ABSTRACT
A gladiator was a man who might lack any positive quality except the skill to fight to the death. But that virtus was so important in defining who was a Roman that its public display might lead to the gladiator’s being accepted back into the community of Romans. Although Rome had effectively ceased to be a city-state generations before the first three pairs of gladiators fought at Junius Brutus Pera’s funeral in 264 bc, the city-state principle that sovereignty ultimately resided with the body of adult male citizens was adhered to even under the emperors. Consequently it was not the editor of the games, even if that editor was the emperor himself, but the assembled people that decided whether a defeated gladiator had shown enough courage to be granted his life, and whether a successful gladiator deserved to be restored to the privileges of citizenship. Reports of what the crowd demanded in the amphitheatre primarily refer to favours for particular fighters; this applies to the literary evidence, and to the occasional archaeological item such as the Tunisian mosaic commemorating the venatio of Magerius (p. 16 f.). The literary evidence is anecdotal, and emphasises demands made in the presence of an emperor. Anecdotes are recorded because of the light they shed on the emperor’s character, particularly when those demands expressed friction between people and emperor, even on apparently non-political matters: the Historia Augusta notes the refusal of Hadrian and Gallienus to grant popular fighters what the people demanded, and Suetonius records the hostility of both Caligula and Domitian towards those who supported gladiators of a different type from their own favourites. The Book of Spectacles refers to the audience’s demand that a 166particular gladiator be allowed to leave the arena alive, missio. 1
