page_title: Gladiator
section_title: Death and disposal
hierarchical_section_title: Gladiator / The games / Death and disposal
caption_attribution_description: English: Photos of the ground floor , the 2 paintings in the National Art Gallery, the National Museum of the Philippines[1][2] is now the site of the Old Congress Building, Manila: Felix Resurrection Hidalgo, "El asasinato del Gobernador Bustamante" Fernando Manuel de Bustillo Bustamante y Rueda Félix Resurrección Hidalgo's The Assassination of Governor Bustamante is Hidalgo's interpretation of the death illustrated by a mob of Dominican friars murdering the governor and Spoliarium painting by Filipino artist Juan Luna .
context_page_description: A gladiator was an armed combatant who entertained audiences in the Roman Republic and Roman Empire in violent confrontations with other gladiators, wild animals, and condemned criminals. Some gladiators were volunteers who risked their lives and their legal and social standing by appearing in the arena. Most were despised as slaves, schooled under harsh conditions, socially marginalized, and segregated even in death.
  Irrespective of their origin, gladiators offered spectators an example of Rome's martial ethics and, in fighting or dying well, they could inspire admiration and popular acclaim. They were celebrated in high and low art, and their value as entertainers was commemorated in precious and commonplace objects throughout the Roman world.
  The origin of gladiatorial combat is open to debate. There is evidence of it in funeral rites during the Punic Wars of the 3rd century BC, and thereafter it rapidly became an essential feature of politics and social life in the Roman world. Its popularity led to its use in ever more lavish and costly games.
  The gladiator games lasted for nearly a thousand years, reaching their peak between the 1st century BC and the 2nd century AD.
context_section_description: A gladiator who was refused missio was despatched by his opponent. To die well, a gladiator should never ask for mercy, nor cry out. A "good death" redeemed the gladiator from the dishonourable weakness and passivity of defeat, and provided a noble example to those who watched:
  
  For death, when it stands near us, gives even to inexperienced men the courage not to seek to avoid the inevitable. So the gladiator, no matter how faint-hearted he has been throughout the fight, offers his throat to his opponent and directs the wavering blade to the vital spot. (Seneca. Epistles, 30.8)
  Some mosaics show defeated gladiators kneeling in preparation for the moment of death. Seneca's "vital spot" seems to have meant the neck. Gladiator remains from Ephesus confirm this.
  The body of a gladiator who had died well was placed on a couch of Libitina and removed with dignity to the arena morgue, where the corpse was stripped of armour, and probably had its throat cut to prove that dead was dead. The Christian author Tertullian, commenting on ludi meridiani in Roman Carthage during the peak era of the games, describes a more humiliating method of removal. One arena official, dressed as the "brother of Jove", Dis Pater (god of the underworld) strikes the corpse with a mallet. Another, dressed as Mercury, tests for life-signs with a heated "wand"; once confirmed as dead, the body is dragged from the arena.
  Whether these victims were gladiators or noxii is unknown. Modern pathological examination confirms the probably fatal use of a mallet on some, but not all the gladiator skulls found in a gladiators' cemetery. Kyle (1998) proposes that gladiators who disgraced themselves might have been subjected to the same indignities as noxii, denied the relative mercies of a quick death and dragged from the arena as carrion. Whether the corpse of such a gladiator could be redeemed from further ignominy by friends or familia is not known.
  The bodies of noxii, and possibly some damnati, were thrown into rivers or dumped unburied; Denial of funeral rites and memorial condemned the shade (manes) of the deceased to restless wandering upon the earth as a dreadful larva or lemur. Ordinary citizens, slaves and freedmen were usually buried beyond the town or city limits, to avoid the ritual and physical pollution of the living; professional gladiators had their own, separate cemeteries. The taint of infamia was perpetual.
caption: Spoliarium by Philippines artist Juan Luna
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