HIST 1250 lecture 8 Bread and circuses: sports as statecraft

bread and circuses

Perhaps the most famous quotation about the public entertainments of Rome came from the sharp-tongued satirist Juvenal, deriding the mob.
• Juvenal claimed that while the Roman People had once possessed great power, they were now sated by the emperors with two commodities: Bread in the form of the free grain to which all citizens were entitled, and Circuses, meaning the public entertainment of the Games, which kept people happy.
• In this lecture, we will see how ‘Circuses’ indeed functioned in a political way.

empire without end

Far more than any Greek city-state, Roman society and culture were fundamentally imperialistic.
• The word ‘imperialism’ comes from Latin, and our concept of it comes from the Romans
• Imperialism was baked into almost every aspect of Roman society, especially in its earliest years. The Romans relentlessly expanded their military and political control of the Mediterranean until they dominated all of its shores.
• This imperialism inevitably both shaped the form of the Ludi and the culture around them

gladiators as prisoners of war

The overwhelming majority of gladiators to fight and die in Roman arenas were originally the residents of Rome’s neighbours, unfortunate enough to be captured during Roman wars.
• Men of fighting age, and especially combatants, were regularly selected specially for their value in the Games. They would be sold to slave traders (See next section) and trained in special gladiatorial schools.
• As ‘barbarians’ (non-Romans), they were systematically dehumanized and thus treated as fair game for death in combat for the amusement of the Roman crowd.

venationes as Spoils of Empire

In our prior lecture, we saw how the Venationes became a craze in the Roman Empire with an increasing focus on ever more exotic animals being brought in.
• This was itself an affirmation of Roman imperialism. The display of new animals from giraffes to tigers was a means of demonstrating to ordinary Roman citizens how far afield their armies had conquered.
• The Beast-Hunts thus functioned not only as entertainment but a reminder of Roman military success and their growing domination over the furthest-flung fringes of the Earth.

the empire in microcosm

One way of viewing the Ludi at Rome is as a microcosm of the entire Roman Empire.
• The Empire was run by and for the benefit of Roman citizens at Rome, ruling over subjugated provinces. The arena allowed these Romans, whether rich or poor, to see themselves as superior to the masses of conquered peoples forced to fight for their amusement.
• Thus it was very common for gladiators to be explicitly named for their ethnic origins: “The Thracian”, “The Spaniard”, “The Gaul”, “The Syrian” etc, reinforcing the sense of Roman domination over the other peoples of the Mediterranean.

the games and the triumph

One of the most explicit ways in which the Games reflected Roman imperialism was their connection to the famous Roman institution of the Triumph.
• After any major Roman victory over foreign foes, the victorious general was entitled to celebrate a great victory parade through the heart of the capital. These parades, called Triumphs, were enormous public
spectacles in their own right; public holidays accompanied by sacrifices and celebration.
• They were also traditionally accompanied by Gladiatorial Games sponsored by the victorious general. This reaffirmed that the Games showcased Roman military strength and success.

games and Romanization

The Games did not simply reflect Roman imperialism however, they also actively contributed to it. As we saw last class, amphitheatres dedicated to gladiatorial combat sprang up around the Mediterranean.

• Although the Romans never forced any of their subjects to put on games, those subjects were very aware that staging gladiatorial games was a way of ‘looking like’ the Romans, and trying to ingratiate themselves with their new masters.

• In this way, the Games and the Amphitheatre acted for the
Romans a lot like the Gymnasium had for the successors of
Alexander during the rise of Hellenism.

spectacle and roman identity

In this way then, the Gladiatorial Games became as central to Roman identity as the Gymnasium and Athletic Culture had been to Greek identity.
• In both instances, participation (or at least, spectating) in a form of sports came to be seen as a key cultural characteristic of an entire people. To put on Gladiatorial Games was to ‘act Roman’, and the Romans understood themselves as the people who put on and watched Games. They were a central badge of identity.
• This would remain the case all the way into the 300s CE, when popularity of the Games would eventually fade.

athletes as slaves

We saw in the prior section that gladiators were typically Prisoners of War taken from Rome’s neighbours.
• It is important to emphasise that they were also usually (though not always enslaved. This was the standard fate of prisoners of war, but also of their descendants in captivity.
• Slavery was tightly bound up with both imperialism in general and the Games in particular. Not only the gladiators but also beast handlers, trainers, and other ‘entertainers’ at the Games were very frequently enslaved.

those about to die

Enslavement in Roman society meant complete ‘social’ death; the annihilation of who a person was before they were enslaved. Slaves were given new names, they were torn apart from their families and loved ones and put into new households; there was no respect for their prior identity in life.
• Slavery was thus treated as a sort of ‘suspended sentence’ on death; the enslaved person got to live a little longer after their capture, but their life was already essentially over. They were not respected as full humans by their captors.
• All gladiators were thus in a sense always ‘those about to die’, as in a famous phrase associated with them by the biographer Suetonius

athletic shame, athletic honor

In the Athletic Culture of Greece, Kleos or Honour was won by the
successful athlete; the fastest runner, most skilled horseman or
discus thrower etc. We have seen that the Romans too had an
honour culture in which Virtus, Honor, was greatly prized.
• This naturally raises questions; if the athletes in question were
enslaved, and slaves are generally dishonoured within their own
societies, then how exactly did this process work?
• As we shall see, the answer was complex: gladiators were both
dishonored and stigmatized as a class, but sometimes capable of
tremendous individual honour.

athletic shame

In general, the very act of participation in the Games was seen as an immense social stigma. While some free men did volunteer to be Gladiators, they were sneered at by other free Romans, who saw them as acting ‘like slaves’.
• Perhaps the most famous example of this came with the Roman emperor Commodus (r. 180 – 193 CE) who was obsessed with the Games to the point that he personally participated in them, dressing asa gladiator and fighting other combatants.
• This was treated as hugely scandalous by contemporaries. The idea of a Roman emperor behaving like a common slave was disgraceful, and may have contributed to Commodus’ eventual assassination.

athletic honor

This norm of social stigma however coexisted uneasily with anotherbasic reality: success was a virtue, and successful Gladiators became extremely popular and well-known as a result of it.
• The very fact that Commodus wanted to be a Gladiator should tell us something of the allure which these athletes held for many observers.
• Success in the arena could thus result in greater honour, including the ultimate prize for any enslaved person: manumission. Some gladiators became celebrities in their own right, with graffiti and even sometimes poetry attesting to their growing fame and success, an apparent contradiction in terms.

resistance

Finally, it is worth noting that the Games were also the context for the most famous slave revolt of the ancient world – indeed perhaps the most famous slave revolt of all time, the Revolt of Spartacus (73 – 71 BCE).
• This event is shrouded in myth and political rhetoric. It is described only by Roman elites who bitterly opposed Spartacus, owning slaves themselves and fearing future revolts.
• What we know for certain is that Spartacus appears to have been a former “barbarian’ soldier who was then captured by the Romans and enslaved as a gladiator, sent to a major Gladiatorial School in southern Italy, near Naples.

I am Spartacus

When Spartacus ultimately led his great Slave Revolt, its core was comprised overwhelmingly of Gladiators. This is a major reason why the revolt would prove more successful than most slave revolts, even if it ultimately fell short.
• The Gladiators were understood to be outstanding fighters. The very f act that Spartacus’ group were all hardened veterans showed that they were the best of the best, making it through the cut-throat environment of the arena. These skills then translated into success in actual warfare against the Roman legions.
• Overwhelming concentration of resources and numbers ultimately crushed the revolt and killed Spartacus in 71 BCE, but his revolt would be remembered as a nightmare scenario for the Romans thereafter.

from competition to monopoly

For the first two and a half centuries of the Games, they functioned as a means of elite competition in the Roman Republic.
• Wealthy Roman senators competed not to participate in sports like Greek elites, but rather to pay for new arenas and shows in which to stage them. It was the sponsors who must reliably won honour and glory, and distinguished themselves before their peers.
• However from the end of the first century onwards, this would change, as a series of civil wars and revolutions left all power in Rome concentrated in the hands of a single individual: The Roman Emperor. From now on, it was the Emperor who would be the major beneficiary of the Games.

the emperor as patron

While Games in the Roman Republic could be sponsored by different elites in competition with one another, the Ludi of the Roman Empire were staged almost exclusively by the emperor himself.
• It was the emperor who sponsored all major arenas, such as the Flavian Amphitheatre (=Colosseum). It was the emperor who chose public holidays and festivals, and decided when games would be held.
• And while the emperor sometimes allowed his elites to sponsor individual games or shows to massage their egos, it was also the emperor who sponsored all of the greatest and most memorable Games.

As the remarks of Augustus note, among the ways in which the emperor controlled the Games was his command of the timetable for them. This was of tremendous importance.
• Every time the Games were staged, even for annual holidays, the Emperor was always credited for putting them on. The Emperor could also decide to hold new Games whenever he wished – for example, when his subjects were unhappy with them or there was broader controversy, he could seek to placate them.
• The Emperor’s absolute control over this wildly popular form of mass entertainment meant people credited him for their existence at all.

the emperor as spectator

Emperors were very aware of the potency of the connection between them and the Games.In both the Gladiatorial Amphitheatre and the chariot-racing Circus of Rome, a special imperial box was constructed.
• In fact, the Imperial Palace at Rome was actually built into the side of a hill overlooking the Circus Maximus, so that the emperor could access his Box via a tunnel directly from his living quarters. This arrangement would be copied in later new imperial capitals, especially Constantinople, the New Rome of the fourth century.
• The Emperor was expected to appear in public at virtually all Games of all sort, thus formalizing his ownership of them in the public eye.

the emperor and his people

The appearance of the Roman Emperor at the Games was one of the ultimate ways in which he performed power before his subjects.
• Emperors would even interact with their People. They might make announcements via Heralds; they would in turn often be petitioned with chants from the crowd.
• Most famously of all, the Emperor performed his ritual dominance by signaling for the survival or death of gladiatorial combatants (possibly with a turned thumb, as in the popular image.)

autocracy and spectacle

The relationship between the Roman Emperor and the Games was a particularly powerful and early example of what would be a fraught and contested relationship between Autocracy and Sports through time.
• The power of Bread and Circuses serves as a reminder of how authoritarian rulers can use pop culture and mass entertainment to entrench their dominance over their societies. Emperors were able to perform rulership, to be associated with success, and to pose as the providers of public entertainment.
• We will see echoes of this association throughout our course, from the relationship between Sports and Fascism in the 1930s to the Sportswashing’ debates of the present day in which various autocratic regimes continue to perform