. The equipment of the different forms of gladiators was derived from barbarian prototypes, and perhaps this reinforced for the legionary that he would be required to fight someone who had very different fighting styles to those in which he was himself trained.

London early became a boom town for pioneers interested in exploiting this latest conquest. Incoming traders founded the town, which developed quickly. The settlement grew from scratch as a purely Roman place. The timber amphitheatre, dating to shortly after AD 70, was part of a process of the creation of familiar institutions in a new setting. The story of the London amphitheatre is thus similar to the legionary sites, and it is probably no accident that these three are the only British amphitheatres to yield dedications to Nemesis and Diana-Nemesis, the most widespread deity of the amphitheatre, an impartial distributor of good and bad fortune, of success or failure, of life and death, who could intercede with the workings of destiny.

• Extravagance in Roman Britain: a visit to Fishbourne Roman Palace

By contrast the other urban amphitheatres of Britain were built in new tribal capitals (Silchester, Dorchester, Cirencester, Carmarthen and Chichester), where existing populations were learning to adapt their behaviour and environment to new forms. These buildings were different to the legionary structures, for instance. All were earthworks, with arena walls and entrances in timber, later stone, but none had outer walls. They were descended from the indigenous tradition of large communal earthworks, put to a different use. Those sites where excavation has been thorough enough show not seating on the earth banks but terraces for standing spectators. This suggests that it would not have been possible to hold day-long events but only spectacles of short duration. It has been suggested, probably correctly, that Roman spectacles were simply not taken up with enthusiasm among the indigenous population of Britain.

When an amphitheatre was located in an urban context, in Britain or elsewhere it was almost always on the fringe of the town. Like many aspects of the games and the amphitheatre, this was symbolic. The amphitheatre was “on the edge” in so many ways, marking the boundary between life and death, between savage and civilised, in the sense of both wild nature and wild humanity seen in the arena, between danger and security, order and disorder. It was “visibly the place where civilisation and barbarism met”.

Visiting the sites: Roman amphitheatres in britain

London

The amphitheatre is of two phases, the first of timber, then stone. The remains of the stone-built entrance, carceres (beast pens), part of the arena wall, and timber elements, including the main drain, can be seen in the basement of the Guildhall Art Gallery.

Caerleon

The best preserved and most completely excavated amphitheatre in Britain. This fully exposed and conserved legionary amphitheatre is the one British site where it is possible to appreciate the scale and complexity of these structures. The eight entrance ways are particularly well preserved.  

Chester

In the second legionary site is a succession of stone-built amphitheatres, the second of which was the largest in Britain, with external architectural decoration on a two storey façade. Half the arena, two entrances and a quadrant of the seating area are currently accessible.

Silchester

The Silchester amphitheatre had two timber phases and a final stone phase. The tree-clad seating banks preserve the 18th-century appearance of the site. The stone-built arena wall, two main entrances and semi-circular niches around the arena are on display.

Tony Wilmott is a senior archaeologist and Roman specialist with English Heritage. He was joint director of the Chester Amphitheatre excavations, and is the author of The Roman Amphitheatre in Britain.

This article was first published in the June 2007 issue of BBC History Magazine 

]]> HistoryExtra <![CDATA[Who were the gladiators of ancient Rome? Plus Spartacus, Crixus and 8 more fighters you should know]]> https://www.historyextra.com/period/roman/who-were-roman-gladiators-famous-spartacus-crixus/ 2024-10-11T11:07:08.000Z 2020-04-28T12:15:28.000Z Q: Who were the gladiators of ancient Rome?

A: Most gladiators were purchased from slave markets, being chosen for their strength, stamina and good looks, says Dr Miles Russell. Although taken from the lowest elements of society, the gladiator was a breed apart from the ‘normal’ slave or prisoner of war, being well-trained combatants whose one role in life was to fight and occasionally to kill for the amusement of the Roman mob.

Not all those who fought as gladiators were slaves or convicts, however. Some were citizens down on their luck (or heavily in debt) while some, like the emperor Commodus, simply did it for ‘fun’ (read more below).

Whatever their reasons for ending up in the arena, gladiators were adored by the Roman public for their bravery and spirit. Their images appeared frequently in mosaics, wall paintings and on glassware and pottery.

• A brief guide to ancient Rome and the Romans, plus 9 fascinating facts

Q: What was life like for a gladiator in ancient Rome?

A: Until the discovery of the cities of Vesuvius in the 18th century, virtually everything we knew about gladiators came from references in ancient texts, from random finds of stone sculptures and inscriptions, and the impressive structures of the amphitheatres dotted about all over the Roman empire, writes Tony Wilmott.

Gladiators were at the bottom of the heap in Roman society. This remained the case no matter how much they were feted by the people. Above most qualities, the Romans valued ‘virtus’, which meant, first and foremost, acting in a brave and soldierly fashion. In the manner of his fighting, and above all in his quiet and courageous acceptance of death, even a gladiator, a despised slave, could display this.

Gladiators were divided into categories – each armed and attired in a characteristic manner – and were then pitched against one another in pairings designed to show a variety of forms of combat.

• Gladiators in ancient Rome: how did they live and die?

Q: What types of Roman gladiator were there?

When Romans went to the gladiatorial games, they wouldn’t just have seen the same old fight to the death over and over. They’d have seen a well-orchestrated sequence of dozens of different warriors – of course, still doing the fight to the death over and over.

Each type of gladiator had his set weapons, armour and look, and would be matched off against a different fighter. So a man with little armour was vulnerable yet swift, while those in full breastplate tired quickly.

Among the first gladiators were prisoners of war – experienced warriors who kept their names, such as Thracians (such as Spartacus), Samnites and Gallus. But most were given a name specifically for the arena. They could be a retiarius, fighting with a trident and net, usually against a secutor, armed with a sword, shield and smooth helmet.

A hoplomachus had a lance and dagger, while a bestiarius would face wild beasts. An eques rode a horse, but if on a chariot they were essedarius. Perhaps the strangest type was the andabatus, who fought in helmets with no eye holes.

Q: Did Roman emperors take part in gladiatorial games?

A: As a rule, no – competing would be beneath the emperor. But that didn't stop Commodus and Nero…

The bloody gladiatorial games and fast-and-furious chariot races were entertainment for the masses – and a magnificent opportunity for the emperor to show off. But two especially deranged and sadistic emperors decided to get closer to the action. In the second century, Commodus, who fancied himself the reincarnation of Hercules, caused countless scandals by fighting in staged bouts, usually against terrified members of the crowd or wounded soldiers. Unsurprisingly, he never lost. He would also take on wild animals – as long as they were caged, and he stood on a raised platform armed with a bow.

Nero, meanwhile, was a chariot racing fan. He even changed the date of the Olympics in AD 67 to allow him to take part, not-so-subtly cheating all the way. He used ten horses instead of the standard four and was declared the winner – even though he fell from the chariot on the very first bend.

Q: Did gladiators usually fight to the death?

A: The image of a row of gladiators standing before their emperor reciting the dread words, “We who are about to die salute you,” is a powerful but highly misleading one, explains historian Justin Pollard.

While a convicted criminal could not look forward to a long and happy life in the arena, most gladiators were professionals for whom fighting was a way of life, not a mode of death. Fights to the death were actually rare and many gladiators became the sports heroes of their day. Women scratched their names on jewellery, teenagers painted their slogans on public bath walls and, if all went well, they retired rich and free. The famous amulet from Leicester lost by a young girl sometime in the second century AD has scratched on it “Verecunda loves Lucius the Gladiator!” – and it was a common sentiment.

Of course, that’s not to say there wasn’t some risk involved. On special occasions the sponsor of the games – and nearly all games were entirely paid for by sponsors – might splash out and ask gladiators to fight to the death. But they had to pay a great deal for the privilege and they had to compensate the trainer for the gladiators he lost. Of course, being a gladiator was dangerous, but so is playing rugby or boxing. Barring accidents and ‘special occasions’, gladiators were fighting not for their lives but for the day they received their wooden sword – a symbol of their retirement and freedom. Many would then go on to found their own gladiatorial schools.

Q: How popular was gladiatorial fighting in ancient Rome?

A: Not as popular as you might think, says Dr Harry Sidebottom. The seating capacity of the main venues formed a ‘rough and ready’ index of the popularity of the different public shows in Rome. The arena for gladiatorial combat, the Colosseum – known in antiquity as the Flavian Amphitheatre – was huge. Modern archaeologists estimate that it could accommodate 50,000 people. One ancient source put the number even higher, at 87,000.

Yet it was dwarfed by the Circus Maximus, where some 250,000 could watch chariot racing. Despite the popularity of pantomime (closer to our ballet than modern panto), theatrical shows came off a poor third. The largest theatre in Rome, that of Marcellus, could hold a mere 20,500.

• Bread and circuses: what happened in the amphitheatres of the Roman empire?

Q: Did people have to pay to see gladiators fight in ancient Rome?

A: The Roman games of gladiatorial combat and animal hunts were great spectacles put on by senators, businessmen and later solely by emperors, in order to win the affection and favour of the masses. From the importation and feeding of exotic animals to the maintenance of warrior gladiators, the cost of laying on such events was immense. But the hosts understood that the masses required entertainment to distract them from the grinding realities of life.

The inaugural games at the Colosseum, for example, lasted for 100 days in AD 80, and were entirely paid for by Emperor Titus. All tickets were freely allocated (by lottery) to the citizens of ancient Rome. The nature of the audience was strictly regulated, though, with the best seats in the house going to the wealthy and upper classes.

Historical accuracy and the Russell Crowe film Gladiator

The hollywood blockbuster Gladiator (2000), which starred Russell Crowe, is a great film, says Tony Wilmott of English Heritage, but inaccurate, right from the opening battle when second century German tribes chant in 19th-century Zulu (as the soundtrack from the movie Zulu was overlain here). Historical errors are numerous. The catapults use Greek fire (invented by the Byzantines), there is too much medieval armour in the arena, and where did they get the Bengal tigers? The film caters to a view of the amphitheatre which is popularly familiar, based on the 19th-century painting Pollice Verso (thumbs down) by Jean-Leon Gerome. There is no subtlety in the exploration of the various meanings of the amphitheatre, shown just as a place for violent entertainment. The scale of fights in the African town where Maximus first enters the arena would be considered lavish and wasteful (who funded the event, and why?), and evidence from mosaics in this part of the Empire indicates that venationes were more popular than munera.

Read on to find out more about 10 famous gladiators of ancient Rome…

Amazon and Achillia

Female gladiators were often a source of amusement for the Roman mob – they were usually matched against dwarves or animals, in semi-pornographic comedy fights. However, the fight between these two women survives as an interesting example of a serious female contest. Their names refer to the mythical conflict between the god Achilles and the queen of the Amazon warrior women tribe. An ancient marble relief, now in the British Museum, shows that these two women fought well and respectably, and were both granted their freedom at the end of it.

• Did Roman men dodge their military service?

Commodus

Played by Joaquin Phoenix in 2000's Gladiator, here was an emperor who not only enjoyed watching fights to the death, he actively participated in them. A narcissistic tyrant, he was known to maim and injure the people and animals he was pitted against, or give his opponents wooden swords, making him unpopular with the Roman crowds. Each time he won, he awarded himself one million silver coins. He met a grisly end when he was assassinated in AD 192, partly motivated by his ridiculous antics as a gladiator.

Marcus Attilius

A volunteer, Attilius probably took up work as a gladiator to pay off his hefty debts. Luckily, he managed to find his true calling in the arena. In his first battle, despite being faced against a man who had won 12 out of 14 fights, the debtor not only defeated his opponent, he repeated the feat in the next contest – where his opponent had also won 12 out of 14 battles, earning Attilius a lot of admiration and following.

Flamma

Gladiators were usually slaves, and Flamma came from the faraway province of Syria. However, the fighting lifestyle seemed to suit him well – he was offered his freedom four times, after winning 21 battles, but refused it and continued to entertain the crowds of the Colosseum (right) until he died aged 30. His face was even used on coins.

• Cheese, angry gods and shoddy surgeons: the unlikely deaths of Roman emperors

Spartacus

Spartacus is arguably the most famous Roman gladiator, a tough fighter who led a massive slave rebellion. After being enslaved and put through gladiator training school, an incredibly brutal place, he and 78 others revolted against their master Batiatus using only kitchen knives. The movement eventually accumulated 70,000 followers, pillaging towns across Italy. Spartacus attempted to lead his rowdy band back home to their native lands, but they preferred to stay and increase their ill-gotten gains. The Roman legions eventually defeated and crucified thousands of them, and Spartacus was killed in battle in 71 BC.

There is no way of knowing how the legendary leader died. He would have been in the thick of the fighting when Marcus Licinius Crassus, the Roman commander with money to burn and glory to win, landed the killer blow against his slave revolt, so it is no wonder that he disappeared in the mass of bodies and gore. He certainly wouldn’t have been wearing a sign around his neck reading ‘I AM SPARTACUS’.

For all we know, Spartacus may have been among the 6,000 prisoners that Crassus had crucified along the Appian Way.

Did you know? Being mauled by a wild beast in the arena was used as a punishment for ‘enemies of the state’, including war prisoners and criminal slaves

Spiculus

This friend of the notorious Emperor Nero definitely received some preferential treatment. Spiculus was one of his favourite gladiators, a real crowd-pleaser and showman. Nero gave him vast wealth, palaces and land, and when the evil Emperor was overthrown in AD 68, Nero asked to die by the hand of Spiculus, a man he clearly respected. However, the gladiator was nowhere to be found, so Nero took his own life.

Priscus and Verus

These two were frequently rivals in the arena, and have been immortalised by the poet Martial. He writes that after hours of combat, putting on a great show for the crowd, the pair laid down their swords at the same time – leaving their fate in the hands of the audience, who could decide whether the fighters lived or died by putting their thumbs up or down, at the request of the Emperor. Touched by their good sportsmanship, Emperor Titus allowed both men to walk away from the battle as free men, a completely unique and unexpected outcome.

Carpophorus

Gladiators battled with wild animals, as well as each other, though most of this type were merely ill-equipped criminals sentenced to death by beast. A rare example of a successful ‘bestiarius’ was Carpophorus, who allegedly killed 20 animals in one day, including a lion, bear and leopard in a single battle. He also managed to spear a rhinoceros to death. The public started comparing him to the god Hercules, which he gladly played up to.

• 6 things you (probably) didn’t know about animals in ancient Rome

Tetraites

Tetraites had previously been lost to history, until graffiti in Pompeii, discovered in 1817, revealed his tale. He fought bare-chested with a sword, a flat shield and only basic armour. Popular across the empire, memorabilia (such as glass vessels) detailing his battle with fellow gladiator Prudes was uncovered in places as far away as France and England.

Crixus

This Gaul was Spartacus’s right-hand man. Helping him to transform their band of rebels from slaves to savvy soldiers, Crixus fought alongside him, earning his trust and respect along the way – although they split up just before Spartacus wished to leave Italy. When Crixus was killed in battle in 72 BC, Spartacus ordered the slaughter of 300 Roman soldiers in his honour.

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This article was first published in the February 2017 edition of BBC History Revealed

]]> HistoryExtra <![CDATA[From the handshake to the high-five: a brief history of gestures]]> https://www.historyextra.com/membership/a-brief-history-of-gestures-from-the-handshake-to-the-high-five/ 2025-02-14T14:39:50.000Z 2020-03-13T17:05:45.000Z  

The handshake

This greeting dates back at least as far as Ancient Greece. In the Pergamon Museum in Berlin, a funeral stone from the 5th century BC depicts two soldiers shaking hands. The base of a column at the Acropolis Museum in Athens, meanwhile, shows Hera [the wife and sister of Zeus in the Olympian pantheon of Greek mythology and religion] shaking hands with Athena [the goddess of wisdom, courage and inspiration in ancient Greek mythology and religion]. By shaking hands, rather than bowing or curtseying, both parties proved they were equals and that they felt sufficiently comfortable in each other’s presence not to bring weapons.

In van der Helst’s painting, The Celebration of the Peace of Münster, 18 June 1648, Captain Witsen [a counsellor and mayor of the city of Amsterdam] is shown shaking hands in a gesture of friendship with his lieutenant. Meanwhile, handshakes between man and wife are depicted in numerous 17th-century marriage portraits. In the wedding ceremony itself, the gesture sealed a sacred and legally binding commitment.

• “The very sight of her hands did almost turn my stomach”: a brief history of hand-washing

The White House lawn became the setting for a notable handshake in Middle East history on 13 September 1993, when Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin and Palestinian Liberation Organization chairman Yasser Arafat signed the Oslo Accords [a set of agreements marking the start of a peace process]. President Bill Clinton had coaxed these bitter enemies together for the symbolic gesture. Unfortunately, the hoped-for peace in the Middle East failed to live up to the promise of that handshake.

Thumbs up

It is popularly believed that this gesture can be traced back to the Colosseum when gladiators fought in front of their emperor and a crowd of thousands. The fate of the fallen gladiator famously depended on how much of a fight he had put up. If he had made a good show, chances were the crowd would convey their appreciation with a thumbs-up gesture, which would then be confirmed by the emperor, who would spare his life. Thumbs down, on the other hand, meant execution.

However, there are in fact no contemporary references to thumbs going either up or down in the Colosseum. In reality, those wanting to spare the gladiator would cover up their thumb and keep it out of sight (pollice compresso, or ‘compressed thumb’). They would only extend it if they wanted him killed. This way, the emperor didn't have to strain his eyes scanning the vast arena to work out which way most thumbs were pointing, which makes far more sense.

Mooning

Baring one’s bottom in public may have originated in Ancient Rome. In AD 66 the historian Flavius Josephus was watching Jewish pilgrims on their way to the temple during Passover, when suddenly a Roman soldier “raised his robe, stooped in an indecent attitude, so as to turn his backside to the Jews, and made a noise in keeping with his posture”.

In Braveheart, the 1995 movie set in 13th-century Scotland, hundreds of Scottish warriors moon their English enemies from across the battlefield. But according to the chronicle of historian Peter Langtoft, it was the English who used mooning to insult the Scots.

The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle [a collection of annals in Old English chronicling the history of the Anglo-Saxons, created late in the 9th century] records how, during the battle of Crécy (1346), several hundred Norman soldiers “exposed their backsides to the English archers and many of them paid a high price for doing so”. The Chronicle does not include further detail.

Meanwhile at the Siege of Nice (1543), Catherine Ségurane, a washerwoman, is supposed to have stood before the invading forces exposing her bare bottom.

The gesture still has appeal in some quarters today: the Annual Mooning of Amtrak trains takes place in Laguna Niguel, California, on the second Saturday of July, and in June 2000, the Movement Against the Monarchy organised mass mooning outside Buckingham Palace. Despite a large police presence, some individuals successfully managed to moon.

The V-sign

There is a popular myth that at the battle of Agincourt (25 October 1415), the French chopped off the index and middle fingers of the right hand of English archers to prevent them shooting arrows. Those who were spared are supposed to have taunted their enemy by raising their first two fingers at them: “You haven't cut off our fingers, we can still fire arrows!”

However, as shown in the Luttrell Psalter [an illuminated psalter commissioned by Sir Geoffrey Luttrell, lord of the manor of Irnham in Lincolnshire] and corroborated by the contemporary chronicler, Jean de Wavrin, the effort involved to draw an English longbow (draw weight around 100lb) would have required, not two, but the use of all three main fingers of one’s dominant hand.

Any evidence establishing the true origins of the ‘V-sign’ seems to have been lost, but the gesture is still very much alive today – even, it seems, in the rarefied atmosphere of the English House of Lords. The video below shows the 89-year-old Tory peer Baroness Trumpington making a V-sign at ex-cabinet minister Tom King, when in November 2011 he dared remark that the survivors of the Second World War, “like my noble friend here” are “starting to look pretty old”.

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The salute

According to one theory, the salute originated in the medieval period, when troops wore a ‘sallet’, or metal helmet, with a visor that could be drawn up. During inspection, the order would be given and the visor would be raised so that the inspecting officer could identify the wearer.

Whatever the truth in that, the salute as we know it seems to have developed much later – in the 18th century, when the flat hats worn by grenadier guards were replaced by cumbersome conical ones. As these new hats were held in place with chinstraps, it made them difficult to raise when greeting someone, so the guards simply touched them with one short, sharp movement to the hairline, as if intending to raise them, before quickly restoring the hand to their side.

The high-five

This hand gesture is now used the world over as a greeting, or celebration. There are rival claims over which US baseball team invented it  – the Los Angeles Dodgers in 1977, or the Louisville Cardinals in 1978.

Whichever it was (and perhaps it was neither – stock exchange brokers the world over seem to have slapped hands for years), the gesture is very similar to the Jazz Age's ‘low five’ or ‘giving skin’, where two people slap each other’s lowered hands. In The Jazz Singer (1927), Al Jolson dishes out a low five to celebrate news of a Broadway audition, while in the 1941 Abbott and Costello film In the Navy, the Andrews Sisters perform ‘Gimme Some Skin, My Friend’ while giving themselves repeated low fives.

Dr Robert Hume was head of history at Clarendon House Grammar School in Ramsgate, Kent (1988–2010), and now regularly writes features for the Irish Examiner.

His publications include Education Since 1700 (Heinemann, 1989); Death by Chance: The Abergele Train Disaster, 1868 (Llygad Gwalch Cyf, March 2004), and a historical novel, Ruling Ambition: The Story of Perkin Warbeck (Gee & Son, 2000). Hume also contributed to Religion and Society in Kent, 1640-1914 (Boydell, 1994).

This article was first published on History Extra in May 2017

]]> HistoryExtra <![CDATA[6 things you (probably) didn’t know about animals in ancient Rome]]> https://www.historyextra.com/period/roman/6-things-you-probably-didnt-know-about-animals-in-ancient-rome/ 2023-11-15T11:10:58.000Z 2019-02-20T10:30:18.000Z Writing for History Extra, Dr Iain Ferris explores the roles of animals in ancient Roman society – from which animals were kept as pets, to the exotic species of imported animals that were used as fodder for entertainment in the bloody Roman arenas…

My book analyses the place and role of animals in ancient Roman society and of their meaning and great significance in cultural terms. Most obviously, there would have been working animals on most Roman farms and animals were commonly kept as household pets. Meat and fish were highly important ingredients in Roman cookery. Animals were also commonly employed in warfare in the Roman period. The extraordinary slaughter of animals in the Roman arena for entertainment and by organised hunting inevitably hung heavily over my study. Again, animal sacrifice was considered as central to the practice and rites of Roman religion.

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Of course, there were animals in the Roman countryside, both wild and farmed, but there was not a complete split between town and country. In cities, animals were ever-present, providing a kind of murmuring undercurrent to Roman urban life: from nits in creatures’ hair and intestinal worms, to mosquitoes in the marshes in and around Rome; from thrips [small insects] in milled grain to mice in kitchens; from passerine birds in gardens, to scavenging, opportunistic foxes in the back alleys of houses and on the fringes of the cities. Throw guard dogs and other working animals and pets into the mix and then suddenly, the Roman city seems to have been a natural host to animal life.

Caged birds were popular pets

There is a considerable amount of evidence for the keeping of animals as pets in the Roman world and the most commonly attested pets in the Roman world were caged birds, particularly favoured by Roman women.

The popularity of caged birds is clearly demonstrated in Latin love poetry. In total, it has been estimated that in Roman poetry there are over 700 individual references to birds both wild and tame, most to wild species. The catching of birds often was used as a metaphor for human pursuit and seduction, caged birds for a 'captured' lover, and dying or dead birds for the withering of love or the end of an affair. There is perhaps no more famous pet bird from the ancient world than Lesbia's pet 'sparrow', whose life and death was described by the poet Catullus in two poems. In two of what are known to academics as the Lesbia Poems, Catullus paints a picture of a Roman matron playing with her pet bird as a displacement activity from thinking passionately about her lover. It is likely that the 'sparrow' in question was actually a blue rock thrush, a passer solitarius, a more decorative and tameable bird than the common sparrow. However, if found as an abandoned fledgling, sparrows can be tamed and domesticated.

It would appear that domestic caged birds were very much a specifically Roman cultural phenomenon, a cultural artefact of sorts. Caged birds did not feature particularly in either Greek or Egyptian cultures and therefore some explanation needs to be sought for this. Bird-keeping can be thought of as having been part of a much wider phenomenon of display and the acquisition of luxury goods. However, it would not appear that the keeping of caged birds was an exclusively aristocratic interest, but most evidence relates to this class. Bird keeping in cages or in aviaries was a fashion, part of an arena of competition, from the time of the late Republic onwards into imperial times, that encompassed the collecting of Greek statues, architectural munificence and benefaction, the design and laying out of great gardens, and the creation of menageries, aviaries, and fishponds.

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Some pets were sacrificed upon the death of their owners

Perhaps the most extraordinary contemporary reference to pet-keeping in Roman times is a letter written by Pliny the Younger in AD 104 to his friend Attius Clemens, describing the violent and disturbing events that had occurred at the funeral of the teenage son of Marcus Aquilius Regulus.

Regulus, in his hysterical grief, is said to have sacrificed his son's pet animals and birds by the funeral pyre, slaughtering two Gallic ponies and a number of dogs, as well as pet nightingales, parrots, and blackbirds. The number of pet animals kept by Regulus's son, or probably more properly looked after by slaves on the son's behalf, attests to his father's wealth and status, or rather it would appear to his aspirations towards high social status and his ostentatious indulgence of his son.

Regulus's seeming lack of any scruples in having the pets killed may have reflected not the madness of incalculable grief but rather the cold, calculating machinations of a schemer, out to draw attention to himself in all probability and to gain public sympathy.

Dogs would have been domesticated, both as guard dogs and as pets

In towns and cities in the Roman period, large dogs would have been kept principally as guard dogs, but this does not necessarily mean that they were not also regarded at the same time as pets by their owners. The same dual role may also have been played by hunting dogs and dogs used to herd animals. There would not though appear to have been the same social cachet involved in keeping dogs as pets as with the keeping of birds in Rome and Italy.

There are a number of black-and-white threshold mosaic panels from houses in Pompeii depicting guard dogs/pet dogs, including the most famous example: the Cave Canem [beware of the dog] pavement from the House of the Tragic Poet, which gives my book its name. The large shaggy black dog depicted there, with white on its limbs and head, is chained up, but is caught barking and snapping at someone at the door. Another chained dog on a mosaic protects the House of Paquius Proculus, while a dog with a studded collar secured by a rope appears on a portion of pavement now on display in the Archaeological Museum in Naples.

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A fourth Pompeiian dog mosaic comes from the House of Caecilius Iucundus, though in this case the hound lies curled up sleeping. An attentive guard dog, sat up ready on his haunches, was also painted on a pillar at the entrance to the bakery of Sotericus. A dog lies sleeping in a busy metalworking shop on a relief from the town. If we project the common use of guard dogs at Pompeii to cover their use in Rome and in cities and towns throughout the Roman empire, then it can be argued that dogs played a crucial and highly significant role in household and urban security in the absence of organised police forces at this time.

Dog’s remains were found during the excavations of Pompeii

Of course, we cannot leave the topic of dogs at Pompeii without making mention of the skeletal remains of dogs excavated at the site over the years and particularly the very well-known plaster cast of a dying dog found during excavations in 1874 at the House of Marcus Vesonius Primus. The poor creature, restrained by a bronze studded collar on a leash, lies on its back, doubled up in evident agony, its legs in the air as it doubtless writhed on the ground gasping for air in its death throes.

This is a pathetic relic of the tragedy which overtook Pompeii in AD 79 and killed its human inhabitants as well as pets and resident wildlife. Further skeletal remains of dogs have been recorded at a number of other locations within Pompeii, the most interesting of which would appear to be the bones of a large dog lying on its side, shut inside the House of Menander. The creature seems to have survived being buried by ash, but sadly then would have died from asphyxiation.

Roman statues of dogs, tombstones of pet dogs, inscriptions or epitaphs naming pet dogs, and depictions of dogs on their owners' funerary monuments occur in sufficiently large numbers to suggest that they were popular pets at this time. The dog breeds include huge Molossian hounds, dogs like Irish wolf hounds, greyhound or lurcher type dogs, smaller Maltese like dogs, and tiny lap dogs.

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Domesticated cats came to Rome from ancient Egypt

It is generally accepted that cats were first domesticated in Egypt and Mesopotamia and that they would have come to Europe through trade or accompanying travellers to Rome from those regions.

At Pompeii, the number of cat bones from excavated deposits is very small indeed – literally a handful – and no cats are among the casts of creatures killed in the town. It has been suggested that in this provincial town before AD 79, there was not yet a fashion for keeping cats as pets, though it may have already started in Rome. Certainly, much greater numbers of cat bones are found in later archaeological deposits in Roman Naples. And yet by the mid to late 4th century AD, the presence of cat bones from excavated sites throughout the empire shows how common cats had become.

Just as with guard dogs and hunting dogs, it may have been the case that cats were viewed by the Romans principally as killers of mice and rats in houses, shops, and public buildings, and that they came to be regarded as pets as a secondary consideration.

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While we know the names of many pet dogs of the Roman period from inscriptions, as far as I am aware not a single cat name is known, perhaps indicating their respective popularity as pets at the time. Pictorial representations of cats in domestic settings are relatively rare. When they do occur, they generally reference the cat's natural hunting and stalking instincts rather than its more peaceable and loving qualities. Perhaps the most famous of these images appears on a mosaic pavement from Santa Maria Capua Vetere (now in the Archaeological Museum in Naples) and takes the form of a stalking cat down on all fours at the foot of a bird bath or fountain. It hisses at its prey, two parrots and a dove, with one clawed paw extended as if ready to move to strike.

Another well-known mosaic panel from the House of the Faun in Pompeii carries a depiction of a cat holding a dead game bird, perhaps a quail, in its mouth. Below the scene with the cat are two ducks, other birds and seafood. 

Animals were used in the arena as a way for the rich and powerful of Rome to display their wealth

Contrasting starkly with the evidence for Roman pet-keeping is the evidence for the astonishing cruelty of animal spectacles in the arena that appear to have begun in Rome in the 3rd century BC.

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Many early arena shows were simply displays of exotic animals for the general public, allowing them sight of creatures that otherwise at the time might have been only been seen by their elite contemporaries and those Roman aristocrats who had used their wealth and connections to stock their own vivaria, or animal enclosures, in Rome and its environs. Exotic animals like elephants were sometimes trained to dance, walk on a tightrope, or pick up items, according to Pliny the Elder and other ancient writers.

Animal shows involving violence and combat, known to the Romans as venationes or hunts, possibly began in 186 BC when lions and leopards featured in a show sponsored by Marcus Fulvus Nobilior. Whether the animals fought each other on this occasion or fought against human performers is unknown. Certainly, it would appear that bloody venatio shows developed out of the culture of gladiatorial spectacles. The last recorded venationes in Rome took place as late as AD 523.

The sponsorship of public gladiatorial and animal shows became a way for the rich and powerful of Rome to display their wealth and enhance their status, influence and power. Sponsorship itself became a locus of political competition in the late Republic and was to become a facet of Roman imperial largesse. In his Res Gestae, a quantified justification of his reign and achievements, the first emperor Augustus proudly claimed that at 26 venationes held during his reign, a total of 3,500 African animals had been slain, setting a high bar for those emperors that followed.

When the Roman poet Juvenal complained about the political apathy of his fellow citizens of the late 1st and early 2nd century AD and their failing to react against the unreasonable or eccentric behaviour of autocratic emperors, he coined a famous phrase that would resonate down the years. These citizens craved and were satisfied with panem et circenses – bread and circuses – he wrote.

Many emperors too found that the provision of mass entertainment and the occasional public distribution of free grain easily diverted critical attention away from the more negative aspects of their reigns. The provision of such spectacles became a necessary strategy for making imperial power visible in Rome.

A history of animals in Roman times such as that presented in my book is not parallel to the history of Roman imperialism or of Roman culture; rather, it is part of the same study, and certainly should be. The book proposes a way to understand ancient Roman culture through analysing the society's relationship with animals. If negative Roman and animal relationships resulted in some form of psychological damage, at least my account hopefully takes something from the discussion of its once-living subjects, almost their very flesh, skin, and breath, and looks at how they were woven into the complex tissue of historical memory that constituted Roman culture, so that these animals may live again conceptually for us through consideration of their existence.

Dr Iain Ferris is the author of Cave Canem: Animals and Roman Society (Amberley Publishing, February 2018. Hardback, £20).

This article was first published by History Extra in March 2018.

]]> HistoryExtra <![CDATA[Ye olde travel guide: Rome 192 AD]]> https://www.historyextra.com/membership/ye-olde-travel-guide-rome-192-ad/ 2025-02-14T15:21:32.000Z 2018-04-16T12:50:02.000Z Rome. Even the name inspires awe. One million inhabitants, consuming nine million kilos of grain a year and a million cubic metres of water per day. It has more diversions than could ever be crammed into even the longest of visits – but don’t let that stop you trying!

When to go

When all roads lead to Rome, there’s no excuse for not coming to the civilised world’s premier city. While there’s no wrong time to visit the glory that is Rome, we recommend that you arrive in late spring, usually a pleasant 22 degrees, and before everyone that matters flees from the stifling heat to the seaside. The end of April is a very pleasant time to visit (more later), but the autumn is to be avoided. Rain, more rain, and plenty of it!

What to take with you

You’ll only need two things. Money – this isn’t a cheap city for the outsider – and bodyguards to make sure that you don’t lose it. Skilled local protection will be expensive, but both the number of tourist frauds and the danger of robbery with violence make this expense essential. Oh, and don’t forget to pack your toga. Formal dinner parties will demand that you look the part.

You’ll need a full purse to make the most of the delights offered by this fabulous city. You can ‘do Rome’ on five sestertii a day, but with a bottle of decent Falernian easily costing that much, you’ll want at least 50 sestertii per night.

To really make the most of the city you’ll need one gold aureus to spend per day, but don’t carry it all round with you! Visit a bank and deposit your wealth, only withdrawing enough to fund your activities every day or two. And don’t trust any of the people around you with your money – including your local bodyguards!

Where to stay

First set your daily budget, then look for an appropriate hostelry. As ever, the more you pay the more convivial atmosphere you can expect.

On a budget, look for a caupona (a restaurant with rooms) but be ready for a lively time. Your host will be doing whatever he – or she – has to in order to scrape a living from the clientele. We recommend paying enough that your brushes with prostitution, and quite possibly the city police, are a matter of informed choice, rather than where you lodge. Stabulae, or coaching inns, usually found just outside of the city walls, will provide a less risky option, and can stable your horse if you have one.

At the refined end of the market we happily recommend one of the gorgeous hospitia, private houses converted to play host to the well heeled. If you’re missing your atrium or that nice walled garden back home, your hospitium will more than compensate.

Sights and activities

The most inventive diversions of the empire are gathered here, with something for every taste and budget. Our choice? Go for a bath! Nine hundred bath houses offer many and varied services, but be sure to visit the city’s major thermae.

Choose the sprawling baths of Trajan to watch Romans at play, or for that more exclusive experience we recommend the upmarket baths of Sura on the Aventine. Whichever you choose, relax! Hire a boy to oil your body and then scrape away the city’s dirt; eat, drink, gamble, read, listen to poetry or just enjoy a ‘spiritual’ massage by skilled eastern practitioners. Entry is a snip at one-sixteenth of a sestertius, but you’ll spend a lot more once you’re inside. And take that bodyguard in as your towel carrier – thieves and pickpockets abound.

What about the circus? Go for the biggest and best, and head straight to the Colosseum, just to the east of the main forum. Gladiators and wild animal hunts, mock battles, executions and dramas, it has everything. You may even get to see the emperor Commodus earn the crowd’s adulation by performing as a gladiator!

Spiritual needs can be met by numerous temples happy to take your money, and more earthly requirements by innumerable brothels. Prostitutes are also to be found at the baths, the circus, in taverns, bakeries, cook houses, inns, even at funerals – so just about anywhere, and cater to all pockets and predilections. Just keep a close eye on your purse. Afterwards you can expect to need another bath, if only to wash away the soot that cascades from their lamps.

Come in late April for the festival of Floralia, when the city’s female entertainers have their moment in the sun and certainly make the most of it!

Emergencies

Be warned: if you get into trouble you won’t find much sympathy here. Romans are by necessity robust survivors, and they’ll expect the same from you. Fail to heed these cautionary words and your visit will be nothing if not exciting. Enjoy your stay!

Anthony Riches is a historical novelist, author of the bestselling Empire series.

Rome today

The glory of ancient Rome still packs them in today, as anyone who's queued for the Colosseum in the height of summer will tell you. However, the imperial city is only part of the story for the millions who come each year. Layer upon layer of history has created a huge and chaotic urban museum, centred around the brooding statue of philosopher Giordano Bruno in the Campo dei Fiori.

In the centuries after 192 AD Rome became the home of the Latin church, and it is to St Peter's and the Vatican that many pilgrims come, whether to worship or rubber-neck at the Renaissance and Baroque treasures within.

Rome today, however, remains as it has been for millennia, all about the Romans: noisy, outgoing, stylish and unable to comprehend why you’d dream of living anywhere else. Spend a day in their shoes, sipping espresso, zipping through dense traffic on scooters and staying out late on sweltering evenings and you’ll find it hard to leave, too. Watch out for the tip-hungry Centurions who prowl the crowds posing for photos, by the way.

This article was first published in the August 2011 issue of BBC History Magazine

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