Penguin (2023) p/b 416pp £12.00 (ISBN 9781804948521)
There are 280 known amphitheatres scattered across the Roman Empire, but most famous of all is Rome’s own Flavian Amphitheatre (known since the Middle Ages as the Colosseum). Built on the site of a lake in the grounds of the disgraced Emperor Nero’s Golden House, its exterior resembling a forest of triumphal arches, its packed interior was the Roman world in microcosm, a hierarchy that knew its place: women and slaves far from the action, then plebs, then equites, and finally the inner circle of senators flanking the imperial box—and below the bronze balustrade beneath a high marble wall, the arena, as alien as the world beyond the bounds of empire, the killing fields where wild beasts and criminals might be eliminated, the stage where gladiators battled for their lives. It was a place of sensory overload: sprayed perfumes; blaring trumpets; organ music; tinted nets that filtered sunlight onto pigment-tinted sand; mechanisms raising scenery and cages housing lions and tigers; and the ever-present thrill of death.
All this S. brings to vivid life in this very clever, thoroughly researched and tightly written book. Rather than simply giving us a monograph on gladiators, as the current title tells us (it previously appeared as Those About to Die) he takes as his framework the twenty-four hours before, during and immediately after a day’s Games. Thus, we begin in the barracks where the public can watch the cena libera, the pre-show supper for the surprisingly fat and sometimes deformed gladiators, pass the night considering oaths and dreams and what brought men (and sometimes women) to fight in the arena, and join crowds and processions at first light as they swarm into the amphitheatre.
S.’s descriptions and analyses of what happened next—animal fights; often-inventive, sometimes intentionally comedic public executions (S. calls them ‘snuff plays’); and the gladiatorial contests themselves (bouts of between 10 and 15 minutes with a one in eight chance of death for each participant)—are graphic and informative, but what makes the book so compelling is the way in which he contextualizes everything. The Games did not exist in a vacuum. Instead, they were (in S.’s interpretation) a crucial part of Roman life, not merely a means for ambitious Republican politicians or favour-seeking emperors to win the crowd’s approval, but a statement of Rome’s power, where the poor could experience the thrill of the hunt (more usually a pastime for the elite) and every section of society could see not just the ‘ritual punishment of dehumanized outsiders’ or the triumph of civilization over barbarity but even, through re-stagings of famous battles—sometimes with novel outcomes—the emperor’s control over past history.
With attendants dressed as Mercury, Pluto and Charon, they may also have had religious connotations and connections with beliefs about the Underworld. Certainly Tertullian, the Church Father, thought that amphitheatres were filled with daemons, while, before their demise in the fifth and sixth centuries AD, they helped shape Christians’ vision of hell.
This is not the first book where material is arranged around the passing of one day. Jérôme Carcopino’s Daily Life in Ancient Rome and Alberto Angela’s A Day in the Life of Ancient Rome have both immersed us in the quotidian experiences of Romans. Where S. differs, however, is in his focus on the gladiator, which somehow makes the structure even tighter while raising the jeopardy. But entertaining though it be, it is not simply a jolly romp. Rather, it is meticulously well researched with a brief Further Reading section, copious endnotes bristling with references, and an exhaustive index. It also contains 20 colour plates, in some cases too small to pick out details but useful nonetheless. Aimed at the general reader, it will be invaluable to students, too, and at a such bargain price it should be bought—and read—by anyone with an interest in Rome or gladiators.
Until now I have myself been sniffy about amphitheatres, repelled by the cruelty they represent. S., however, has converted me, and I find myself resembling the prissy Anytus who, St. Augustine tells us, went reluctantly to the Games, vowing to keep his eyes shut, but when he heard the roars could not resist seeing their cause. In a flash he was converted, ‘one of the crowd, a true companion to those who brought him’, shouting and raving with excitement and leaving with ‘a madness that would goad him to return’.
David Stuttard