The
brutal reality of gladiators in Roman Britain
Headless
skeletons, feral bears and female fighters – a new British Museum show
revolutionises our understanding of life in 175 AD
Edith Hall
It’s 175 AD in Colchester – then called Camelodunum – a prosperous industrial town. Several thousand people are making their way past villas, pottery factories and temples of Jupiter and the deified Claudius to the amphitheatre. Local Britons, descended from the tribes who long ago rebelled under Cunobelinus (Cymbeline) and Boudicca, now live peacefully side-by-side with retired legionaries from Gaul, Thrace, Italy and Anatolia.
After
buying refreshments from market traders at the entrance, they take their seats
on wooden benches around the oval arena to await the day’s entertainment.
First, hares and deer are released, followed by a large, ravenous dog, who
takes some time to shed the first blood of the day. Then, to great applause,
the famous venators (hunt-showmen) Marius and Secundus, armed
with only a whip and a cudgel, subdue an enraged bear.
But the
climax is a long-awaited showdown between the professional gladiators. Loud
applause greets the helmeted Memnon, a celebrity African combatant who has
adopted the stage-name of an Ethiopian superhero who fought Achilles at Troy.
It is Memnon’s ninth appearance here; he has always won. He takes the role
of secutor, armed with sword and shield; the retiarius with
a hunting net and trident is named Valentinus, sent by a division of the 30th legion
stationed in Gaul. Few retiarii have ever kept Memnon at bay for long; he has
the advantage of being left-handed and difficult to ward off. Valentinus
eventually drops his net and Memnon lifts his sword to strike. Valentinus
points his index finger upwards to concede defeat. The crowd roars to signal
whether he should live or die.
We can
time-travel to these thrilling spectacles because they are illustrated on a
clay vase made locally around the time of the event, which will be on display
at the British Museum throughout its touring
exhibition Gladiators in Britain, which opens at the Dorset Museum & Art
Gallery on January 25 and travels throughout the rest of year. The vase was
buried at the funeral of a middle-aged man, perhaps a deceased gladiator. The
names were inscribed before the pot was fired. It was one of the more elaborate
souvenirs that spectators could purchase at stalls around the amphitheatres in
at least ten towns in the province of Britannia.
Gladiator culture united this
north-western extremity of the Roman Empire with hundreds of towns across the
Roman world, from Algeria to Israel, Spain to Syria. Britannia was no rustic
backwater, but a thriving and cosmopolitan civilisation receptive to all the
technology and culture that flourished under the Roman Empire.
Gladiators
were common across Roman Britain – and evidence for them is abundant. At
Richborough in Kent, the arena wall was painted in brilliant hues of red and
blue. Chester offers plentiful evidence for portable fast-food ovens and
souvenir shops. Londonium’s amphitheatre, beneath Guildhall Yard, sported tiled
entrances. At Aldborough in North Yorkshire (Isurium Brigantum) the
amphitheatre entertained the merchant travellers who passed through this trade
point at the highest navigable point on the river Ure.
One of the
oldest arenas was constructed at Silchester, the capital of the Atrebates
tribe, in around 75 AD. It could seat around 7,000 – a capacity midway between
the Royal Albert Hall and the O2 Arena. The clergyman William Lisle Bowles
visited it in the early 19th century, recalling, “Here
– where the summer breezes waved the wood / The stern and silent gladiator
stood, /And listened to the shouts that hailed his gushing blood.”
A muddier
envisioning of Silchester gladiators occurs in the Roman Britain action movie Eagle (2011),
directed by Kevin Macdonald and adapted from Rosemary Sutcliff’s novel The
Eagle of the Ninth (1954). In the film, the British youth Esca (played by Jamie
Bell of Billy Elliot fame) faces death at the hands of a gladiator clad in a
sinister full-face helmet, but is rescued by the Roman centurion Marcus Aquila
(Channing Tatum) before they travel north to seek the famously missing 9th Legion.
Meanwhile,
the Neolithic henge at Maumbury Rings near Durnovaria (Dorchester) was
converted into an amphitheatre in around 100 AD, its arena levelled with chalk
and sand and recesses built into the walls to house the caged animals. Thomas
Hardy used this atmospheric sense of a long-buried history to echo the pain of
a lost marriage in The Mayor of Casterbridge; Michael Henchard arranges his
clandestine reunion there with Susan, the wife he has not met for eighteen
years. The emotional turbulence is reflected by the overgrown grass, “bearded
with withered bents that formed waves under the brush of the wind, returning to
the attentive ear Aeolian modulations, and detaining for moments the flying
globes of thistledown”.
More recent
archaeological finds have revealed more about the appearance of gladiators in
Roman Britain, including a visually intimidating copper alloy helmet found at
Hawkedon, Suffolk which is on show at the exhibition. The short City of London
street named Poultry revealed an oil lamp portraying a fallen Samnite
gladiator. The popularity of gladiator culture is further demonstrated by more
than forty knife handles carved to portray fighting gladiators that have been
discovered, from Corbridge and South Shields to Caerwent, Monmouthshire. Cupids
fight as miniature gladiators on a mosaic from Bignor Roman villa in West
Sussex.
Less
certain evidence is provided by the more than 80 decapitated skeletons of
well-built men under 45 found in a Roman cemetery in York, some of whom came
from Syria, may have been gladiators; one of them had been bitten by a large
carnivore. They may have been criminals beheaded in the arena after being
forced to fight with beasts. Although female gladiators are attested in Rome
and Antioch, it may be wishful thinking that has interpreted the skeleton of a
twenty-something Romano-British woman found in Great Dover Street, Southwark,
as belonging to a gladiatrix; the evidence is only that she was wealthy,
perhaps suggesting a successful career in the arena, and that one of the oil
lamps buried with her depicts a gladiator.
The
exhibition will breathe new life into our understanding of ancient British
recreation, revealing that new finds extend the evidence for the appreciation
of gladiators across all England and Wales. Just last year, a delightful
figurine found on the banks of the Tyne near Hadrian’s Wall depicts a perky,
helmeted gladiator, and he is left-handed. Did Memnon, after his ninth victory
at Colchester, tour every amphitheatre in Britannia?
Gladiators of Britain runs until April 2026; further details, see: britishmuseum.org
Edith Hall is Professor of Classics at Durham University. Her
forthcoming book is Epic of the Earth (Yale, £18.99)
