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The Historians' History of the World 06 [The Early Roman Empire]
- Автор: Gutenberg
- Год: 1905
- Язык: английский
- Жанр: История
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The Actian games, celebrated at Rome every four years, were particularly magnificent. The first time (28) Augustus and Agrippa themselves managed the festivities and offered the populace spectacles of the most varied character. First a race ridden by boys and men of the highest families; then gymnastic contests in a wooden stadium which the emperor had caused to be set up on the Field of Mars; while at the end prisoners of war were forced to exhibit to the people the spectacle of a mortal combat of gladiators. In later times the highest priestly colleges in Rome took charge of these games in rotation.
In his detailed narrative Augustus assigns the first place to the combats of gladiators, which he exhibited sometimes in his own name and sometimes in the names of his sons and grandsons; and in eight battles of this sort some ten thousand gladiators were engaged. Women were not absolutely excluded from among the spectators, but they were only allowed to watch the bloodshed from the topmost places. Augustus also abrogated the inhuman custom that none but the victors might leave the arena alive.
He endeavoured to check the excessive fondness for these cruel sports by forbidding officials to give gladiatorial shows instead of the usual theatrical or circus performances when they entered upon office, as had been done, for example, by the ædiles of the plebs in the year 42. Certain members of the aristocracy who were notorious for their bloodthirsty tastes, like Domitius Ahenobarbus, were first privately admonished, and, when that proved of no avail, their cruel gladiatorial fights were prohibited by an imperial edict.
Large troops of gladiators constituted a grave menace to the public peace, as had been proved, not only by the Gladiators’ War, but in the case of the gladiators of Decimus Brutus and M. Antonius. Accordingly in the year 22 an edict appeared to the effect that combats of gladiators were only to be arranged with the permission of the senate and not oftener than twice a year, and at the same time the number of contesting pairs was limited to sixty. Of course this did not diminish the popularity of these combats nor the interest of the populace in the combatants. It was an event when two veterans, each of whom had often conquered and slain his opponent, were at last pitted against each other for the decisive combat, or when a well-known gladiator had fought his way through and proceeded to hang up his victorious weapons in the temple of Hercules.
Roman Gladiator
In later days the emperor Tiberius scorned to make himself popular by these means. But as the passion of the people for gladiatorial exhibitions did not wane they became a matter of private speculation. A freedman of small means erected a wooden amphitheatre for his shows at Fidenæ, but it was so badly built that it collapsed beneath the crowds of spectators who had flocked thither, most of them from Rome. After this accident the senate decreed that no one should give such performances unless he could prove that he was possessed of a certain fortune.
Wrestling matches of the sort so popular among the Greeks were not altogether unknown, but were only arranged three times by Augustus in the course of his long reign. Wooden stages were erected on the Field of Mars, and the most famous athletes were invited to Rome. Glycon of Pergamus, whose unconquered fist was celebrated not by his epitaph alone but also by Horace, was probably of the number.
The emperor followed these contests with peculiar interest. The Greeks had perfected boxing according to all the rules of the science; in Italy, on the other hand, it had retained more of its indigenous character. Augustus was in the habit of occasionally allowing the champions of the two nations to measure their strength against one another, but personally he was on the side of the Latin boxers, whether more or less schooled. When a harmless street fight broke out in any part of Rome, the emperor used to delight in the mighty blows which his countrymen dealt.
The emperor strove, though without lasting success, to keep women aloof from the brutal boxing matches. If the populace wanted to see boxers he yielded to their wishes, but he appointed the early morning hours for the contest and forbade women to go to the theatre before ten o’clock in the morning.
More popular still were the wild-beast hunts, of which Augustus arranged six-and-twenty, in which thirty-five hundred African lions and other wild animals were slain. Great was the difficulty of capturing and transporting these rare and dangerous animals; but greater still, it may be, the amount of care and money expended on the elaboration of the scenery. The Spaniards regard their bull-fights as a direct continuation of the wild-beast shows of antiquity; the splendour of the mise en scène has survived to modern days, but the demands made by an ancient public in the matter of decoration and machinery were incomparably greater. In most cases gladiators were obliged to fight the dangerous animals, but occasionally criminals fell victims to them. Strabo, for example, saw the dreaded robber chieftain, Selurus, “the son of Etna,” hurled from a lofty scaffold that suddenly collapsed beneath him into the arena at Rome, where he fell straight into the lion’s cage that had been placed below.
The bloody battles of the gladiators on land found a counterpart in a tremendous sea fight which Augustus, following the example of the dictator, arranged quite close to Rome in the year 2. He caused a lake to be dug in the plain between the slopes of Janiculum and the bank of the Tiber, eighteen hundred feet long by twelve hundred wide, on which thirty large warships and many smaller ones, manned by three thousand (or possibly six thousand) gladiators, represented a sea fight of the time of the Persian wars. Ovid describes the gorgeous spectacle as an eye-witness:
“Then when Cæsar of late showed forth to the people
Ships of Persia and Athens, a type of the terrible sea fight,
Hither came youths from the two seas and hither came maidens,
And to the capital flocked all that dwelt in the earth.”
The lake was not supplied with water from the neighbouring Tiber, but Augustus built a special aqueduct (Aqua Augusta Alsietina) which brought water from the Alsietine and Sabatine lakes (Lago di Martignano and L. de Bracciano) to the Janiculum. The Romans were so spoiled by the beautiful spring-water of their aqueducts that Augustus never thought of carrying the water of these two lakes right across to the city on the other bank of the river, but the work was so substantial that it outlasted its original purpose. The emperor allowed the possessors of fields and gardens in the vicinity to make use of the water, which was not to be compared with that of the other aqueducts in the city.
The lake formed the centre of a little wood which the emperor presented to the Roman people in the name of his grandsons Lucius and Caius. Although he never arranged another sea fight on this lake, it was not filled up but was used by other emperors for maritime spectacles, in accordance with its original purpose.
Races and Theatricals
The ordinary performances in the theatre and circus, such as officials were required to arrange when they took office, were arranged by Augustus four times in his own name and twenty-three times in the names of other persons. Races in the circus, in particular, had been in vogue from very old times and enjoyed a high degree of popularity. It is true that the enthusiasm of the people did not reach the culminating point till the latter days of the empire, but the germ and rudiment was there even in republican times, and the age of Augustus did its fair share towards developing it. Epitaphs were not yet composed on the victors, like the τοὺς σοὺς ἀγῶνας αἰὼν λαλησει of subsequent centuries, but the interest and enthusiasm were spreading to wider circles. The prizes which rewarded the winners of the various races were valuable, and an exact record was kept of the first, second, and third prizes carried off by a famous charioteer in different years. There were originally only two parties in the circus, the whites and the reds, but the greens and the blues appear to have been added by the time of Augustus; or so it seems probable from inscriptions which, though they bear no date, yet form part of a large find of this period.