PUBLIC GAMES IN ANCIENT ROME

Public Games were free exhibitions given at first in honor of some god, or gods, at the cost of the State and extended and multiplied for political purposes until all religious significance was lost, had come by the end of the Republic to be the chief pleasure in life for the lower classes in Rome; indeed Juvenal declares that free bread and the games of the circus were the people’s sole desire. Not only were these games free, but, when they were given, all public business was stopped and all citizens were forced to take a holiday. [Source: “The Private Life of the Romans” by Harold Whetstone Johnston, Revised by Mary Johnston, Scott, Foresman and Company (1903, 1932) |+|]
These holidays became rapidly more and more numerous; by the end of the Republic sixty-six days were taken up by the games, and in the reign of Marcus Aurelius (161-180 A.D.) no less than one hundred thirty-five days out of the year were thus closed to business.1 Besides these standing games, others were often given for extraordinary events, and funeral games were common when great men died. These last occasions were not made legal holidays. For our purposes the distinction between public and private games is not important; games may be classified, according to the nature of the exhibitions, as ludi scaenici, dramatic entertainments given in a theater, ludi circenses, chariot races and other exhibitions given in a circus, and munera gladiatoria, shows of gladiators, given usually in an amphitheater. It must be understood that there was no commercial theater, and that plays were shown only in connection with the games mentioned above. |+|
In the Italian municipia and in the provincial towns, the local magistrates whose duty it was annually to provide the government-sponsored shows called in the expert advice of specialist contractors, the lanistae. These contractors, whose trade shares in Roman law and literature the same infamy that attaches to that of the pander or procurer (leno), were in sober fact Death's middlemen. The lanista would hire out his troupe of gladiators (familia gladiatoria), at the best figure he could command, to duumvir or aedile for combats in which about half were bound to lose their lives. [Source: “Daily Life in Ancient Rome: the People and the City at the Height the Empire” by Jerome Carcopino, Director of the Ecole Franchise De Rome Member of the Institute of France, Routledge 1936]
By the A.D. 2nd century, in Rome, there were no longer any lanistae. Their functions were performed exclusively by the procuratores of the princeps. These agents had special official buildings on the Via Labicana at their disposal the barracks of the Indus magnus, probably erected under Claudius, and those of the Indus matutinus, constructed by Domitian. They were also in charge of the wild and exotic animals which subject provinces and client kings, even to the potentates of India.
RELATED ARTICLES:
NAUMACHIAE — GIANT ROMAN ST europe.factsanddetails.com
AMPHITHEATERS IN THE ROMAN EMPIRE — WHERE GLADIATOR EVENTS europe.factsanddetails.com
ROMAN COLOSSEUM: HISTORY, IMPORTANCE AND ARCHAEOLOGY europe.factsanddetails.com
ROMAN COLOSSEUM: LAYOUT, ARCHITEC europe.factsanddetails.com
ROMAN COLOSSEUM SPECTACLES europe.factsanddetails.com
ANIMAL SPECTACLES IN ANCIENT ROME: KILLING AND BEING KILLED BY WILD ANIMALS europe.factsanddetails.com
GLADIATORS: HISTORY, POPULARITY, BUSINESS europe.factsanddetails.com
GLADIATOR CONTESTS: RULES, EVENTS, HOW THEY WERE RUN europe.factsanddetails.com
TYPES OF GLADIATORS: EVENTS, WEAPONS, STYLES OF FIGHTING europe.factsanddetails.com
ROMAN CHARIOT RACING: HISTORY, TEAMS, FANS, HORSES AND FAME europe.factsanddetails.com
CIRCUSES — WHERE ROMAN CHARIOT europe.factsanddetails.com
ANCIENT ROMAN SPORT: BALL GAMES AND FIXED WRESTLING MATCHES europe.factsanddetails.com
RECREATION IN ANCIENT ROME europe.factsanddetails.com
GAMES AND GAMBLING IN ANCIENT ROME europe.factsanddetails.com
Websites on Ancient Rome: Internet Ancient History Sourcebook: Rome sourcebooks.fordham.edu ; Internet Ancient History Sourcebook: Late Antiquity sourcebooks.fordham.edu ; BBC Ancient Rome bbc.co.uk/history; Perseus Project - Tufts University; perseus.tufts.edu ; Lacus Curtius penelope.uchicago.edu; The Internet Classics Archive classics.mit.edu ; Bryn Mawr Classical Review bmcr.brynmawr.edu; Cambridge Classics External Gateway to Humanities Resources web.archive.org; Ancient Rome resources for students from the Courtenay Middle School Library web.archive.org ; History of ancient Rome OpenCourseWare from the University of Notre Dame web.archive.org ; United Nations of Roma Victrix (UNRV) History unrv.com
Books: Book: "Gladiators and Spectacle in Ancient Rome" by Professor Roger Dunkle, of Brooklyn College (Pearson, 2008); "The Roman Games: A Sourcebook" by Alison Futrell (Blackwell Publishing, 2006)
First Public Games in Ancient Rome

Religion presided at the birth of early Roman "holidays," of which there were around 20. An outcrop of the religious substratum is visible on the surface of the ancient ceremonies which the Romans never omitted to perforrti though they had long since forgotten their significance. Thus the fishing contest of June 7, over which the city praetor presided in person, ended onthe Vulcanal rock with a fish fry for the prize winners. But a note of Festus which cannot be challenged indicates that this offering of fried fish represented a sacrifice in which the god Vulcanus accepted the substitution of fish for human victims. [Source: “Daily Life in Ancient Rome: the People and the City at the Height the Empire” by Jerome Carcopino, Director of the Ecole Franchise De Rome Member of the Institute of France, Routledge 1936]
Similarly, there was a horse-race in the Forum on October 15, the result of which betrays its primitive origin. Woe to the winner! The priest of Mars sacrificed the luckless race-horse immediately after it had won the victory. Its blood was collected in two vessels, and the contents of one were straightway poured over the hearth of the Regia the traditional palace of Numa and home of the Pontifex Maximus while the other was sent to the Vestals who kept it in reserve for the year's lustrations.
As for the horse's head, which had been severed by the knife of the sacrificing priest, the dwellers by the Sacred Way and the inhabitants of the Subura fought savagely to decide which of their respective quarters should have the honor of exhibiting on the wall of one of its buildings the trophy of the "October Horse." The significance of these strange customs is revealed at once when we turn back to the distant past in which they had their origin. Each year on their return from the annual military campaigning, which began in spring and continued until autumn, the Latins of ancient Rome offered a horse-race to the gods by way of thanksgiving; and they sacrificed the winning Tiorse that the city might be purified by the shedding of its blood and protected by the fetish of its skeleton.
Games of the Roman Emperors
Augustus, for example, following the distant precedents of the great-hearted Philhellenes of the second century B.C., and resuming the spasmodic attempts of Sulla, of Pompey, and of Caesar, tried to acclimatise Greek games at Rome. These contests strengthened the body instead of destroying it, and included artistic as well as physical competitions. Both to commemorate his victory over Anthony and Cleopatra and to give thanks for it to Apollo, Augustus founded the Actiaca, which were to be celebrated every fourth year both at Actium and Rome. But by 16 A.D. the Actiaca are no longer recorded. [Source: “Daily Life in Ancient Rome: the People and the City at the Height the Empire” by Jerome Carcopino, Director of the Ecole Franchise De Rome Member of the Institute of France, Routledge 1936]

Nero wished to revive them in his Neronia, which were to be periodic festivals comprising tests of physical endurance and competitions of poetry and song. The senators deigned to take part in the former; but in the latter none dared to dispute the crown with the emperor, who believed himself an unrivalled artist. Despite their august patronage, however, the Neronia fell quickly into abeyance, and it was Domitian who at length succeeded in endowing Rome with a lasting cycle of games in the Greek style. In 86 A.D. he instituted the Agon Capitolinus, whose prizes the emperor awarded alternately for foot races and for eloquence, for boxing and Latin poetry, for discus-throwing and Greek poetry, for javelincasting and for music. He built the Circus Agonalis, on the site of the Piazza Navona, especially for his sports ; and for the more "spiritual" contests erected the Odeum, whose ruins are now hidden beneath the Palazzo Taverna on Monte Giordano. In his reign the Greek games which his bounty maintained enjoyed an ephemeral popularity, and Martial sang the praises of the prize winners. The games survived their founder, but though we have proof that they were celebrated in the fourth century and that the jurists never ceased to emphasise the high honor they deserved, they never seriously rivalled the muncra in favor. For one thing the Agon Capitolinus recurred only once in four years. Furthermore, Domitian designed them to appeal to a select and limited public, for his Odeum provided only 10,600 loca and his Circus Agonalis only 30,088 say 5,000 and 15,000 seats respectively so that the two together were less than half the size of the Amphitheatrum Flavium alone.
There is no denying the fact that the Greek games were never very popular. The crowd, addicted to the thrills of the Colosseum, looked on them as colorless and tame; and they enjoyed no greater favor among the upper classes, who professed to detect an exotic degeneracy and immorality in their nudism.
Pliny the Younger applauds the Senate's decision under Trajan to forbid the scandal of the gymnastic games at Vienne in Gallia Narbonensis and complacently quotes his colleague Junius Mauricus, "who in resolution and integrity has no superior," as saying, "and I would that they could be abolished in Rome, too!" for "these games have greatly infected the manners of the people of Vienne, as they have universally had the same effect among us." The incompatibility between the eurhythmy of Greek games and the brutality of gladiatorial combats was bound to be irreconcilable. It is significant that while the majority of provincial towns imitated Rome by building amphitheaters, whose ruins have been found in South Algeria and on the. banks of the Euphrates, Greece herself fought tootfc and nail against the contagion, and in Attica, at least, apparently succeeded. This one exception is a poor make-weight to the general infatuation. In Italy the Greek games took refuge in Naples and Pozzuoli, but were crushed to death by the government-sponsored shows in Rome.

It seemed indeed that the government-sponsored show was not to be eradicated. Good emperors, therefore, sought to humanise it. While Hadrian forbade impressment of slaves into gladiatorial troupes, Trajan and Marcus Aurelius exerted themselves to the utmost to extend the part played in their festivals by the mimic combats (lusiones), at the expense of the government-sponsored show proper. On March 30, 108, Trajan finished a lusio which had lasted thirty days and involved 350 pairs of gladiators. Marcus Aurelius, obeying the dictates of his Stoic philosophy, exhausted his ingenuity in reducing the regulations and budgets of the government-sponsored shows and in this way lessening their importance, and whenever it fell to him to offer entertainment to the Roman plebs he substituted simple lusiones. But philosophy lost the round in this struggle against spectacles where, as Seneca phrased it, man drank the blood of man: "iuvat humano sanguine jrui".
After Marcus Aurelius, whose son Commodus himself aspired to gladiatorial fame, the Romans, not contented with the discontinuation of lusiones, inclined to desert the theater for the amphitheater. From the second century on we find the theater architects in the provinces, notably in Gaul and Macedonia, modifying their building plans to accommodate gladiatorial duels and venationes. At Rome the representation of sinister drama was transferred to the arena, and it became usual to play the most terrifying mimes at the Colosseum Laureolus, who was crucified alive for the amusement of the public, Mucius Scaevola, who plunged his right hand into the burning coals of a brazier, and the Death of Hercules, whose hero in the last act writhed in the flames of his pyre. As the amphitheater henceforth sufficed for the more lurid dramatic representations, no attempt was made to repair the ruined theaters, and in the reign of Alexander Severus (235 A.D.) the theater of Marcellus was abandoned.
It might have been predicted that the government-sponsored shows would be everlasting and that nothing henceforward could stop their invading growth. But where Stoicism had failed the new religion was to succeed. The conquering Gospel taught the Romans no longer to tolerate the inveterate shame. Racing continued as long as the races of the circus were maintained, but the butcheries of the arena were stopped at the command of Christian emperors. On October i, 326, Constantine decreed that condemnation ad bestias must be commuted to forced labour ad metalla, and dried up at one blow the principal source of recruitment for the gladiatorial schools. By the end of the fourth century gladiatorial shows had disappeared from the East. In 404 an edict of Honorius suppressed gladiatorial combats in the West. Roman Christianity thus blotted out the crime against humanity which under the pagan Caesars had disgraced the amphitheater of the empire.
Games and Shows Under Augustus
Suetonius wrote: “He surpassed all his predecessors in the frequency, variety, and magnificence of his public shows. He says that he gave games four times in his own name and twenty-three times for other magistrates, who were either away from Rome or lacked means. He gave them sometimes in all the wards and on many stages with actors in all languages,a and combats of gladiators not only in the Forum or the amphitheatre, but in the Circus and in the Saepta; sometimes, however, he gave nothing except a fight with wild beasts. He gave athletic contests too in the Campus Martius, erecting wooden seats; also a seafight, constructing an artificial lake near the Tiber, where the grove of the Caesars now stands. On such occasions he stationed guards in various parts of the city, to prevent it from falling a prey to footpads because of the few people who remained at home. [Source: Suetonius (c.69-after 122 A.D.): “De Vita Caesarum — Divus Augustus” (“The Lives of the Caesars — The Deified Augustus”), written A.D. c. 110, “Suetonius, De Vita Caesarum,” 2 Vols., trans. J. C. Rolfe (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1920), pp. 123-287]

Augustus
“In the Circus he exhibited charioteers, rumlers, and slayers of wild animals, who were sometimes young men of the highest rank. Besides he gave frequent performances of the game of Troya by older and younger boys, thinking it a time-honoured and worthy custom for the flower of the nobility to become known in this way. When Nonius Asprenas was lamed by a fall while taking part in this game, he presented him with a golden necklace and allowed him and his descendants to bear the surname Torquatus. But soon afterwards he gave up that form of entertainment, because Asinius Pollio the orator complained bitterly and angrily in the Senate of an accident to his grandson Aeserninus, who also had broken his leg. He sometimes employed even Roman knights in scenic and gladiatorial performances, but only before it was forbidden by decree of the Senate.
After that he exhibited no one of respectable parentage, with the exception of a young man named Lycius, whom he showed merely as a curiosity; for he was less than two feet tall, weighed but seventeen pounds, yet had a stentorian voice. He did however on the day of one of the shows make a display of the first Parthian hostages that had ever been sent to Rome, by leading them through the middle of the arena and placing them in the second row above his own seat. Furthermore, if anything rare and worth seeing was ever brought to the city, it was his habit to make a special exhibit of it in any convenient place on days when no shows were appointed. For example a rhinoceros in the Saepta, a tiger on the stage and a snake of fifty cubits in front of the Comitium. It chanced that at the time of the games which he had vowed to give in the circus, he was taken ill and headed the sacred procession lying in a litter; again, at the opening of the games with which he dedicated the theatre of Marcellus, it happened that the joints of his curule chair gave way and he fell on his back. At the games for his grandsons, when the people were in a panic for fear the theatre should fall, and he could not calm them or encourage them in any way, he left his own place and took his seat in the part which appeared most dangerous.
See Separate Article: AUGUSTUS'S ACCOMPLISHMENTS: BUILDING CAMPAIGN, PUBLIC WORKS, THE ARTS europe.factsanddetails.com
Caligula’s Outrageous Gladiator Shows

Caligula
Suetonius wrote: “He gave several gladiatorial shows, some in the amphitheater of Taurus and some in the Saepta, in which he introduced pairs of African and Campanian boxers, the pick of both regions. He did not always preside at the games in person, but sometimes assigned the honor to the magistrates or to friends. He exhibited stage-plays continually, of various kinds and in many different places, sometimes even by night, lighting up the whole city. He also threw about gift-tokens of various kinds, and gave each man a basket of victuals. During the feasting he sent his share to a Roman eques opposite him, who was eating with evident relish and appetite, while to a senator for the same reason he gave a commission naming him praetor out of the regular order. He also gave many games in the Circus, lasting from early morning until evening, introducing between the races now a baiting of panthers and now the manoeuvres of the game called Troy; some, too, of special splendor, in which the Circus was strewn with red and green, while the charioteers were all men of senatorial rank. He also started some games off-hand, when a few people called for them from the neighboring balconies as he was inspecting the outfit of the Circus from the Gelotian house. [Source: Suetonius (c.69-after 122 A.D.) “De Vita Caesarum: Caius Caligula” (“The Lives of the Caesars: Caius Caligula”) written in A.D. 110, 2 Vols., translated by J. C. Rolfe, (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, and London: William Henemann, 1920), Vol. I, pp. 405-497, modernized by J. S. Arkenberg, Dept. of History, Cal. State Fullerton]
Besides this, he devised a novel and unheard of kind of pageant; for he bridged the gap between Baiae and the mole at Puteoli, a distance of about thirty-six hundred paces, by bringing together merchant ships from all sides and anchoring them in a double line, after which a mound of earth was heaped upon them and fashioned in the manner of the Appian Way. Over this bridge he rode back and forth for two successive days, the first day on a caparisoned horse, himself resplendent in a crown of oak leaves, a buckler, a sword, and a cloak of cloth of gold; on the second, in the dress of a charioteer in a car drawn by a pair of famous horses, carrying before him a boy named Dareus, one of the hostages from Parthia, and attended by the entire praetorian guard and a company of his friends in Gallic chariots. I know that many have supposed that Gaius devised this kind of bridge in rivalry of Xerxes, who excited no little admiration by bridging the much narrower Hellespont; others, that it was to inspire fear in Germany and Britain, on which he had designs, by the fame of some stupendous work. But when I was a boy, I used to hear my grandfather say that the reason for the work, as revealed by the emperor's confidential courtiers, was that Thrasyllus the astrologer had declared to Tiberius, when he was worried about his suceessor and inclined towards his natural grandson, that Gaius had no more chance of becoming emperor than of riding about over the gulf of Baiae with horses.
“He also gave shows in foreign lands, Athenian games at Syracuse in Sicily, and miscellaneous games at Lugdunum in Gallia; at the latter place also a contest in Greek and Latin oratory, in which, they say, the losers gave prizes to the victors and were forced to compose eulogies upon them, while those who were least successful were ordered to erase their writings with a sponge or with their tongue unless they elected rather to be beaten with rods or thrown into the neighboring river.
“He completed the public works which had been half finished under Tiberius, namely the temple of Augustus and the theater of Pompeius. He likewise began an aqueduct in the region near Tibur and an amphitheater beside the Saepta, the former finished by his successor Claudius, while the latter was abandoned. At Syracuse he repaired the city walls, which had fallen into ruin through lapse of time, and the temples of the gods. He had planned, besides, to rebuild the palace of Polycrates at Samos, to finish the temple of Didymaean Apollo at Ephesus, to found a city high up in the Alps, but, above all, to dig a canal through the Isthmus in Greece, and he had already sent a chief centurion to survey the work.
Claudius's Shows, Games and Gladiator Contests

Suetonius wrote: “He very often distributed largesse to the people. He also gave several splendid shows, not merely the usual ones in the customary places, but some of a new kind and some revived from ancient times, and in places where no one had ever given them before. He opened the games at the dedication of Pompeius Magnus's theater, which he had restored when it was damaged by a fire, from a raised seat in the orchestra, after first offering sacrifice at the temples [Pompeius Magnus placed the double Temple of Venus Victrix at the top of his theater, so that the seats of the auditorium formed an approach to it] in the upper part of the auditorium and coming down through the tiers of seats while all sat in silence. [Source: Suetonius (c.69-after 122 A.D.) : “De Vita Caesarum:Claudius” (“The Lives of the Caesars: Claudius”), written in A.D. 110, 2 Vols., translated by J. C. Rolfe, (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, and London: William Henemann, 1920), Vol. I, pp. 405-497, modernized by J. S. Arkenberg, Dept. of History, Cal. State Fullerton]
“ He also celebrated secular games [See Aug. xxxi.4] alleging that they had been given too earths by Augustus and not reserved for the regular time; although he himself writes in his own History that when they had been discontinued for a long time, Augustus restored them to their proper place after a very careful calculation of the intervals. Therefore the herald's proclamation was greeted with laughter, when he invited the people in the usual formula to games "which no one had ever seen or would ever see again"; for some were still living who had seen them before, and some actors who had appeared at the former performance appeared at that time as well. He often gave games in the Vatican Circus [Built by Caligula] also, at times with a beast-baiting between every five races. But the Circus Maximus he adorned with barriers of marble and gilded goals [The carceres were compartments closed by barriers, one for each chariot. They were probably twelve in number and were so arranged as to be at an equal distance from the starting point of the race. When the race began, the barriers were removed. The metae, or "goals", were three conical pillars at each end of the spina, or low wall which ran down the middle of the arena, about which the chariots had to run a given number of times, usually seven; see Dom. iv.3], whereas before they had been of tufa and wood, and assigned special seats to the senators, who had been in the habit of viewing the games with the rest of the people. In addition to the chariot races he exhibited the game called Troy and also panthers, which were hunted down by a squadron of the Praetorian cavalry under the lead of the tribunes and the prefect himself; likewise Thessalian horseman, who drive wild bulls all over the arena, leaping upon them when they are tired out and throwing them to the ground by the horns.

“He gave many gladiatorial shows and in many places: one in yearly celebration of his accession, in the Praetorian Camp without wild beasts and fine equipment, and one in the Saepta of the regular and usual kind; another in the same place not in the regular list, short and lasting but a few days, to which he was the first to apply the name of sportula, because before giving it for the first time he made proclamation that he invited the people "as it were to an extempore meal, hastily prepared." Now there was no form of entertainment at which he was more familiar and free, even thrusting out his left hand [Instead of keeping it covered with his toga, an undignified performance for an emperor] as the Plebeians did, and counting aloud on his fingers the gold pieces which were paid to the victors; and ever and anon he would address the audience, and invite and urge them to merriment, calling them "masters" from time to time, and interspersing feeble and far-fetched jokes. For example, when they called for Palumbus [The "Dove", nickname of a gladiator] he promised that they should have him, "if he could be caught." The following, however, was both exceedingly timely and salutary; when he had granted the wooden sword [The symbol of discharge; cf.. Hor. Epist. 1.1.2] to an essedarius [See Calig. xxxv.3], for whose discharge four sons begged, and the act was received with loud and general applause, he at once circulated a note, pointing out to the people how greatly they ought to desire children, since they saw that they brought favor and protection even to a gladiator.
He gave representations in the Campus Martius of the storming and sacking of a town in the manner of real warfare, as well as of the surrender of the kings of the Britons, and presided clad in a general's cloak. Even when he was on the point of letting out the water from Lake Fucinus he gave a sham sea-fight first. But when the combatants cried out: "Hail, emperor, those who are about to die salute you," he replied, "Or not," and after that all of them refused to fight, maintaining that they had been pardoned. Upon this he hesitated for some time about destroying them all with fire and sword, but at last leaping from his throne and running along the edge of the lake with his ridiculous tottering gait he induced them to fight, partly by threats and partly by promises. At this performance a Sicilian and a Rhodian fleet engaged, each numbering twelve triremes, and the signal was sounded on a horn by a silver Triton, which was raised from the middle of the lake by a mechanical device.
Nero’s Early Shows and Games
Suetonius wrote: Nero “gave many entertainments of different kinds: the Juvenales, chariot races in the Circus, stage-plays, and a gladiatorial show. At the first-mentioned, he had even old men of consular rank and aged matrons take part. For the games in the Circus he assigned places to the equites apart from the rest, and even matched chariots drawn by four camels. At the plays which he gave for the "Eternity of the Empire," which by his order were called the Ludi Maximi, parts were taken by several men and women of both the orders; a well known Roman eques mounted an elephant and rode down a rope; a Roman play of Afranius, too, was staged, entitled "The Fire," and the actors were allowed to carry off the furniture of the burning Curia and keep it. Every day all kinds of presents were thrown to the people; these included a thousand birds of every kind each day, various kinds of food, tickets for grain, clothing, gold, silver, precious stones, pearls, paintings, slaves, beasts of burden, and even trained wild animals; finally, ships, blocks of houses, and farms. [Source: Suetonius (c.69-after 122 A.D.) : “De Vita Caesarum: Nero: ” (“The Lives of the Caesars: Nero”), written in A.D. 110, 2 Vols., translated by J. C. Rolfe, Loeb Classical Library (London: William Heinemann, and New York: The MacMillan Co., 1914), II.87-187, modernized by J. S. Arkenberg, Dept. of History, Cal. State Fullerton]

“These plays he viewed from the top of the proscenium. At the gladiatorial show, which he gave in a wooden amphitheatre, erected in the district of the Campus Martius within the space of a single year [58 A.D.], he had no one put to death, not even criminals. But he compelled four hundred senators and six hundred Roman equites, some of whom were well-to-do and of unblemished reputation, to fight in the arena. Even those who fought with the wild beasts and performed the various services in the arena were of the same orders. He also exhibited a naval battle in salt water with sea monsters swimming about in it; besides pyrrhic dances by some Greek youths, handing each of them certificates of Roman citizenship at the close of his performance. The pyrrhic dances represented various scenes. In one, a bull mounted Pasiphae, who was concealed in a wooden image of a heifer; at least many of the spectators thought so. Icarus at his very first attempt fell close by the imperial couch and bespattered the emperor with his blood; for Nero very seldom presided at the games, but used to view them while reclining on a couch, at first through small openings, and then with the entire balcony uncovered. He was likewise the first to establish at Rome a quinquennial contest in three parts, after the Greek fashion, that is in music, gymnastics, and riding, which he called the "Veronia"; at the same time he dedicated his baths and gymnasiums supplying every member of the senatorial and equestrian orders with oil. To preside over the whole contest he appointed ex-consuls, chosen by lot, who occupied the seats of the praetors. Then he went down into the orchestra among the senators and accepted the prize for Latin oratory and verse, for which all the most eminent men had contended, but which was given to him with their unanimous consent; but when that for lyre-playing was also offered him by the judges, he knelt before it and ordered that it be laid at the feet of Augustus' statue. At the gymnastic contest, which he gave in the Saepta, he shaved his first beard to the accompaniment of a splendid sacrifice of bullocks, put it in a golden box adorned with pearls of great price, and dedicated it in the Capitol. He invited the Vestal Virgins also to witness the contests of the athletes, because at Olympia the priestesses of Ceres were allowed the same privilege.
“I may fairly include among his shows the entrance of Tiridates into the city. He was a king of Armenia, whom Nero induced by great promises to come to Rome; and since he was prevented by bad weather from exhibiting him to the people on the day appointed by proclamation, he produced him at the first favorable opportunity, with the Praetorian cohorts drawn up in full armor about the temples in the Forum, while he himself sat in a curule chair on the rostra in the attire of a triumphing general, surrounded by military ensigns and standards. As the king approached along a sloping platform, the emperor at first let him fall at his feet, but raised him with his right hand and kissed him. Then, while the king made supplication, Nero took the turban from his head and replaced it with a diadem, while a man of praetorian rank translated the words of the suppliant and proclaimed them to the throng. From there the king was taken to the theater [Of Pompeius Magnus], and when he had again done obeisance, Nero gave hint a seat at his right hand. Because of all this Nero was hailed as Imperator, and after depositing a laurel wreath in the Capitol [This was usual only when a triumph was celebrated], he closed the two doors of the temple of Janus, as a sign that no war was left anywhere.
Games and Amusements under Vespasian
The chief public amusements of the Romans were those which took place in the circus, the theater, and the amphitheater. The greatest circus of Rome was the Circus Maximus. It was an inclosure about two thousand feet long and six hundred feet wide. Within it were arranged seats for different classes of citizens, a separate box being reserved for the imperial family. The games consisted chiefly of chariot races. The excitement was due to the reckless and dangerous driving of the charioteers, each striving to win by upsetting his competitors. There were also athletic sports; running, leaping, boxing, wrestling, throwing the quoit, and hurling the javelin. Sometimes sham battles and sea fights took place. [Source: “Outlines of Roman History” by William C. Morey, Ph.D., D.C.L. New York, American Book Company (1901) \~]
The Romans were not very much addicted to the theater, there being only three principal structures of this kind at Rome, those of Pompey, Marcellus, and Balbus. The theater was derived from the Greeks and was built in the form of a semicircle, the seats being apportioned, as in the case of the circus, to different classes of persons. The shows consisted largely of dramatic exhibitions, of mimes, pantomimes, and dancing. It is said that the poems of Ovid were acted in pantomime. \~\

The Colosseum was started by V and finished by Titus
The most popular and characteristic amusements of the Romans were the sports of the amphitheater. This building was in the form of a double theater, forming an entire circle or ellipse. Such structures were built in different cities of the empire, but none equaled the colossal building of Vespasian. The sports of the amphitheater were chiefly gladiatorial shows and the combats of wild beasts. The amusements of the Romans were largely sensational, and appealed to the tastes of the populace. Their influence was almost always bad, and tended to degrade the morals of the people. \~\
Suetonius wrote: “At the plays with which he dedicated the new stage of the theater of Marcellus he revived the old musical entertainments. To Apelles, the tragic actor, he gave four hundred thousand sesterces; to Terpnus and Diodorus, the lyre-players, two hundred thousand each; to several a hundred thousand; while those who received least were paid forty thousands and numerous golden crowns were awarded besides. He gave constant dinner-parties, too, usually formally and sumptuously, to help the marketmen. He gave gifts to women on the Kalends of March [The Matronalia, or Feast of Married Women; see Hor. Odes, 3.8, 1], as he did to the men on the Saturnalia. Yet even so he could not be rid of his former ill-repute for covetousness. The Alexandrians persisted in calling him Kybiosactes [Meaning, "dealer in square pieces of salt fish"], the surname of one of their kings who was scandalously stingy. Even at his funeral, Favor, a leading actor of mimes, who wore his mask and, according to the usual custom, imitated the actions and words of the deceased during his lifetime, having asked the procurators in a loud voice how much his funeral procession would cost, and hearing the reply "Ten million sesterces," cried out: "Give me a hundred thousand and fling me into the Tiber!" [Source: Suetonius (c.69-after 122 A.D.): “De Vita Caesarum: Vespasian” (“Life of Vespasian”), written c. A.D. 110, translated by J. C. Rolfe, Suetonius, 2 Vols., The Loeb Classical Library (London: William Heinemann, and New York: The MacMillan Co., 1914), II.281-321]
Titus and the Grand Opening of the Colosseum
Titus (ruled from A.D. 79-81) oversaw the rebuilding of Pompeii and inaugurated the Colosseum which was begun before his rule by Vespasian. Titus was known for his extravagant games. One bloody circus during Titus's rule lasted for 123 straight days and between 5,000 people and 11,000 were killed.
On the huge spectacle held for the opening of the Colosseum, Dio Cassius (A.D. 150-235) wrote: "Most of what he [Titus] did was not characterized by anything noteworthy, but in dedicating the hunting-theatre (Amphitheatrum Flavium) and the baths that bear his name, he produced many remarkable spectacles. There was a battle between cranes and also between four elephants; animals both tame and wild were slain to the number of nine thousand; and women (not those of prominence however) took part in dispatching them. As for the men, several fought in single combat and several groups contended together both in infantry and naval battles. For Titus suddenly filled this same theatre with water and brought in horses and bulls and some other domesticated animals that had been taught to behave in the liquid element just as on land. He also brought in people in ships, who engaged in a sea-fight there, impersonating the Corcyreans and Corinthians.... These were the spectaculars that were offered and they continued for a hundred days; but Titus also furnished some things that were of practical use to the people. He would throw down into the theatre from aloft little wooden balls variously inscribed, one designating some article of food, another clothing, another a silver vessel, or perhaps a gold one, or again horses, pack animals, cattle or slaves. Those who seized them were to carry them to the dispensers of the bounty, from whom they would receive the article named". [Dio Cassius. 65.25]

Triumph of Vespasian and Titus
On the same event Suetonius wrote: “At the dedication [80 C.E.] of the amphitheatre [The Colosseum] and of the baths which were hastily built near it, he gave a most magnificent and costly gladiatorial show. He presented a sham sea-fight too in the old naumachia and in the same place a combat of gladiators exhibiting five thousand wild beasts of every kind in a single day”. [Source: translated by J. C. Rolfe, ed.,Suetonius, 2 Vols., The Loeb Classical Library (London: William Heinemann, and New York: The MacMillan Co., 1914), II.321-339]
Domitian’s Games and Extravagances
Suetonius wrote: “He constantly gave grand and costly entertainments, both in the amphitheatre [The Colosseum], and in the Circus, where in addition to the usual races between two-horse and four-horse chariots, he also exhibited two battles, one between forces of infantry and the other by horsemen; and he even gave a naval battle in the amphitheatre. Besides, he gave hunts of wild beasts, gladiatorial shows at night by the light of torches, and not only combats between men but between women as well. He was always present, too, at the games given by the quaestors, which he revived after they had been abandoned for some time, and invariably granted the people the privilege of calling for two pairs of gladiators from his own school, and brought them in last in all the splendor of the court. During the whole of every gladiatorial show there always stood at his feet a small boy clad in scarlet, with an abnormally small head, with whom he used to talk a great deal, and sometimes seriously. At any rate, he was overheard to ask him if he knew why he had decided at the last appointment day to make Mettius Rufus prefect of Egypt. He often gave sea-fights almost with regular fleets, having dug a pool near the Tiber and surrounded it with seats; and he continued to witness the contests amid heavy rains. [Source: Suetonius (c.69-after 122 A.D.): “De Vita Caesarum: Domitian,” (“Life of Domitian”), written c. A.D. 110, translated by J. C. Rolfe, Suetonius, 2 Vols., The Loeb Classical Library (London: William Heinemann, and New York: The MacMillan Co., 1914), II.339-385]
“He also celebrated Secular games, reckoning the time, not according to the year when Claudius had last given them, but by the previous calculation of Augustus. In the course of these, to make it possible to finish a hundred races on the day of the contests in the Circus, he diminished the number of laps from seven to five. He also established a quinquennial contest in honor of Jupiter Capitolinus of a threefold character, comprising music, riding, and gymnastics, and with considerably more prizes than are awarded nowadays. For there were competitions in prose declamations both in Greek and in Latin; and in addition to those of the lyre-players, between choruses of such players and in the lyre alone, without singing; while in the stadium there were races even between maidens. He presided at the competitions in half-boots clad in a purple toga in the Greek fashion, and wearing upon his head a golden crown with figures of Jupiter, Juno, and Minerva, while by his side sat the priest of Jupiter and the college of the Flaviales [Established for the worship of the deified Flavian emperors, after the manner of the Augustales], similarly dressed, except that their crowns bore his image as well.
“He celebrated the Quinquatria too every year in honor of Minerva at his Alban villa, and established for her a college of priests, from which men were chosen by lot to act as officers and give splendid shows of wild beasts and stage plays, besides holding contests in oratory and poetry. He made a present to the people of three hundred sesterces each on three occasions, and in the course of one of his shows in celebration of the feast of the Seven Hills gave plentiful banquets, distributing large baskets of victuals to the Senate and equites, and smaller ones to the plebeians, and he himself was the first to begin to eat. On the following day, he scattered gifts of all sorts of things to be scrambled for, and since the greater part of these fell where the people sat, he had five hundred tickets thrown into each section occupied by the senatorial and equestrian orders.

“Reduced to financial straits by the cost of his buildings and shows, as well as by the additions which he had made to the pay of the soldiers, he tried to lighten the military expenses by diminishing the number of his troops; but perceiving that in this way he exposed himself to the attacks of the barbarians, and nevertheless had difficulty in easing his burdens, he had no hesitation in resorting to every sort of robbery. The property of the living and the dead was seized everywhere on any charge brought by any accuser. It was enough to allege any action or word derogatory to the majesty of the princeps. Estates of those in no way connected with him were confiscated, if but one man came forward to declare that he had heard from the deceased during his lifetime that Caesar was his heir. Besides other taxes, that on the Jews [A tax of two drachmas a head, imposed by Titus in return for free permission to practice their religion; see Josephus, Bell. Jud. 7.6.6] was levied with the utmost rigor, and those were prosecuted who, without publicly acknowledging that faith, yet lived as Jews, as well as those who concealed their origin and did not pay the tribute levied upon their people [These may have been Christians, whom the Romans commonly assumed were Jews]. I recall being present in my youth when the person of a man ninety years old was examined before the procurator and a very crowded court, to see whether he was circumcised. From his youth he was far from being of an affable disposition, but was on the contrary presumptuous and unbridled both in act and in word. When his father's concubine Caenis returned from Histria and offered to kiss him as usual, he held out his hand to her. He was vexed that his brother's son-in-law had attendants clad in white, as well as he, and uttered the words "Not good is a number of rulers" [Iliad, 2.204].
Image Sources: Wikimedia Commons
Text Sources: Internet Ancient History Sourcebook: Rome sourcebooks.fordham.edu ; Internet Ancient History Sourcebook: Late Antiquity sourcebooks.fordham.edu ; “Outlines of Roman History” by William C. Morey, Ph.D., D.C.L. New York, American Book Company (1901) ; “The Private Life of the Romans” by Harold Whetstone Johnston, Revised by Mary Johnston, Scott, Foresman and Company (1903, 1932); BBC Ancient Rome bbc.co.uk/history/ ; Project Gutenberg gutenberg.org ; Metropolitan Museum of Art, National Geographic, Smithsonian magazine, New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Live Science, Discover magazine, Archaeology magazine, Reuters, Associated Press, The Guardian, AFP, The New Yorker, Wikipedia, Encyclopædia Britannica, Encyclopedia.com and various other books, websites and publications.
Last updated November 2024