GLADIATORS

Bloodier than Stalingrad, bloodier than Verdun. So unspeakably
bloody that it may have been no miracle at all when Pope Gregory-
XIV gave each of a group of ambassadors a handful of the arena's
earth; seeing their disappointment at a gift so paltry, he squeezed one
handful, and it DRIPPED BLOOD!!!

"GOETHE called the Colosseum
"a vision of beauty." Dickens wrote,
"It is the most solemn, grand, majestic,
mournful sight conceivable." Stendhal
told how Michelangelo, as an old man,
wandered through the ruins "to lift
his soul to the pitch required to feel
the beauties and defects of his own
design of St. Peter's dome."
Before you let these tributes clinch
your .resolve to follow their authors'
footprints to Rome, hark to a more
recent visitor: myself. I clambered
over the Colosseum for hours last
summer, matching facts against fan-
cies. What romantics rhapsodized
about a century ago to their diaries
is today an insult to visitors and a
threat to their safety. At night it is

"one of the favorite hangouts for
prostitutes and perverts, and purse-
and camera-snatchers waylay unwary
tourists. The interior caverns
are often used as public latrines, and
rubbish frequently litters the ruins.
Even so, it is still one of the most
imposing structures in the world,
with a history to match though
for most of us that history is clouded
by misconceptions. Until last summer
the word "Colosseum" had
conjured for me a dusty, roaring
arena, where lions gnawed on meek
Christians, while Nero lounged on
rose leaves with death-dealing,
.down-turned thumb. Not so.
First, Nero never even heard of
it the cornerstone wasn't laid until
four vears after his death. Second,

A leaf from the famed Menologium of Basil II,
the elegantly illuminated service book of the
Eastern Church, shows the final agonies of Saint
Ignatius. The second-century Bishop ofAntioch
was the first Christian to be martyred on the sands
of the Flavian Amphitheater.

few scholars believe that any Chris-
tians were martyred there. Third,
neither emperors, gladiators, nor
Christians spoke of the "Colosseum";
to them it was the Amphithcatrum
Flavium. The name Colosseum was
not attached until the 8th century.
Marvel on a Marsh. The Amphi-
theatrum Flavium was so named
because it was built by the Emperor
Vespasian, amember of the Flavius
limily. His reasons for building the
largest amphitheater in the Roman
empire were as substantial as would
be the building: it could be built
cheaply by prisoners of war, it
would give Rome another recrea-
tion center, and it would return
some of the~ public acreage that
previous emperors had confiscated.

True, one almost insuperable ob-
stacle had to be faced: Nero had
made a lake at the site, only a,
few hundred yards from the Forum.
Vespasian's engineers managed to
drain it, but the ground was still
marshy, and how they persuaded it
to sustain so stupendous a weight is
a marvel of their profession.
Consider the Colosseum's meas-
urements : Its long axis is 620 feet,
its short axis 313 feet, and it is 160
feet highfour stories, not counting
the basements and subbasements.
And all this was solid masonry I The
shell and the principal corridors
were stonehuge blocks of traver-
tine clamped with iron. The interior
was part stone, part concrete, with
brick facings. The seats, 30,000 of 235

moners, a tier of io for soldiers and,
topmost, a tier for women.
Vespasian did not live to bestow
his gift. Work had begun in A.D.
72, but the seven years from then un-
til his death saw the walls rise only
to the third story. One more year
topped them up, and his son and
successor, the cruel Titus, invited
the public in for inauguration cere-
monies. His "games," in the cynical
term of the times, began with beast
against beast: bear against buffalo,
buffalo against elephant, elephant
against rhino. Then man against
beast, then man against man. So it
went, over and over, from dawn to
dusk, for loo days. At the end, Titus
weptwhether from exhaustion,
disgust, or a premonition of death,
only one year away, no one knew.
Five thousand animals were recorded

as slaughtered in those ioo
days. There is no record of the hu-
man dead. Certainly they were num-
bered in the hundreds. The cataract
of blood thus begun would not be
dammed until this had become the
most blood-soaked acre in the world:

enjoy

Typical Games. Anyone with
money enough could sponsor games,

and so many enjoyed the prestige
_and publid~thaL~elLbefore, the
Colosseum opened, there were al-
ready 93 days of games a year. The
standard program was like Titus's,
though more modest. First, days in
advance, posters went up around the
city, naming the sponsor, announc-
ing the star gladiators with their
records. At dawn of the appointed
day, the animals were brought from
their enclosure nearby and turned
into the dens under the arena. Then
came a procession of chariots, the
sponsor leading, followed by the
gladiators dressed in purple chia-
myses embroidered in gold, and
slaves bearing their arms and armor.
. What a spectacle it must have
been! The emperor in gorgeous
robes, diplomats in native costumes,
senators in purple-edged togas and
laced sandals. And above them the
Populus Romanus, tier on tier, "full

and running over with the lustiest
life," in Dickens' phrase. Suddenly,
silence. Up go the gladiators' sword-
arms, and out rings their bitter cry:
"Hail, emperor! We who are about
to die salute you!" They march off..
The emperor holds a scarf over the
railing and lets it drop. A trumpet
blares. The games begin.
Preliminary events were often
mimic, fought with wooden or pad-
ded weapons. But the main bouts
were in bloody earnest. As the pace
quickened, the noise rose, until the
orchestrahorns, flutes and a hy-
draulic organ-was drowned out by
the screaming spectators, the clash
and clang of weapons.
Cries of "Habetl"- "He's got it!"

latin

greeted a wound or a fall. If the
vanquished had strength enough, he
lifted his left arm to beg clemency.
Thumbs up and a flutter of hand-
kerchiefs granted it, with "Mitte!"
"Send him awav!" Thumbs down
denied it, with ")ugula!"
While one crew of slaves raked the
bloody sand, and another threw
grappling irons over the corpse and
dragged it out through the Death
Gate, the victor ran to receive a
palm leaf, and silver dishes heaped
with gold and jewels. The trumpet
blared again. The next duel began.
Waste no pity on these profession-
als. Victors were rewarded, coddled
and adulated far beyond the actors
and star athletes of today. Their portraits...

decorated Vases; poets hymned
them; noble ladies wooed them.
Moreover, their merry lives were not
necessarily short. The vanquished
were often spared. Many a gladiator
survived duel after duel and eventu-
ally took home the wooden sword
that symbolized honorable retirement.
Variety of Horrors. The first glad-
iators in Roman history were the
three pair whom the Brutus brothers
engaged in 264 B.C. as a sideline
entertainment for the funeral cere-
monies in honor of their father.
Titus Flaminius was soon engaging
37 pair to honor his father's death;

The embattled spear-wielder shown in this
detail from the renowned Bmghese mosaics
could well be the deranged Emperor Commodus,
whose passion for unequal combat drew him
to the arena more than a thousand times before
his assassination in A.D. 192.

Julius Caesar engaged 300 pair, the
Emperor Trajan, 5000.
Most gladiators were recruited
from slaves, prisoners, condemned criminals,
though some were freedmen seeking to found
their fortunes, bankrupts trying to
recoup, or men of birth and wealth
who fought simply for the thrill. In
their man-to-man duels, the "pur-
suer"one of the basic types of
gladiator fought with torso bare.
He wore a crested helmet and car-
ried a large shield and short sword
(gladius, whence "gladiator"). His
opponent was usually a "netter,"
who wore no armor at all, but had a
cast-net for entangling his pursuer,
;Ind a trident and dagger for slaying
him. Other types included those who
fought from chariots, or with spears
attached to their wrists by long
straps, or vvith a sword in each
hand. Sometimes both opponents
wore eyeless helmets and slashed ...