In Colleen McCullough’s Masters of Rome series, she makes it very clear, both in the narrative and in the afterwords, that during the Roman Republic, gladiatorial combats usually were not only not to the death, they were not even earnest contests. They were a performing art, like professional wrestling with swords and spears, giving entertainment by the graceful flourishing of weapons, and serious injuries were extremely rare. Spartacus gets in trouble, and gets sent to a much harsher ludus, for killing an opponent in the arena. Bloody to-the-death matches did not become routine until the Empire.
But in all other historical fiction I’ve read set in the Republican period, it is assumed that gladiatorial combat was generally to the death, and it was exceptional for a defeated fighter to be spared by the crowd’s mercy. And I know the highly civilized Cicero loathed the games, and attended only as social obligations required and brought his legal paperwork with him.
I have no information about this question, but I will offer this, from I, Claudius:
Livia: These games are being degraded by the increasing use of professional tricks to stay alive! And I won’t have it! So put on a good show and there’ll be plenty of money for the living and a decent burial for the dead. And if not…? I’ll break this guild up. And I’ll send the lot of you to the mines in Numidia.
Gladiatorial combat was around long before Rome was. The first recorded Roman gladiatorial battle took place in 264 B.C.E. and that was for a funeral ceremony. Actually, in the Republic public athletics - like a gladiator battle - was pretty much frowned upon. It wasn’t until the Republic started to crumble that large public spectacles such as the games were held at all in Rome.
Regardless, the OPs question is whether the combatants dueled to the death or not. Yes and no. Originally in Rome any gladiator engagement would be a (semi) private affair usually associated with a funeral ceremony. Would the combatants fight to the death? Usually not, but it happened. It wasn’t until Caesar in 65 B.C.E. held an event in Rome itself that the “games” became the massive public spectacle Hollywood has turned it into. Even then, many many individual fights would not result in death.
Remember, popular gladiators in the Empire would fight for years and gain a loyal fan following. Also remember that there had to be profit in gladiator fights. Sure there could always be a slaughter when you just threw in some captives when a Consul returned from a military conquest and was celebrating his triumph. However, otherwise somebody spent lots of money and time training, feeding, and housing a professional gladiator. The owner wouldn’t be spending that time and money unless he could expect a return on the investment.
Do you have any evidence that gladiatorial combats weren’t usually to the death? Because by my understanding, they were. That was the whole point of them. They started out as funeral games, and death of the gladiator in combat was a sacrifice to the spirit of the dead man.
We know from the graffiti in Pompeii that individual gladiators developed and cultivated reputations and cults of personality, much like modern professional athletes do. That’s not really possible if fights to the death are the norm.
secondly, this article claims that a trainer would charge the sponsor of the games very highly when one of his gladiators was killed.
But there’s nothing stopping “named” star gladiators going constantly up against fresh captured and poorly trained prisoners who would die on their first fight. Canon fodder would have been cheap, it might have just been very rare for two highly trained and known gladiators to ever fight each other (and when they did the loser would usually be granted missio)
I’d always thought that it was a fifty-fifty thing. Gladiatorial managers didn’t like fights to the death because it’d be a waste of all the money they’d spent feeding, housing and training them. But at the same time, well, shit happens when you’re swinging swords at each other.
This is of course assuming a one on one fight. Shit loads of criminals and slaves were sent to be butchered by gladiators.
ok, a better cite:
“Victors were indicated by the letter ‘v’. Losers could be marked as either ‘m’ for ‘missus’ indicating that they had lost but been reprieved or ‘p’ for ‘perrit’ indicating they had been killed. Far more gladiator’s names were marked with an m indicating that losers often survived.”
However, thats likely to be recent fights when Pompeii was destroyed in 79AD, doesn’t answer the OP’s question about what was common during the republic.
I’m seeing something saying that were two kinds of fights; fights that were, going in, to the death, with no mercy possible, and fights that a defeated gladiator could ask for mercy (although it wasn’t always granted), and that Augustus outlawed the former.
Right, and the earliest fights were strictly funeral games, so can anyone find a cite on whether the funeral games were strictly to the death, or was the death symbolic?
I only raise the question because that’s what I read in McCullough’s Masters of Rome novels, which are so famously well-researched that classical scholars call McCullough for advice.
I don’t know if that’s true. I’ve read McCullough’s Rome books, and there’s a lot of stuff in there that’s inaccurate, changed for dramatic purposes, unwarranted speculation, unconventional interpretations, or just plain wrong. They’re good books, and enjoyable reads, but I wouldn’t use them as history.
Don’t know about McCullough, but whatever you do, don’t use Robert Graves (I, Claudius) as a reference. I’m sure he did do some research, but for Graves, factual accuracy is far less important than a good story.
A lot of his research was based on correspondence and writings by the original Claudius, so right from the get go you have to take a leap of faith on the validity of the Roman original. It was probably rife with historical inaccuracies before he even got to take a crack at it!