ABSTRACT
Even before Russell Crowe’s Maximus suffered and slaughtered his way through Ridley Scott’s epic movie Gladiator in 2000, Roman gladiators were a hot topic. Excellent traditional works had collected sources and detailed the phenomenon earlier, but new works were interpreting the paradoxical significance of the arena in Roman civilization. 1 Focusing on gladiatorial combat at Rome under the Republic, this essay will discuss the origin of gladiatorial combats, their relationship to Roman militarism, and the ambivalent attitudes to gladiators in Roman society. 2 As gladiatorial entertainment at Rome emerged in the Middle Republic (264–133 BC) and was politicized further in the Late Republic (133–31 BC), the imagery of gladiators evolved in terms of the inconsistency between their base and vile social status and the growing popular appeal of these warriors of the arena.
