He was lanista of the gladiators employed by the state circa 105 BC to instruct the legions and simultaneously entertain the public. The contract between editor and his lanista could include compensation for unexpected deaths; this could be “some fifty times higher than the lease price” of the gladiator. From the principate onwards, private citizens could hold munera and own gladiators only with imperial permission, and the role of editor was increasingly tied to state officialdom. Henceforth, an imperial praetor’s official munus was allowed a maximum of 120 gladiators at a ceiling cost of 25,000 denarii; an imperial ludi might cost no less than 180,000 denarii. It involved three days of funeral games, 120 gladiators, and public distribution of meat (visceratio data)—a practice that reflected the gladiatorial fights at Campanian banquets described by Livy and later deplored by Silius Italicus.

• For some modern scholars, reappraisal of pictorial evidence supports a Campanian origin, or at least a borrowing, for the games and gladiators.
• By this time, interest in gladiator contests had waned throughout the Roman world.
• As most ordinarii at games were from the same school, this kept potential opponents separate and safe from each other until the lawful munus.
• One gladiator’s tomb dedication clearly states that her decisions are not to be trusted.
• In the republican era, private citizens could own and train gladiators, or lease them from a lanista (owner of a gladiator training school).
• A procession (pompa) entered the arena, led by lictors who bore the fasces that signified the magistrate-editor’s power over life and death.
• The body of a gladiator who had died well was placed on a couch of Libitina and removed with dignity to the arena morgue, where the corpse was stripped of armour, and probably had its throat cut as confirmation of death.

The event may also have been used to drum up more publicity for the imminent game. These were probably both family and public events which included even the noxii, sentenced to die in the arena the following day; and the damnati, who would have at least a slender chance of survival. As reward for these services, he drew a gigantic stipend from the public purse.
Few gladiators survived more than 10 contests, though one survived an extraordinary 150 bouts; and another died at 90 years of age, presumably long after retirement. A gladiator might expect to fight in two or three munera annually, and an unknown number would have died in their first match. Having no personal responsibility for his own defeat and death, the losing gladiator remains the better man, worth avenging.
Those condemned ad ludum were probably branded or marked with a tattoo (stigma, plural stigmata) on the face, legs and/or hands. By Domitian’s time, many had been more or less absorbed by the State, including those at Pergamum, Alexandria, Praeneste and Capua. The Spartacus revolt had originated in a gladiator school privately owned by Lentulus Batiatus, and had been suppressed only after a protracted series of costly, sometimes disastrous campaigns by regular Roman troops. Hopkins and Beard tentatively estimate a total of 400 arenas throughout the Roman Empire at its greatest extent, with a combined total of 8,000 deaths per annum from executions, combats and accidents. Marcus Junkelmann disputes Ville’s calculation for average age at death; the majority would have received no headstone, and would have died early in their careers, at 18–25 years of age. A natural death following retirement is also likely for three individuals who died at 38, 45, and 48 years respectively.

Gladiator

• Having no personal responsibility for his own defeat and death, the losing gladiator remains the better man, worth avenging.
• This yielded two combats for the cost of three gladiators, rather than four; such contests were prolonged, and in some cases, more bloody.
• Modern pathological examination confirms the probably fatal use of a mallet on some, but not all the gladiator skulls found in a gladiators’ cemetery.
• Legislation by Claudius required that quaestors, the lowest rank of Roman magistrate, personally subsidise two-thirds of the costs of games for their small-town communities—in effect, both an advertisement of their personal generosity and a part-purchase of their office.
• One gladiator was even granted “citizenship” to several Greek cities of the Eastern Roman world.

Courage, dignity, altruism and loyalty were morally redemptive; Lucian idealised this principle in his story of Sisinnes, who voluntarily fought as a gladiator, earned 10,000 drachmas and used it to buy freedom for his friend, Toxaris. Having “neither hope nor illusions”, the gladiator could transcend his own debased nature, and disempower death itself by meeting it face to face. Yet, Cicero could also refer to his popularist opponent Clodius, publicly and scathingly, as a bustuarius—literally, a “funeral-man”, implying that Clodius has shown the moral temperament of the lowest sort of gladiator.
The munus thus represented an essentially military, self-sacrificial ideal, taken to extreme fulfillment in the gladiator’s oath. Nero banned gladiator munera (though not the games) at Pompeii for ten years as punishment. Those judged less harshly might be condemned ad ludum venatorium or ad gladiatorium—combat with animals or gladiators—and armed as thought appropriate. In Roman law, anyone condemned to the arena or the gladiator schools (damnati ad ludum) was a servus poenae (slave of the penalty), and was considered to be under sentence of death unless manumitted. Part of Galen’s medical training was at a gladiator school in Pergamum where he saw (and would later criticise) the training, diet, and long-term health prospects of the gladiators. All prospective gladiators, whether volunteer or condemned, were bound to service by a sacred oath (sacramentum).

Role in Roman life

A match was won by the gladiator who overcame his opponent, or killed him outright. Suetonius describes an exceptional munus by Nero, in which no-one was killed, “not even noxii (enemies of the state).” At the opposite level of the profession, a gladiator reluctant to confront his opponent might be whipped, or goaded with hot irons, until he engaged through sheer desperation.

The gladiators

The Christian author Tertullian, commenting on ludi meridiani in Roman Carthage during the peak era of the games, describes a more humiliating method of removal. The body of a gladiator who had died well was placed on a couch of Libitina and removed with dignity to the arena morgue, where the corpse was stripped of armour, and probably had its throat cut as confirmation of death. Even more rarely, perhaps uniquely, one stalemate ended in the killing of one gladiator by the editor himself.

Welcome Lanista Bonus

Their training as gladiators gave them the opportunity to redeem their honour in the munus. Yet, in the last year of his life, Constantine wrote a letter to the citizens of Hispellum, granting its people the right to celebrate his rule with gladiatorial games. Throughout the empire, the greatest and most celebrated games would now be identified with the state-sponsored imperial cult, which furthered public recognition, respect and approval for the emperor’s divine numen, his laws, and his agents. Following Caesar’s assassination and the Roman Civil War, Augustus assumed imperial authority over the games, including munera, and formalised their provision as a civic and religious duty. Thereafter, the gladiator contests formerly restricted to private munera were often included in the state games (ludi) that accompanied the major religious festivals.

A century before this, the emperor Alexander Severus (r. 222–235) may have intended a more even redistribution of munera throughout the year; but this would have broken with what had become the traditional positioning of the major gladiator games, at the year’s ending. Despite the harsh discipline, gladiators represented a substantial investment for their lanista and were otherwise well fed and cared for. A condemned bankrupt or debtor accepted as novice (novicius) could negotiate with his lanista or editor for the partial or complete payment of his debt. In the earliest munera, death was considered a righteous penalty for defeat; later, those who fought well might be granted remission at the whim of the crowd or the editor. Gladiator games were advertised well beforehand, on billboards that gave the reason for the game, its editor, venue, date and the number of paired gladiators (ordinarii) to be used.

The ludi and munus

Throughout the Roman world, ceramics, lamps, gems and jewellery, mosaics, reliefs, wall paintings and statuary offer evidence, sometimes the best evidence, of the clothing, props, equipment, lanista names, events, prevalence and rules of gladiatorial combat. Mosaics dating from the 2nd through 4th centuries AD have been invaluable in the reconstruction of combat and its rules, gladiator types and the development of the munus. In the later Imperial era, Servius Maurus Honoratus uses the same disparaging term as Cicero—bustuarius—for gladiators.
In Rome’s military ethos, enemy soldiers who had surrendered or allowed their own capture and enslavement had been granted an unmerited gift of life. For example, in the aftermath of the Jewish Revolt, the gladiator schools received an influx of Jews—those rejected for training were sent straight to the arenas as noxii (lit. “hurtful ones”). According to Theodoret, the ban was in consequence of Saint Telemachus’ martyrdom by spectators at a gladiator munus. Honorius (r. 395–423) legally ended gladiator games in 399, and again in 404, at least in the Western Roman Empire.
The use of volunteers had a precedent in the Iberian munus of Scipio Africanus; but none of those had been paid. Rome’s military success produced a supply of soldier-prisoners who were redistributed for use in State mines or amphitheatres and for sale on the open market. In the later Republic and early Empire, various “fantasy” types were introduced, and were set against dissimilar but complementary types.