"Not for an Olive Wreath, but Our Lives": Gladiators, Athletes, and Early Christian Bodies

In this article, I dwell on the blurring of the lines between gladiators and athletes in the first and second centuries C.E., showing that attention to gladiators, athletes, and the spaces in between helps one to see interesting processes by which identities are constructed-Greek, Roman, and Christian alike. The material and literary "texts" that I examine here show wealthy Greeks using gladiatorial games in the construction of provincial identity, Greek gladiators resignifying themselves as athletes, and a Paul who blurs the lines between athletes and gladiators in his correspondence with the Corinthians (particularly 1 Cor 9:19-27 and 2 Cor 4:7-13). In each case, I argue that we can locate the production and reception of these texts in a context in which Greek athletics and Roman games had begun to blur, both discursively and practically, for those discerning audiences who flocked to the amphitheater to see physical and violent enactments of virtue and vice. In this broader context, Paul's own ambiguous appropriations of the stadium and the arena emerge as one site among many where the language of sport and spectacle opened up spaces for rethinking and refashioning identity.So that, by the gods, justly one could greet him, "Hail incredible man!" but not those foul boxers and pancratiasts, nor those like them-the gladiators.-Epictetus (2.18.22)* 1In this quotation from Epictetus we find a surprising comparison between Greek athletes and Roman gladiators, two spheres of competition and spectacle long thought in classical scholarship to be separate. Many modern scholars have assumed a clear separation between the Greek athlete, whose exertions in the stadium have long been represented as the ideal intertwining of education and physical fitness, and the Roman gladiator, who competed in vulgar displays of violent bloodlust and barbarity; however, as Epictetus indicates, there were places where these two spheres of popular entertainment blurred. In this article, I explore the blurring of the Unes between these two groups in the first and second centuries c.e., showing that attention to gladiators, athletes, and the spaces in between helps one to see interesting processes by which identities are constructed-Greek, Roman, and Christian alike. In particular, I ask how we might contextualize Paul's own blurring of the lines between athletes and gladiators in 1 Corinthians 9 and 2 Corinthians 4, alongside a statement such as Epictetus's and other Uterary constructions of Greek gladiators, physicaUy fit apostles, and athletic martyrs. In so doing, I argue that the Roman games and Greek athletics provided important points of contact, within the constraints of Roman imperial power, that aUowed Greeks, Romans, and Christians to create "new systems of meaning and of exchange."2The material and Uterary "texts" that I wiU examine here show wealthy Greeks using gladiatorial games in the construction of provincial identity, Greek gladiators resignifying themselves as athletes, and Paul blurring the Unes between athletes and gladiators in his correspondence with the Corinthians. In each case, I argue that we can locate the production and reception of these texts in a context in which Greek athletics and Roman games had begun to blur, both discursively and practicaUy, for those discerning audiences who flocked to the amphitheater to see physical and violent enactments of virtue and vice. In this broader context, Paul's own ambiguous appropriations of the stadium and the arena emerge as one site among many where the language of sport and spectacle opened up spaces for rethinking and refashioning identity.I. Violent Sport as Cultural NegotiationThe spread of Roman games, which included wild beast hunts (venationes), public executions of condemned criminals or prisoners of war (noxii), and gladiatorial contests, throughout the Mediterranean has often been described in ethnic terms. Early scholarship on the Roman games was possessed of a romantic idealism about a philosophical Greek world. …