Gladiators in Chester - and Afghanistan

I’m writing this from an international conference on Roman amphitheatres in Chester. I had intended to leave yesterday but in the end couldn’t resist staying for the conference dinner – after which a “gladiatorial entertainment” was promised, courtesy of some fighters from Roman Tours, whose normal business is to provide “authentic” Roman guides around the town and museum.

All the high-minded academic diners on my table seemed to be looking forward to it as much as I was. After all, it was a wonderfully Roman idea. For gladiators didn’t just appear in the amphitheatre, they featured at funerals and – among the rich – as a private, dinner-time spectacle.

I’m glad I stayed. But it did turn out to be a little tamer than I had hoped (or feared). The bouts didn’t actually last very long and most of the fighters were so burdened with all the gear that they couldn’t muster much agility. That may have been true of the real version too. But I don’t imagine that ancient gladiators were quite as portly as most of this lot. Far be it from me to point the finger at others who should lose a bit of weight, but the impression I got was that it was overwhelmingly middle-aged men of the short and dumpy variety who liked dressing up as Romans.

The conference itself was partly to celebrate the re-excavation of the amphitheatre at Chester, which captured the media’s imagination on Saturday. All the usual suspects, from the Today programme to the Times, had luridly entertaining features on the blood and guts of the Chester arena two thousand years ago. As the Times put it,  “Torture topped the bill in Roman Chester”.

Really?

Well, most of this seemed to me to be wilful misunderstanding – or, at least, a pretty partisan reading of the evidence. What intrigued journalists was a stone block with a ring attached found in the new excavations. It certainly looks as if it was intended to tether something. But what? Almost certainly animals. But most reports couldn’t resist the idea that it was intended to tether human victims. And this was the cue for a whole load of fantasies about chained prisoners tortured to death by rampaging lions (from god knows where) to please the cheering crowds.

At the conference, archaeologists stood firm against most such notions. All the same, bringing evidence for amphitheatres together from all over the Roman empire, the papers did tend to reinforce the impression that ancient Rome was nothing short of a gladiatorial culture, committed to the enjoyment of human slaughter.

It was me who was the party pooper here. I started my own presentation with the jolly picture of the gladiator at the top of this post (he’s from the permanent collection in the Musée Guimet, and is another piece of the Begram treasure – found in modern Afghanistan, in other words). But my main argument was that historians and archaeologists, as well as journalists, have wildly over-estimated the importance of gladiators in the ancient world. It’s us who is obsessed with the arena, not (so much) the Romans.

All the evidence – and, to be honest, there is not a lot of it – suggests that public gladiatorial spectacle was not a frequent event. The inhabitants of Roman Chester would have been lucky to see a handful of B team gladiators twice a year. The more interesting question for us is what went on in these amphitheatres on the other 360 or so days.

Who knows? But when I learned yesterday that a human tooth had been found among the debris of the Chester amphitheatre, I decided that it was more likely to be the result of a makeshift dentist setting hiself up in the arena – not the consequence of a nasty gladiatorial injury.

Comments

[M Downes]

A shame Professor Beard comments on the stature of the gladiator reneactors. The depiction on the vase at the top of the article and numerous other depictions clearly show a physique far from lithe. this sort of physique would have been a distinct advantage for a gladiator, otherwise fairly shallow wound would cause serious organ damage as opposed to just opening the fat layer.
Excellant book on Roman Religion all the same.

[Lord Truth]

Surely your classicists will have read the comment from some famous Roman historian that deplores the lack of excitement in the arena-"This afternoon -only a dozen miserable women and some children quickly put down"....
This is not the place for a discussion but I do find the interest in Gladiators sickly and evil.
Classicists of course always identify with the free Romans who are of course all white and at the levels usually talked about rather frightfully English circa 1953...
Gladiators,despite the attempts to elevate them to modern football heroes were simply slaves with good looks or build who -with the help of a few hot iron rods- were ordered to fight others to the death.
The successful ones -certainly lauded as heroes -would have lived in a state of barely repressed hysteria as their death count mounted and their own come uppance drew nearer.Incidentally does anyone actually know what percentage were made freemen for providing great "sport"?
The illustration on the glass vase showing the gladiator raising his arm is interesting.
Despite its simplicity-the body language-when looked at carefully shows a curiously restrained,held back physicality.There is no sign of the full blown happy exultantcy that a true free military hero would show...
The artist has captured perhaps more than he intended...

[Alex D-F]

C'est moi qui souligne...

[H.M. Fischer]

Far be it from me to correct the English of a Cambridge don, and it is a blog and all that, but, from the above in Ms. Beard's blog:

"It was me who was the party pooper here." And later, in the same paragraph: "It’s us who is obsessed with the arena, not (so much) the Romans."

Okay, I really enjoy reading Ms. Beard's posts, but the old teacher in me can't resist being, well, a party pooper. It should read "It was I..." and "It's we who are obsessed." Oh well....

[Jackie]

I can go along with Natalie's suggestion that an empty amphitheatre could have been used for military training. I have always believed that the REAL reason for building Hadrian's Wall was to keep the troops busy. Forget everything else!

[Natalie Bennett]

I recall a London archaeologist suggesting that its ampitheatre would have been most often used for military training.

[Tony Keen]

In the arcades of the Colosseum, they display some rather detailed pictures of gladiators, scratched by members of the audience into the marble of the seats. This has always suggested to me that there were long periods when scratching pictures was more interesting than anything actually happening in the arena, so in that sence I'd say Life of Brian gets something that the likes of Gladiator miss.

[Philippa]

I feel quite nostalgic about all this (I've been reading about the new finds in newspapers for a few days), Chester being very much part of my home country.

Is the building that covers half of the amphitheatre being knocked down? Or are they just digging deeper on the exposed side? I can't seem to find a way of finding out now that I have no contacts in Chester to spy for me!

[David Leedham]

Were the papers and radio bulletins really showing 'wilful misunderstanding' or were they being fed this stuff directly, and by people actually participating in the conference? One questioner did dare
to raise this possibility and to point to the motives involved. Me. Professor Beard's comments afterwards seeking to excuse or explain this conduct as a way of grabbing attention for the subject are surely less convincing given what appeared that very day in the Times and Telegraph which I see is now rejected in this splendid bulletin. I am sure I am not alone in hating to be misled, conned and patronised.

As for a previous contributor to this site, what is so strange about a building being left unused for considerable periods of time? Why not just open for tourists to wander and wonder at the power of Rome just as today they walk through castles, stately homes and churches and marvel that people in the past had the wealth and need to create such places.

On a more general point, I for one still worry about the lack of reticence on the part of archeologists about talking up their finds and their seemingly never satisfied appetite for seizing the limelight. There IS a difference between history and archaeology. Historians are used as part of their discipline to see things in context and to consider the wider picture. Chester seems always to be seeking to make itself out to be more special than it is, often from some sense of having to compete with places like York for the tourist trade. Of course its amphitheatre is special and this is only to be expected - there were only thre legionary HQs in Britain. But any claim for Chester's amphitheatre based on present finds should be moderated with the words 'so far'. Wait till they find the amphitheatre in York or uncover more of what Consatnatine intended for this new northern capital after the year 306!
Also, Chester was a military centre responsible for the government of a vast area including the whole of north Wales. Ther would have been a whole host of uses to which a large open space or a vast auditorium could be put. Yes, and as the Chester conference heard, there would have been all sorts of entertainments and ceremonies associated with the reception of emperors, legates, imperial agents and, of course, native rulers who would always have been courted and entertained to ensure maximum cooperation.

May Professor Beard appear at every gathering of archaeologists and continue throwing spanners in their publicity driven wheels!

David Leedham

[Jackie]

I think the point Professor Beard is making is not that there were no gladiatorial games in Britain, but that they would have been B class, and few and far between. Given the geographical position on the very edge of the empire this seems perfectly feasible to me. There were far richer places for the top notch gladiators to travel to.
The pancration was Greek wasn't it? Part of the Olympic Games. So not part of the gladiatorial arena.
So what did they use the amphitheatre for on the other days of the year? The one in Chester is far too large to have been left empty for most of the time. I love the picture of the itinerant dentist!

[Xjy]

So you think the gladiatorial combat in the Life of Brian was pretty representative? :-)

Reading the Golden Ass I'm struck - now you mention it - by the lack of any mention of this kind of entertainment. Can't recall any in the Satiricon, either...

But Lucretius is full of gory close-ups of lion's jaws chomping men, and Virgil's "games" have scenes so grotesque (the pancration, I think it's called) that he could hardly have sucked them out of his thumb. And if they didn't see this kind of thing at the circus, then where?

And Carcopino doesn't exactly make the shows out to be some kind of morris dancing, does he?