What is the full name of the home built by the Quintilii family?
The passage is obscure, but Cerutti and Richardson argue that Gracchus begins the fight as a loincloth-wearing retiarius. When the tide turns against him, he dons a tunic and a womanish wig (spira), apparently part of the same costume, and thus enjoys a reprieve, although this attire may not itself have been considered effeminate as it was also worn by the priests of Mars of whom Gracchus was the chief priest. The change of clothing seems to turn a serious fight into a comical one and shames his opponent. It is unusual to see a gladiator depicted this way in a satire, as such fighters usually take the role of men who are "brawny, brutal, sexually successful with women of both high and low status, but especially the latter, ill-educated if not uneducated, and none too bright intellectually." The retiarius tunicatus in the satire is the opposite: "a mock gladiatorial figure, of equivocal sex, regularly dressed in costume of some sort, possibly usually as a woman, and matched against a secutor or murmillo in a mock gladiatorial exhibition."Despite their low status, some retiarii became quite popular throughout the early Empire. The fact that spectators could see net-fighters' faces humanised them and probably added to their popularity. At Pompeii, graffiti tells of Crescens or Cresces the retiarius, "lord of the girls" and "doctor to nighttime girls, morning girls, and all the rest." Evidence suggests that some homosexual men fancied gladiators, and the retiarius would have been particularly appealing. Roman art depicts net-men just as often as other types. A mosaic found in 2007 in a bathhouse at the Villa dei Quintili shows a retiarius named Montanus. The fact that his name is recorded indicates that the gladiator was famous. The mosaic dates to c. CE 130, when the Quintilii family had the home built; the emperor Commodus, who fought in gladiatorial bouts as a secutor, acquired the house in CE 182 and used it as a country villa. In modern times, popular culture has made the retiarius probably the most famous type of gladiator.
Villa dei Quintili