It seems that there were two kinds of gladiators:
-guys equipped with a net and a trident-like spear
-men equipped with swords and shileds
Which type survived best?
I imagine the net was pretty effective-if your opponent could manage to spread it over you. Presumably, the netted man was then finisted off by a jab from the trident-messy!
Hoowever, the swordsmen had shileds-and a trident is a pretty ineffective weapon-if the swordsman knocked the trident out of your hands, you were pretty vulnerable.
anybody know how these fights went?
You’re thinking of hoplomachi (short sword and shield) and retiarii (trident and net), but there were a bunch of other configurations. List of Roman gladiator types suggests that these two types were typically matched against other types, rather than each other.
Yes, I imagine in a one-on-one fight a retiarus would normally win this matchup, but fights were often deliberately unbalanced in one way or another, depending on the status of the fighters and the perceived entertainment value.
There were actually more than two types. I think you’re thinking retiarii and hoplomachi.
I believe current thinking is that the way these fights went is much like the way professional wrestling matches go nowadays – played up for the crowd, but probably not the no-holds-barred, life-or-death struggles you’d think.
shakes fist curse you, spark240! now, where’s my trident…
Deaths in the arena did occur, and the possibility of death was doubtless one of the things which drew the crowds, but it wasn’t really something the organizers would have wanted. Gladiators were valuable: Any slave always is, plus the gladiators had specialized training, and many of them had celebrity status. You can’t keep people coming back to see Celadus the Thracian (said to be a big hit with the ladies) if Celadus got skewered three weeks ago. The organizers were probably especially fond of weapons like nets, then, because they allowed for a decisive finish to a contest without the loser dying.
Experienced gladiators were certainly valuable and became even more so with victories and recognition. They would not have been readily sacrificed. At the same time, some of the “fights” were more like butcheries, in which lightly-armed, untrained slaves or convicts were sent in to be cut up by those celebrity gladiators. Sometimes the pretense of a contest was dispensed with, and condemned people were simply tied to posts and mangled by beasts. At the other extreme were relatively harmless contests with wooden weapons. So there was quite a range, but the overall reputation for savagery is well-earned.
Was there ever public betting on the outcome of a match, assuming there were two similarly equipped gladiators?
Certainly there was betting, though I don’t know if that was ever structured and formalized like our horse races, or just arranged among the spectators themselves.
Here’s another essay which covers some ground the wiki articles don’t, and which suggests a one-in-ten fatality rate per event (among actual gladiators facing one another) in the 1st century AD. The origins of some of the fighting styles are explained.
On further reflection, the OP was probably thinking of secutores rather than hoplomachi; the secutores (with larger shields than the former, and a little more armor) were indeed matched against retiarii (who would have had a mobility and reach advantage here, and would have to use it well to keep the slower secutor’s gladius at a safe distance).
A retiarius would normally fight a secutor.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Retiarius
The Mack Reynolds novel “Time Gladiator” claimed a Retiarius was favored 5 to 3 over a Secutor because of superior mobility and the longer reach of the trident made it hard for the Secutor to close with his opponent.
Of course, since this was a novel, making stuff up is permitted.
At least some of it was just for the sake of appearances, too: One of the styles of armor popular at the time looked like a fish’s scales, so it makes for a good spectacle to have someone fighting against someone so clad, using fishing equipment.
A historian, Josef Löffl, does a lot of interesting experimental archaeology at the University of Regensburg.
His latest project might be of interest to you:
Roman Gladiator Summer School: Can 20 Students Learn to Fight Like Spartacus?
I like this approach. I learned to fight with the German longsword and in armor during my days at the university and it helped me say goodbye to a lot of prejudices wrt the medieval knight.
Added:
I have a book recommendation for the German readers/history buffs among the dopers:
Philip Matyszak
Legionär in der römischen Armee
Der ultimative Karriereführer
Don’t miss it; it’s great.
In both Rome the series and Sparticus they have scenes in which somebody whacks off a limb with a gladius. In Sparticus, he cuts both of a guy’s legs off in one whack. I know in Ruanda people got limbs hacked off with machettes, but I’ve always assumed this was not done in one clean swipe but several vicious chops. But of course I have no idea. Would it have been possible to cleanly dismember someone with a gladius?