Were the gladiators a slave? Yes, No, maybe, more or less?
The answer to this question lies not only in Roman law but also in the Roman concept of slave and its legal framework. To give us a first draft of the answer is Pliny the Elder in his Historia Naturalis , in which, among other things, he talks extensively about the living and working conditions of slaves and gladiators, clearly distinguishing the two categories, but not only, Pliny also tells us what were the legal obligations of the owners and owners of slaves and gladiators, distinguishing the two categories.
Without too many words, the slave in Roman times is not a property, in the " modern sense ”Of the term, the Roman slave is in fact profoundly different from the“ American slave ", The owner has obligations and duties towards the slave and above all, he does not have the authority or the power to kill him, cause his death or put his life in danger. These same duties that the master had towards the slave, were not always foreseen for the gladiators, whose life, trivially, was endangered every day.
The Roman slave according to Pliny and Cato
The condition of the Roman slave was very particular and, in this regard, Guido Bonelli, in an article published in 1994 in the journal Quaderni Urbinati di Cultura Classica, New Series, Vol. 48, No. 3 (1994), pp. 141-148 tells us observes that Pliny the Younger and slavery:Considerations and clarifications , he tells us that in some ways, according to Pliny (and also Vitruvius), in purely economic terms, for a landlord / landowner, it was more “ convenient "To have employees, free men, who not slaves because if the slave was injured, maimed, maimed or sick, the owner had the duty, perhaps legal, to cure him, in practice, for a period the slave could not work , but he still had to be maintained and was entitled to medical treatment, room and board, which legally could not be denied.
In this regard in his de agri cultura , Cato argues the need for the master to have to sell a sick slave, since, during the illness it represented an unproductive expense for the master.
On this issue Pliny and Cato take divergent political positions, Cato supports the sale of the slave, while Pliny supports their protection also on a " moral level. "And his position is in a letter that the Roman chronicler writes to a friend named Valerio asking him to host a freedman of his own in his own lands, in Gallia Nerborense.
Returning to the economic convenience of dependent work, unlike the slave, who, beyond political positions, both Pliny and Cato, tell us to enjoy certain legal protections, the free man who was injured at work, could be replaced during the " convalescence "By another free or slave worker, without the owner of the villa or construction site or otherwise having any legal obligation towards the former employee, this implied a significant" savings In terms of money. This “ convenience "Translates, in practice, into the use of slaves and free men for different tasks, very often entrusting the most dangerous tasks to free men.
The master, said very simply, by Roman law, could not voluntarily endanger the slave's life, let alone kill him, the master of the Roman slave therefore had no authority over the life and death of the slave, and this is where the slave resides. huge difference between gladiator and slave.
The life of the gladiator in fact, although he was a slave in all respects, the gladiator could be bought, sold, freed, etc., and, unlike the common slave, he could risk his own life. As far as we know, the life of the gladiator was not protected by Roman law like that of a common slave, since for the role of athlete in bloody competitions, his life and his safety were constantly endangered.
We could say that the common slave, the one who worked in the countryside, was “ insured "For any accidents at work, while the fighting slave or gladiator, no.
The gladiator was not a laborer, he was instead an athlete, an actor and a fighter and his social status is halfway between that of a slave and a soldier, whose role included the possibility of injury and death.
Slave killings were "rare"
We know that the killing of slaves in Roman times is very rare, with very few exceptions, the masters almost never killed or endangered their own slaves and the British historian William Smith he argued that the killings of slaves in Roman times were rare because killing a slave implied a reduction in manpower.
In other words, the killings were rare because they were not economically convenient, since the killing lacked a resource that could otherwise be used or sold.
This thesis is still very widespread today, however, it is echoed by an increasingly accredited alternative thesis which, starting from the aforementioned Pliny and Cato, asserts that, most likely, killings were "rare" because killing a slave was no different from killing a free man, in other words, the murder of a slave, like the murder of a free man, was still considered murder.
We do know, however, that gladiators died, not in very large numbers, but still died without there being any consequences for the masters.
The discourse of economic convenience persists, the massive death of gladiators implied a continuous, excessive expense for the masters, and therefore, remaining in Smith's theory, few gladiators died because their death implied a loss of resources, however, by borrowing the story that Appiano, Sallustio and Plutarco do of the three servile wars, we know for sure that, although rare, the death of gladiators in combat is possible, we also know that the wounding of gladiators, during games, during combat or during training, was very frequent and not they had no legal consequences for the owners, unlike what happened to the rural slaves who worked in the countryside.
This leads us to think that, on the juridical level gladiator and slaves were not exactly the same thing, but more likely, that gladiators were a "special" type of slaves, for which different protections and rules were provided and that, even on the social plane, gladiators and slaves, were two distinct entities, not surprisingly, always in the story of the servile wars, Pliny, Plutarch and Appian, speak distinctly of Gladiators and Slaves insurgents, an important distinction because if on the social, juridical and cultural gladiators were common slaves, in their stories the three authors would have spoken only of insurgent slaves.
Conclusions
Unfortunately we do not know exactly how Rome distinguished common slaves from gladiators, we do not know whether the distinction was cultural or legal, what is certain is that, for Pliny, Appian, Plutarch, Cato and Sallust, to quote the Roman authors at the base of this article, there were differences between gladiators and slaves. Trivially we could say, beyond the physical conditions and athletic training, that if it is true that all gladiators were slaves, not all slaves were or could be gladiators.
Bibliography
E. Lo Cascio, Anthology of sources
G. Bonelli, Pliny the Younger and slavery:Considerations and clarifications
Pliny the Younger, Epistle V19
Cato, De agri cultura