Roman Sports and Spectacles - Focus Publishing

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viii · ROMAN SPORTS AND SPECTACLES As you will see in the sources collected here, the Romans found their own solutions to these problems, and observing how they did so tells us something about what was important to them. Our sources include philosophical works, in which intellectuals theorize about the place of sport in society (Cicero, Seneca, Tertullian, Augustine); private letters between upper-class friends (Cicero, Pliny); and official government documents and correspondence (Pliny, inscriptions). These all give us an idea of the views of the people who ran Rome and its empire. We are fortunate, though, that we can also see what ordinary Romans cared about, from advertisements, graffiti, and tombstones written by and for them, and those make up the majority of the inscriptional sources in this book. Romans of all walks of life went to the chariot races and gladiator fights, and most people appear to have enjoyed them. Roman sports are both similar to and different from the sporting events of the modern world. First of all, for the Romans, sports, theater, and other spectacles were all part of religious festivals. The closest analogy in contemporary American life might be the traditional Thanksgiving football game—but imagine football being played only on holidays, as an essential part of the observance of the day. Next, the Romans were generally observers, not participants, and the competitors in Rome were usually slaves. This is particularly Roman, not an inevitable feature of a slave-holding society: in classical Greece, although it was also a slave society, citizens competed and exercised frequently, and slaves were forbidden to compete in the great games. One possible reason for this difference between Greece and Rome might be that Greek citizens fought in the armies of their city-states, and physical fitness was thought to contribute to military preparedness. Rome, on the other hand, had a standing army of professional soldiers. Another contributing factor is that gladiator combat is more dangerous than any of the Greek combat sports. A gladiator fight was normally expected to end with the death of one of the combatants, while in a Greek wrestling or boxing match both the winner and the loser could expect to survive the fight. In the one sport that was common to both Greek and Roman competitions, chariot racing, both societies used hired or slave drivers: the owner of a chariot would not be the one holding the reins. Perhaps we can imagine the typical ancient Roman being delighted with the idea of a sports TV network, and the typical ancient Greek being unimpressed. Finally, whereas many contemporary sports are team competitions, Roman sports generally involved individuals. Gladiators usually fought one on one. A typical chariot race involved four drivers, each competing for himself against the other three. Yet Roman chariot racing came as close as anything in the ancient world to the team sports we know today. Each chariot belonged to one of four “factions” or colors, called Blue, Green, Red, and White. Tombstones and other monuments for charioteers always
Chapter 5 Women and Sports · 65 These texts focus on women, family life, and sexuality as connected with sports, especially with gladiators. Normally women did not compete, although they were occasionally brought into the arena for a novelty. They did go to the theater, the circus, and the arena, however, and it was a standard stereotype that they found gladiators attractive. See also Martial, Book of Spectacles, Statius, Silvae 1.6, all in ch. 4, about women fighting in the arena, the selections from Ovid in chapter 3 about women watching the races at the circus, and the mention of women gladiators in the selection from Suetonius’s life of Domitian in ch. 6. Propertius, Elegies 3.14 Here Propertius fantasizes about athletic women. Sparta was a city in Greece with a strong tradition of militarism; everyone in Sparta, male and female, was expected to keep in fighting shape. The customs described here are typical of the seventh—fourth centuries BC; by the first century BC, when Propertius lived, Sparta was under Roman rule like the rest of Greece and was becoming Romanized. Sparta, we are amazed at the rules of your wrestling schools, and particularly at the young women athletes: for your girls, there is no shame in working out, naked among the men wrestling. The ball, thrown swiftly from hand to hand, confuses the spectators; the hoop rattles as the hooked stick rolls it along; a woman stands in the dust at the far turning-post, or gets hurt in the harsh pancration. 92 Now she happily straps boxing-gloves to her hands, now the heavy discus whirls as she throws it. Her horse’s hooves pound the ring; she girds a sword to her snow-white side and covers her maidenly head with hollow bronze; and then she follows the local hounds over the ridges of Mt. Taygetus, getting snow in her hair. She is like the warrior Amazons, who bathe with nude breasts in the waters of Thermodon, or like Castor and Pollux on the sands of Eurota, the one a victorious boxer, the other a horseman. Helen, they say, took up arms along with them, and did not blush to bare her breast before her divine brothers. 92 The pancration was a Greek combat sport in which almost anything was permitted, except biting and eye-gouging. THEATER, GREEK ATHLETICS, AND OTHER EVENTS 65
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Roman Sports and Spectacles - Focus Publishing

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