Gladiators In Ancient Rome

Gladiators were “created by the enactment of Roman justice and Roman authority” (Futrell 121). Thus, the lifestyle of the gladiator quite possibly originated from prisoners of war. During the second Sicilian slave war, the last standing survivors surrendered themselves to Aquilius who then took them to Rome where he “consigned them to fight with wild beasts” (Diodorus Historical Library 36.10). From there on, gladiators largely comprised of criminals, prisoners, slaves and other members of lower status within Roman society. Several literary inscriptions denote the status of a gladiator to be “low [and] vile” (Barton 2), and there being “no meaner condition among the people than that of the gladiator” (Barton 2). Gladiators and wild-beast hunters
were not entitled to most rights and were considered “infames” (Futrell 130). The question then, was why anyone would want to become a gladiator? Especially members of the Roman elite.
As ancient inscriptions prove, much of the reasons why members of the Roman elite chose to fight as gladiators and wild-beast hunters include debt and poverty, glory, and compulsion from an Emperor, especially during Nero’s reign. These reasons can be seen to be proven through literary inscriptions by Tacitus, Tertullian, and several others. Tacitus described the possibility of poverty being a factor in the reasoning behind Roman elite taking part in public spectacles when he described emperor Nero’s tendency to bring “on the stage members of the ancient nobility whose poverty made them corruptible” (The Annals 14.22). However, in terms of most Roman elite, this state of poverty could not have been a widely existing conception; after all, the elite had such a status because of the fortunes they possessed. Therefore, poverty and debt may have been the reasoning behind some Roman elite membership into gladiatorial combat and other forms of activities within the public spectacle, but it could not have been the sole reasoning.