ABSTRACT
What could we learn about the Romans by using the gladiatorial games as a historical source? This chapter aims at answering this question by focusing on four different areas: Politics, culture, society and gender. In the field of politics, the author presents how “the games”, as the gladiatorial combats were known in Roman times, became a tool to promote the political profile of the wealthy patrons who had the means to organize them in the republican period, and later of the emperors. He also discusses the games as an arena where the Roman citizens had the opportunity to express their approval, or not, of politicians and even the emperor. The cultural approach focuses on the gladiatorial games as witnesses of “what it meant to be Roman” and as tools of “Romanization”. The games also offer a window to the Roman society, which might be used by focusing on who the gladiators were and how they were perceived and evaluated, on the reflection of social stratification in the grandstand of the arena, and the social interactions that were related to the games. Finally, the gender study of the games focuses on the participation of women in them, both as gladiators and as spectators, as well as on the gladiators as “sex-symbols” in Roman times.
