A question about gladiators

Cafe Society
1

I’ve read the first five books of Colleen McCollough’s Masters of Rome series at least three times each. Book six is sitting in my shelf awaiting my attention. To me, these books rank as the absolute pinnacle of historical fiction. I’ve never found anything else that even comes close as far as depth of research and attention to authenticity.

In one of these books (Fortune’s Favourites, I think) McCollough makes the claim that gladiators of Caesar’s time did not fight to the death. That, in fact, a death in the arena was seen as shocking. But I’ve never come across this claim anywhere else. Granted, most of my other sources over the past few years have been more in the way of History Channel documentaries than anything scholarly (I know…o tempora, o mores!). So can any of our resident classicists provide me with an answer? Was Colleen McCollough making this up, or are the documentary script writers in need of some education? And if gladiators didn’t fight to the death in Caesar’s time, when did things change?

2

Yes gladiators fought to the death. That being said…There was an upper tier of Gladiators. Those were the sports stars of their time. You don’t let your drawing card get killed.

Check out the DVD of “Gladiator” for a good documentary on gladiators.

3

We actually don’t know anywheres near as much about gladiatorial games in Caesar’s time as under the empire. In general, I trust Colleen McCullough to have done excellent research, so I wouldn’t dismiss her claim out of hand. Fighting to the death was rarer than people today think; human beings were expensive, and trained gladiators (as opposed to condemned criminals) were an investment. Criminals (ie, Christians thrown to the lions, etc) were the ones who were guaranteed death.

4

It’s my understanding that even they weren’t quite guaranteed death. If the Christian somehow miraculously survived the lion (and, of course, there are a number of stories of saints doing just that) then he went free.