Meggie Macdonald

The Key to Distance:  A Re-examination of Modern Scholarship Gladiatorial Representation in Domestic Mosaics

When considering gladiators in the Roman World, the tendency is always to look at them through the lens of the modern world.  Enlightenment humanism and Revolutionary ‘liberte, egalite, fraternite’ have coloured scholarly interpretation of Roman gladiators to the point where one wonders if they are indeed discussing the same subject.  It is perfectly understandable why academics would shy away from looking at gladiators in any way other than their own.  Professional biases aside, it is very hard for someone of this modern age to comprehend why watching a person die, regardless of their social status, could be anything other than bloodthirsty aggression. 

The major scholarship from the 1960s and 1970s is all too ready to associate gladiators with the incredible violence of the earlier part of the twentieth century.  Michael Grant considered it “the nastiest blood-sport ever invented”, and compares it to Nazism as “two of the most quantitatively destructive institutions” in human history .  Roland Auguet chose to focus on the bloodiness of the games as pointless cruelty with no advantage simply “to satisfy a passion or merely for pleasure” .

There were some unfocused attempts in scholarship to appreciate Roman gladiators for something more than bloody violence.  Auguet himself hinted at a ‘magic’ within the amphitheatre but associated it with a primitive baseness inherent in the combats .  Gladiators had their traditions in funerary rituals and , due to associations with death, the death of a combatant was considered sacrificial blood for the deceased.  Theories about human sacrifice still rest in the realm of blood, a visceral but also visual experience, and that tangible element deters from more transcendental elements at the games. 

This trend – bloodthirsty but fascinating – continued throughout the 1970s and 1980s, but following that a new surge in scholarship inundated the field with new more psychological theories about gladiatorial combat.  Marilyn Skinner’s research on sexuality in the ancient world , and particularly the way a gladiator’s sexuality appealed to the audience at the amphitheatre, introduced a new way of looking at the events in the arena as socially interactive rather than senselessly violent.  Alison Futrell chose to address the spiritual side of gladiatorial games more bluntly than had Roland Auguet, but still held fast to the idea that it was a spectacular and very public form of human sacrifice .  She most succinctly describes the problem faced by modern scholars:  “how to reconcile the bloodiness of the arena and the events it sheltered with the arena’s centrality in Roman society” .  And yet she still hinges her theories and questions on ‘bloodiness’.

Shelby Brown suggested violence in degrees, stating that not enough study has been done “to identify those factors that legitimized the ‘violent’ acts of the arena in their own time and context”, that “physical hurt done to others [was] only considered violence in certain social contexts” .  She draws renewed attention to Auguet’s idea about distance – both Futrell and Brown believes that the boundaries were vital for the games to function  – the ‘real’ architectural boundary between the spectators and the fighters leads to a psychological boundary as well between the legitimate citizens (or even the accepted members of society) and those who have been cast out, made infamis. 

The issue of social respectability opened up the debate in a powerful way when DS Potter and DJ Mattingly published their collection of articles in “Life, Death, and Entertainment in the Roman World” in 1999 .  This book’s insights into elite male identity pointedly juxtaposed with entertainment spectacles in ancient Rome draw immediate attention to the wide variety of links that can be forged between the two .  Roman masculinity was mutated almost beyond recognition by gladiators in the arena, but held fast to some innately Roman characteristics such as courage and virtue.  A great deal of irony persisted in existence of a gladiator who was infamis but could display virtus, a purely male trait, and would incurred such emotional reactions from an audience who should not have deigned to feel when a slave died. 

In fact, the very effect of a slave performing and exhibiting these exclusively male Roman virtues was both a safety mechanism and a dangerously ambiguous situation.  It was safe because it allowed a slave to do what was normally totally unacceptable for a slave and because the ultimate stop-mechanism of death was available to the whim of the audience.  It was dangerous because a slave was given a venue in which to act like a Roman citizen, a comparison kept cleanly out of law and society everywhere else, and thus the arena provided a catalyst for the exhibition of some of Rome’s most cherished virtues.

K.R. Bradley has done extensive work on slavery in the last several decades and has been able to illuminate the ‘reality’ (as an acknowledged anachronism) of slavery in many different cultures .  However, because the nature of his work has spanned millennia in which major sociological and psychological ideas have been developed, he is unable to look at Roman slavery without a modern humanist ideology backing his thought processes.  His judgments based on those biases make his approach to ancient slavery hopelessly anachronistic.

It is the work of Carlin Barton that has best been able to convey the sheer complexity of the sentiments felt towards gladiators in the Roman world in her various books and articles by combining sexuality, elite masculinity, slavery versus citizenship, and the very intensity of the large audiences at the arena .  There is no doubt that the gladiatorial games were intense emotional experiences, both for the individuals performing and spectating and for the collective audience, and that this was a semi-regular part of the urban social life in the Roman Empire.

Despite the breadth of theories circulating about gladiatorial combat and its socio-political implications, the research done to this point has been almost exclusively theoretical.  Nowhere in the current scholarship has the problem of dealing with this subject matter from a more Roman perspective ever been effectively dealt with.  Admittedly, approaching anything even partially resembling a Roman perspective can itself be considered theoretical, or even fantastical.  But the modern world is not so far removed from the ancient world that even a breath of that viewpoint is impossible.

The most abstract yet potentially highly revealing remnants available for study are the artistic representations of gladiators produced by the Romans themselves.  As with all forms of art, what is drawn from the medium depends largely on who is viewing it.  However, this can be of use in the current study.  The artistic representations that remain extant from the first and second centuries CE are often but not always details of live-action events witnessed by the artist (or in some cases, the manufacturer).  These artists were not bound to produce photographic or realistic accuracy but instead created their own personal impressions as well as recognizable social standards of the time.  To study gladiatorial representations, one must only look at what was created in mosaics, painting, ceramics etc. to see what was emphasized, embellished, and recognizable to capture a glimpse of what artists saw when they looked at gladiators.

Mosaics were a major part of Roman domestic architecture and decoration.  They were representative of avenues of privilege within the Roman house and of available points of view.  As Amos Rapoport states with such cerebral complexity, the social nature of the house within a culture depends almost exclusively on the sets of actions that occurred within it and the meaning invested by those action sets on the larger architectural space .  There is no place were cooking is done:  there is a kitchen where it is understood that the preparation of food is undertaken at certain times of the day, month, or year, and that functions as something else altogether at different times (ie. a social gathering place).  It is the understanding of the activities within a particular space and time that defines it, not the activities or the space or the time themselves.

Thus, the choice to permanently represent gladiators in any of these spaces is remarkable.  A very public and communal social event, reserved almost entirely to communities with enough urbanization to include an amphitheatre (either temporary or permanent), has been reduced and manipulated to suit the transitive public/private nature of a Roman house.  This style of decoration does maintain its elite status implications as mosaics were frequently commissioned and thus prohibitively expensive.  Only those members of society with the means and the physical space to encompass a mosaic would have one.

David Fredrick applies this opulent elitism to the use of erotic subject matter in domestic decoration to identify the value inherent in such choices.  There are architectural boundaries in a house that limit access and draw attention to the limitations of one’s social class as well as what the owner of the house wishes different levels of society to see .  An architectural feature that limits access either physically or visually, when crossed, represented a social achievement.  The house’s ability to reflect the nature and complexities of society was reinforced by the choices made in decoration.  This conversational potential of the house, its occupants, and its visitors provide yet another dimension to the analysis of gladiatorial representations in domestic decoration.

Of the many mosaics that have survived the turmoil of the past two millennia, perhaps the most famous and most recognizable is the floor mosaic found in a villa near Zliten in Tripolitania, North Africa. Its fame stems from the fact that, apart from damage to one side of the gladiator border, the Zliten floor mosaic is almost entirely intact and narrates the full order of events at a gladiatorial show .

From clockwise, top left of the full image, musicians lead in the procession, followed by fighting pairs of gladiators.  These are in turn followed by the condemnation of criminals ad bestias where they are torn apart by wild animals, and the show concludes with beast hunts called venationes.  Clearly there is a temporal discrepancy here, since most scholars believe that the gladiators would have walked in behind the musicians and been introduced in an informal way before commencing battle, but the artist chose to show the dynamism of the event rather than the temporal reality. 

Another element of this mosaic, identified by Christine Kondoleon, is the value of the white background that lacks any horizon .  It is as if the performers are floating in air.  The fact that this is a floor mosaic, found in one of the atria of the villa near Zliten, makes the need for a horizon redundant.  Not only would this mosaic have been viewed from a superior position vertically, creating a horizon within the space of the room, but the need for an artistically rendered setting would have detracted from the emphasis.  Again, the artist (or perhaps at the behest of the commissioner of the piece) chose to focus on the players within the gladiatorial show, not on the atmosphere.  It is considered likely that this representation depicts an actual day of games, perhaps patronized by the owner of the house . 

However, what is most remarkable about the reputation of this mosaic is that the gladiator representation is but a frieze, the surrounding border of a much larger part of the floor.  The central floor is a series of alternating geometric styles and designs that provides a busy decoration to a large atrium.  The use of gladiators and venatores is but a superfluous addition to a rather abstract main image. 

The fact that gladiators could be used in decoration as something other than the ‘main attraction’ shows that, although we may be endlessly fascinated by gladiators, the Romans were not as obsessive about focusing attention on them to achieve any kind of social discourse.  This may be because the Romans had more access to the actual gladiatorial events or because this particular villa owner’s tastes did not run in that direction.  However, if the theory that the owner may have financed the games represented on the mosaic is valid, the need to emphasize this could have been overwhelming.  In this case, the focus is not on the gladiators in the frieze for this floor mosaic.  And yet, if it were, how would it measure up to the established theories about gladiators?

Violence is a recognizable element of this mosaic.  One of the gladiators bleeds profusely from a wound to his leg.  Heavily-armed pairs fight in close combat and, in one case, a gladiator has his opponent pinned by the neck.  There are even two men dressed in simple white attire acting as a sort of referee.  The actions and persons of the gladiators are emphasized by the lack of horizon, but nowhere is there any hint of a ritualized slaughter.  There is practically no control here, nothing that would give a solemn or reverent air to the event.  Even the two referees are vastly outnumbered by the gladiators themselves.  There is also nothing in this mosaic that would seem to be glorifying death or violence; otherwise why would each gladiator be so carefully depicted with arms and armour unique to each man?  If violence were the ultimate aim and goal, what difference would it make if all the fighting pairs looked exactly the same?

The emphasis seems to be on the fighters themselves and their conduct at these games.  Again, the temporal abstract plays a role here because it allowed the artist to depict several pairs of fighters at different stages of combat simultaneously.  If indeed gladiators had fought in pairs altogether in this instance rather than one pair at a time as has been attested elsewhere , the possibility that they would not all be fighting at the same pace is evident.  But the fact that each figure stands so close to his neighbour suggests that the artist was depicting several fights in one frieze that did not occur all at once and had limited space with which to accomplish this. 

Despite the fact that the gladiator frieze is a part of a larger floor mosaic, great care was taken in depicting each fighter as realistically as possible.  This mosaic was meant to be looked at and, as it occupied a room that saw perhaps the most human traffic in the house, it was meant to be looked at by more than one level of society.  The care and detail taken in this extensive mosaic is part of the visual experience.  To elite visitors, it would remind them of the particular gladiatorial show financed by the owner and, possibly, the effectiveness of those games.  To lower class, it would also remind them of the games, but instill in them a sense of awe, perhaps as they paced around the room waiting for an audience with their patron .  There is a subtlety to the games narrative at Zliten stemming from its ability to be innocuous and eye-catching simultaneously.  It is not the main part of the floor but it forces the viewer’s eye to follow the procession, from the musicians to the venationes and (from what can be discerned of the damaged side) wild animals. 
The Zliten mosaic presents a vividly different understanding of gladiatorial games than the theories presented in the past four decades by modern scholars.  Blood and gore are certainly not the order of the day, nor is there any evidence of ritual human sacrifice.  Instead, the artist has given his or her representation of the games a new audience.  The amphitheatre (or any other setting, for that matter) does not figure into this mosaic.  Instead the viewer is invited to follow the procession around the floor and appreciate the craftsmanship that created it.  The reverence that is cannot be used to identify sacrifice is meant for the piece of art itself and for the event that inspired it, and is due from the audience.  The simplicity of the figures and their place in a greater geometric design emphasize this.  These figures draw the viewers’ focus to the fighting, not the dying or even necessarily the blood in one case, and the fighting is intense and individualistic.  Each combatant, though similarly armed is not identically armed, and they are all fighting their own battles.

To take another example for consideration, a villa near Nennig in Germany yielded yet another astonishing atrium floor mosaic.  The Nennig mosaic was created about a hundred years later and in a very different style from the one at Zliten.  Rather than a square shape with a border and geometric abstracts in the centre, the Nennig mosaic is an example of the use of emblemata.  Implementing individual images, either pre-made or made on site and added to the floor individually, these are distinct from a mosaic that is created to encompass them.

In this case, the musicians, gladiators, beasts, and beast-fighters are the central focus of the floor and the abstract geometric designs were created to draw the eye to them, to enshrine them.  Not only that, the emblema that depicts two gladiators and a referee is the largest and most prominent on the floor, offset by a water basin at the opposite end of the atrium .  The geometric designs add substance or ‘busy-ness’ to the floor, but also serve to illusively raise the emblemata from the surface of the floor.  It immediately draws the viewer’s attention to these very specific sections of the floor, adding emphasis but creating a disjunction between the abstract and the concrete images .  This is again very different from the Zliten mosaic where the gladiators represented where not the main part of the floor but a periphery; Nennig’s gladiators are very clearly the central focal point of this floor.

This artist has again chosen to depict all the major elements of a gladiatorial show:  musicians, beasts, beast-fighters, and gladiators.  The order is entirely ambiguous, however, while the gladiator emblema is noticeably the most important feature.

Here again there is no horizon, only a background of white tesserae, but Nennig also includes shadows on the ground from the three figures, something the Zliten mosaicist did not do.  The shadows accomplish two things:  first, it draws attention to the time of day being late afternoon ; second, it adds emphasis to the sheer bulk of the two fighting gladiators, and thus also symbolic or psychological weight to the combat itself.  Of the two gladiators, the retiarius or ‘net-man’ faces the viewer, who is thus able to see a bare chest glistening with sweat and muscles tensed as he thrusts his trident at his opponent. 

From the descriptions of elite masculine identity in Potter and Mattingly’s book, such nudity was highly provocative.  Elite Roman men were not physically fit in a way that would appeal to the modern western world; the belief was that a visibly toned body was a sign that a man was forced to engage in manual labour and was not financially secure enough to be a man of leisure .  The body of a wealthy man was softer and thus more indicative of his status within society.  Muscular strength was not a coveted attribute.  The sensuality of a bare-chested gladiator was therefore that much more powerful because it represented the lowest social class, (even lower than a legitimate class since many gladiators were slaves), put on display for an audience of primarily Roman citizens.  In this way, the gladiator was a man to be revered and reviled.  He was recognizably beneath contempt for much of Roman society but he was an integral part of that society’s understanding of itself, which made him inherently symbolize that society. 

This introduces a new layer to Roman conceptions of gladiators, one that Carlin Barton, Marilyn Skinner, and Shelby Brown have attempted to eke out in modern scholarship .  The epitome of perfection for an elite Roman male was to be able to embody virtus – virtues that make a man a man such as courage, skill, military excellence  – and this ideology did not change overmuch throughout the course of Roman Imperial history, despite a gradual separation of the citizen-soldier into each component.  A gladiator, being infamis and therefore socially inert, was the polar opposite or ultimate negation of the elite Roman male.  Slaves and anyone else upon whose bodies were placed a value or who used their bodies for monetary gain were so despised that they were not legitimate members of society.  Not unlike the metics of Classical Athens who existed in society but outside of it, gladiators were nebulous entities that society did not recognize legally but who were accepted on a basic social level. 

Gladiators were a particularly unique part of this group because, although they put their bodies on display for the pleasure of the audience, the reverence felt by the audience (either in the arena or domestically) was directed at the fighters who best represented the virtus that was exclusively reserved for the elite upper classes.  Simply put, even though they looked like slaves, they could potentially display the ultimate ideal of romanitas (Roman-ness).  This state of flux is what gives the gladiator his power.  He is not bound by a social norm, something the Romans were adept at preserving at all costs, but is able to use his status to a sublime purpose.  The audience would have been sensitive to this contradiction and thus more willing to appreciate the transcendence of the gladiator beyond the realm of worldly existence.  He had become a symbol for society, a complex and highly culture-specific figure, and as a result could extend beyond the physical person in the arena into the representation inside a private house. 

Domestic decoration using gladiatorial images provides modern scholars with the undiluted representation of what the gladiator stood for in Roman society.  Aggression, violence, blood, and sacrifice do not figure into mosaic art because they were not the primary focal point at the games.  They were a reality of the events in the amphitheatre but were clearly not substantial enough aspects of the audience’s interest to warrant including them in domestic art, because nowhere are they attested in extant Roman mosaics .  Marilyn Skinner’s book Sexuality in Greek and Roman Culture shows that the Romans used erotic or otherwise provocative images without hesitation .  Instead, fighting figures in moments of ambiguity or suspense act as symbolic representations of the nature of the experience in the amphitheatre.
The fact that mosaicists were under no compunction to represent gladiators with photographic accuracy and yet did so much of the time shows that the standard set in art had been forged in the amphitheatre.  What was being offered up for interpretation necessitated a degree of recognition of what was being represented.  The viewer had to be able to recognize the gladiator before them in order to comprehend the depth of comprehension required for the subject matter.  The gladiator had become a symbol so deeply standardized in physical reality that that same iconographic permanence existed in artistic representations as well .  The same conversation between viewer and viewed that occurred in the amphitheatre thus also existed in domestic decorative representations of gladiators. 

There was clearly a cultural imperative in the conversation that occurred over gladiatorial subjects.  The very fact that such a powerful aspect of public life could be transposed into the private sphere with relative ease is indicative of this fact.  But here is where the dissimilarities between the Roman and modern worlds end.  The continual use of gladiators as subjects in art, either predominantly or otherwise, alludes to the theory that the Romans themselves were never fully satisfied with the result.  Interest in gladiators continued over centuries of Imperial rule even as gladiatorial shows became more exclusive but also more frequent .  Exposure to them did not seem to lessen their value in society as an integral element of social discourse. 
It seems that Roman artists had the same difficulties with the subject of gladiators as modern scholars do, although the artists had the luxury of being culturally intimate with gladiatorial events.  However, it is clear that, unlike with modern theories about gladiators, the emphasis was not on violence or bloodthirstiness but did include a powerful relationship between the fighters and the audience and between the mosaic and the observer.  This opens up a wide breach in the study of gladiatorial representations as questions of iconography, convention, and artistic language for this subject immediately arise.  Was there something specific that Roman artists wanted to convey about gladiators besides the need for further consideration?  Is there a language of symbols unique to gladiatorial representation?  Do these symbols transcend amphitheatre subjects into other images in art?  These are questions that will be addressed in more detail in later works .
 
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