ABSTRACT
The gladiatorial combats first appeared in Rome long after the Circus games, in 264 b.c., as a funerary rite reserved to the aristocracy. That year, indeed, the sons of Junius Brutus, descendants of the great Brutus, decided to honour the memory of their father by matching three pairs of slaves against one another, according to a custom which was not of Roman origin. Though these first gladiators—known as bustuarii—derived their name from bustum, a word meaning the tomb or the funeral pyre, it does not seem that these combats formed part of the many ceremonies of the funeral itself or that the gladiators fought to the death ‘before the tomb’ of the dead man, as has sometimes been assumed by a simplification of language. They took place in the days that followed, on a date difficult to state precisely but doubtless, at least at first, on the ninth day after the obsequies, the day which marked the end of the period of mourning after the solemn funeral ceremonies reserved for persons of importance, and on which the funeral games were traditionally celebrated.
