I'd like to ask a follow-up question: I've read a couple of times that after retiring gladiators would often find employment as glorified bodyguards to the richest Romans for whom having a star of the arena at their side would be a status symbol. Is this true and how often did a gladiator live long enough to retire?
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We know a fair bit about gladiators at this point and our information comes from a wide range of sources. I hesitate to call it a revisionist view, but think it is just becoming a more popular and known view One thing to remember is that gladiatorial combat did not stay the same throughout Roman history. In the early days of the republic many of the people who fought within such games were prisoners and captured slaves and yes, they probably only had about a 1 in 10 chances of dying in a match. But over time this changed as more and more games where held as the number of contestants fought, the chance of death increased. There was also an increase in the number of freemen and romans who voluntarily entered the coliseum increased as they hoped to make money ad gain fame. Although to do this they did have to give up some of their rights a freemen or citizens and it was generally members of the lower call. One thing that aided in keeping deaths relatively low during certain periods is the fact that training, feeding arming and housing gladiators was not cheap and thus when one died their owner was due compensation for all the money they had invested into them. To be paid either by the one who called for their death or the owner of the other gladiator.
It would not be too surprising that a former gladiator would end up working as bodyguard. Although this was probably reserved more for the more famous and popular gladiators not just any one who survived. They would most likely still have the stigma of being a gladiator, so it would be difficult to find work and I’m not sure if due to being a gladiator they would be barred from serving in the military like a freeman who volunteered to be one was. But since they had a great deal of combat experience and being a low-class freeman, a body guard job would make sense. The rate of surviving to retire was generally fairly low but could change based on the time period.
Sources
The Scandal of the Arena by Carlin A. Barton
Gladiators: Violence and Spectacle in Anceint Rome By Roger Dunkle
Prepare for a wall of text. This is actually a very complex subject and one which I've tried to approach myself before and got swamped, so here is a general run down on gladiators:
To answer your question in short; yes, it was both, but also we need to acknowledge the difference between gladiators proper and other convicts sentenced to various punishments in the arena.. And and while the two categories were generally separate there was also potential for overlap. The practice of gladiatorial fights spans approximately a thousand years of Roman history and many aspects changed and evolved over the years. Almost any statement you can make in general likely has at least one if not many provable exceptions and any definite statement can only be made about a specific era and even then you have evidence of exceptions.
Gladiator combats also not only took place in the famous Colosseum, but in many other forums or stadiums in Rome, such as the Forum Romanum/ Forum Magnum which was essentially the city square. They also took place in many cities and provinces outside of Rome proper and therefore hundreds if not thousands of combats were likely never recorded.
So, who becomes a gladiator? Gladiators (literally “sword men” from the Roman gladius) were generally speaking, slaves, either sentenced to be so or purchased to be so, though there are instances of freemen and citizens (even an emperor or two) becoming gladiators, and their status will get discussed later. However, by the time of the late Republic, paid volunteers (auctorati) may have comprised half of all gladiators.
In the 1st century BC, estimates as high as 30 to 40% of the population of Italy were slaves, some 2-3 million people. For the Empire as a whole, slaves numbered just under five million, representing 8-10% of the total population of 50-60 million. Slaves most often were men, women, and children captured in war and auctioned in public. Most were bought by wealthy families as farmhands and domestic servants. Slaves, in the ancient world, were a social class that spanned multiple roles. Some slaves, especially Greek, were highly educated and used to teach children of the nobility. Some skilled workers might sell themselves into slavery to escape debt knowing they would be fed, housed, and treated well enough in return for their work. Some were purchased specifically to become gladiators, whether because they were previously fighters or simply looked big and mean.
Only slaves found guilty of specific offences could be sentenced to the arena; citizens were exempt from this sentence, though they or freedmen found guilty of particular offenses could be then stripped of citizenship or free status, enslaved/re-enslaved, and finally sentenced as slaves. Crimes punishable this way were banditry, theft, arson, treasonous acts, and avoiding taxes among others.
In Roman law, anyone condemned to the arena or the gladiator schools (damnati ad ludum) was a servus poenae (slave of the penalty), and was considered to be under essentially a death sentence. Emperor Hadrian reminded magistrates that "those sentenced to execution should be despatched immediately, or at least within the year" and those sentenced to be gladiators should not be discharged “before five years, or three years if granted freedom.”
As slaves, gladiators were "infames", a form of social dishonour which excluded them from most of the rights of citizenship. They could not vote, plead in court, or leave a will. Unless they were freed, their lives and property belonged to their masters. Again, we do have some records of men who died as gladiators leaving money and goods to family or friends but likely this was a somewhat standard practice of lenient owners towards slaves who were profitable and popular, who had a stable of similar men they wanted to keep performing, and not a legal necessity. Actors and actresses had a similar legal status, were often also slaves, and in many ways were not viewed differently than prostitutes. We’ll discuss later how this contrasts with their social standing and perception.
Even in later years when freemen might volunteer to become a gladiator, they would have to place themselves under the literal ownership of a lanista. A lanista was a man who owned many gladiators for the purpose of renting them out to anyone who wanted to sponsor a gladiatorial game (called an "editor"). Hosting games (gladiatorial and otherwise) was one way to gain public favor among the masses for an election, or simply as a display of power and wealth, although these were usually depicted as one of two types of celebrations, either of a religious holiday “ludi” (meaning simply “games” but denoting the festival itself) or as a memorial to either an ancestor or a god, a munera, (meaning gift, sometimes implying obligation, related to our word “munificent,” the quality or action of being lavishly generous) which was a commemorative duty owed to a dead ancestor by his descendants.
Again these terms define quite different things at first but later on become blurred in meaning, for instance ludi are supposed to be state sponsored as part of religion and originally had no gladiators, only races, plays, and other performances, and munera more privately held by families, often related to funerals where gladiators initially became common, perhaps as a transition from straight up human sacrifice at the grave of a chief, but you also have rich citizens helping to pay for ludi and of course eventually gladiators became part of state sanctioned events as well. "Ludus" ironically has connotations of both play as well as school or training, and it was a name given to sessions of math and writing taken by young children as well as the training barracks of gladiators such as the Ludus Magnus and Ludus Dacicus.
Some private citizens also maintained their own stable of gladiators for the same purpose, and yes, they could be used as “muscle” but they were mixed in with musicians, friends, and other associates as a larger entourage, as much for show as for practical defense. Marc Antony was said to have a dedicated group of gladiators at his side.
Gladiators represented a substantial investment and were well fed and cared for. Gladiators were sometimes called hordearii ("eaters of barley)". Replacing wheat with barley was a punishment for legionaries but it was thought to strengthen the body, probably in the same way we think of boxers drinking raw eggs (if it's gross, it's got to be good for you!) Their diet also included boiled beans, oatmeal, ash and dried fruit. This was a high energy diet which both facilitated training but also promoted the growth of muscle...and fat. A fattened gladiator could be cut and bleed dramatically, without damaging the muscle underneath. They were also given regular medical treatment, most famously by Galen, considered the grandfather of modern medicine, at a gladiator school in Pergamum.
However, gladiators often were placed into strict hierarchies by their owners, and kept in separate quarters depending on their type and status. Your heavily armored fighters (Murmillo, Secutor) slept apart from your more agile Retiarius, the net fighters. Veterans and popular victors were separate from newly acquired stock. Thus, it is possible each lanista had a stable of both gladiators he wished to maintain, as well as some he thought were not only acceptable to die, but perhaps intended to.
One more followup: how long did the career of an average gladiator last? Did they keep won/loss records, like fighters today? Were there rankings, whereby a contender would move up and down based on his wins and losses?
