Roman Sports and Spectacles - Focus Publishing

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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.
· 67 loves to pull on the rough ropes. So what kind of body does Eppia burn for? Whose youth has caught her eye? What does she see for which she puts up with being called “Gladiator Girl”? Her dear Sergius has already begun to shave his throat, like an older fellow, and to anticipate retirement with his cut-up arm. There are lots of ugly things on his face, like a huge wart on the middle of his nose, right where the helmet rubs it, and foul stuff always dripping from his eyes. But he was a gladiator. That makes him a Hyacinth; for that, she prefers him to her sons, her country, her sister, and her husband. It’s the sword that they love. This same Sergius, when he gets his rudis, 94 begins to look like Veiento. 95 246-267: Who doesn’t know about the purple athletes’ cloaks and the ladies’ wrestling ointment? Who hasn’t seen the wounds on the palus, which they’ve gouged with the rudis and beaten with the shield? She goes through all the exercises and is quite worthy to blow the trumpet at the Floralia, though she’s a matron—unless she has bigger ideas and wants to appear in the real arena. What decency can a woman show wearing a helmet, when she leaves her own sex behind? She wants to be strong like a man, but does not want to turn into a man: after all, we men have such little pleasure. Such an honor, if her husband holds a yard sale, to auction off her balteus, manicae, helmet-crests, and a Samnite-style greave. Or if a different kind of fighting moves her, you’ll be happy that she sells her Thracian greaves. There are women who sweat in a delicate, embroidered robe, who broil in even a light silk dress. See how she grunts as she repeats the blows the trainer shows her, how she’s weighted down by the helmet, what thick bark bandages wrap her knees. Then laugh when she puts down her weapons and sits down to piss. Tell me, descendants of Aemilius Lepidus, of blind Metellus, of Maximus Gurges, of Quintus Fabius, of all ancient and famous Romans, what gladiator’s girl would ever dress up like this? When did Asylius’s girl ever get out of breath at the palus? Tacitus, Annals 15.32 Women gladiators were not just a fantasy of the satirists. WOMEN AND SPORTS In the same year Nero Caesar granted the Latin rights to the people of the province of Maritime Alps. He put the knights’ seats in front of the plebs at the circus; up to this time they had sat all mixed together, because the Lex Roscia 96 only dealt with the fourteen rows. That year saw gladiator spectacles as magnificent as any prior year, but many distinguished 94 The rudis was a wooden practice sword. When a gladiator retired, he was given a rudis, perhaps as a symbolic replacement for the real sword he would no longer need. Hence to “get his rudis” means to retire. 95 “Veiento” might be the name of Eppia’s husband, or might be a proverbial name for any ugly old man. 96 The Lex Roscia, of 67 BC, was the main law making rules for seating in the theater and the amphitheater. See selections in chapter 6 for more about this law and its effects.
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