Roman Sports and Spectacles - Focus Publishing

66 · ROMAN SPORTS AND SPECTACLES
Thus the Spartan law forbids the separation of lovers, and allows a
man to be at his mistress’s side in public places. Girls are not locked away,
timid and under guard, and a man does not have to fear punishment.
You can talk to her yourself and plead your case with no middle-men, no
rejection, no long wait. Rich purple clothes do not seduce wandering eyes,
and there is no fussing with perfumed hair.
The Roman woman, on the other hand, goes around in a huge
crowd—you can’t get anywhere near her, can’t find out what she’s really
like or find a way to talk to her. A lover is quite in the dark. Rome, if
you would adopt the rules of Spartan wrestling, you would be even
dearer to me.
Petronius, Satyricon sec. 126
A slave describes her mistress for the narrator’s benefit. The mistress, seated in
the orchestra with the senatorial class, looks beyond the knights’ 14 rows to the
lower classes in the higher seats.
Since you say you’re a slave, a commoner, you’ll set her on fire with
passion. There are some women, you know, that get hot for low-lifes, and
they don’t get aroused unless it’s a slave’s tunic they’re tucking up. The
arena turns others on, either covered with dust for fighting or given
over to a theatrical show. My lady’s one of those: from the orchestra
she jumps over 14 rows and looks way up among the plebeians for
what she wants.
Juvenal, Satire 6, 76-81, 98-113, 246-267
In satire 6, by far the longest of the group, Juvenal discusses women’s faults. One
of these faults, according to him, is an excessive attraction to gladiators. In two
of these passages, Juvenal describes women who have adulterous affairs with
gladiators. In the third, he describes a woman who wants to be a gladiator herself.
For Juvenal, and probably for most Romans, the idea of a woman gladiator was
preposterous because fighting was considered unfeminine and unwomanly.
76-81: You have taken a wife by whom Echion the cithara-singer will
become a father, or Glaphyrus, or Ambrosius who accompanies choruses
on the aulos. 93 Let’s put up long reviewing stands in all the narrow street
and decorate the doorposts with laurel, Lentulus, because your noble
son, under the canopy in his tortoise-shell crib, is the very image of
Euryalus the murmillo.
98-113: If her husband orders her, it’s hard to travel on board ship:
the bilge-water smells bad and she’s dizzy with seasickness. But if she’s
following her lover, her stomach’s fine. The one vomits all over her
husband, the other eats with the sailors, runs up and down the deck, and
93 An aulos was a Greek musical instrument, related to the modern oboe.