Postponements and Cancellations of Mass Events in Ancient Rome: CIL IV 9967 in a Broader Context of Gladiatorial Games (original) (raw)
Related papers
Imperial Spectacle in the Roman Provinces (= the Roman games outside Italy)
The Oxford Handbook of Sport and Spectacle in the Ancient World, 2021
NB: This chapter was submitted May 2011 but was only published in 2021, i.e. a full decade later!! Unfortunately, this means that my bibliography was already somewhat out of date at the time of publication, and there are a number of newer studies I would have liked to cite. I made only minimal revisions (e.g. regarding the Noheda mosaics) but, fortunately, my conclusions and directions for future research still stand. The Handbook is reviewed by Sofie Remijsen in Plekos 25 (2023) 461-466 with a few references to this chapter. First paragraph: Circuses, theatres, amphitheatres, and other entertainment facilities where Roman spectacles were produced are attested in the hundreds in the provinces of the Roman empire. Hundreds or even thousands of spectacles must have been organized in each of these buildings in the course of the decades and centuries. Likewise gladiators, charioteers, stage performers, venatores, and athletes are known from hundreds of funerary monuments. The iconographic evidence is pervasive, from single gladiators depicted on domestic oil lamps to full event programmes tessellated on the dining room floors of the wealthy and powerful. It may, therefore, seem rather puzzling that fewer than 200 provincial honorary, dedicatory, and funerary inscriptions (out of over 100,000) record the organization of any spectacle by the provincial municipal elites in the Latin part of the empire, on which this chapter will mostly focus. Nevertheless, epigraphy is the best source of knowledge for the mounting of spectacles in the provinces. The number of men who assumed any title as organizer of a spectacle is, at first sight, surprisingly small as well; there are altogether barely forty provincial munerarii and curatores muneris (respectively, givers of a statutory or private munus, i.e. of an amphitheatrical spectacle, and organizers of a statutory or at least state- administered periodic munus), and we know of only a single uncertain case of a curator lud[orum?] (organizer of games). We therefore have many more buildings than we have organizers and their spectacles. This chapter will provide an explanation for this fundamental problem, which must be addressed if we are to make sense of the inscriptions and other artefacts which do record spectacles in some or other way.
Scheduling Gladiatorial Combats at Pompeii - SAS PhD Summit May 2018
From the first century AD onwards public entertainment was used as a common method of political promotion by the local elite in the cities outside of the city of Rome. The graffiti preserved at Pompeii referencing these spectacles promoting politicians illustrate how public entertainment proved to be a valuable method of public exposure for ancient politicians. Inscriptions would be commissioned to record and promote these acts of public generosity. This research examines these inscriptions with the aim to reconstruct individual costs and scale of gladiatorial, beast-hunt, chariot, and theatrical entertainment in the Roman Empire. By taking these individual prices and analysing them in relation to ancient literary evidence it is possible to depict not only the infrastructure of Imperial period entertainment in the Roman Empire, but to also draw conclusions on the individuals responsible for organising these spectacles.
Rome’s seat of passion: An assessment of the archeology and history of the Circus Maximus
It is a place where the general public can gather communally to watch ludi, provisionally erasing invisible boundary lines which sharply divide one social class from another. The Circus is also a location which has the capability to eradicate personal and societal perceptions potentially rendering a crowd in an intoxicated, wanton state. The association existent between society and its predetermined allocation of space in many venues (e.g. hippodromes, theaters, amphitheaters, etc.) which exhibit sports and spectacles, more generally, is well attested to in the Circus Maximus’s history. Using this as the conceptual framework, this article attempts to assess the recurrent, measured, and far-ranging evolutions and interdependencies between the aristocracy and the Circus they constructed. The construction methodology, I argue, was constantly being adapted to suit specific political agendas beginning with its legendary foundation under the Etruscan kings in the sixth-century BCE and ending with its usage during late Empire in the fifth-century CE. The fictional rape of the Sabine women, for example, relates Roman notions of losing self and spatial awareness as a hazardous mistake which can be purposely leveraged by manipulating a predestined, popular situation “monstra.” The organization of this article which traces the Circus’s transitions will begin with the Regal Period, move to the Republican Period, then to the Empire. The variations and modifications the Circus Maximus has undergone since the sixth-century BCE—architecturally and usage wise—serves as evidence to both the flexibility of public spaces and usages by the aristocracy from pre-Roman times through the Roman Empire.
2021
L’état de fébrilité du public lors des courses de chars de la Rome antique apparaît, à certains égards, comme un lieu commun dans de nombreux passages de la littérature ancienne parvenus jusqu’à nous. Néanmoins, l’engouement suscité par ces spectacles à Rome, comme dans les provinces de l’Empire, est confirmé non seulement par les ruines de cirques antiques encore visibles de nos jours à Rome, et ailleurs en Europe ou en Afrique du Nord, mais aussi par un grand nombre de représentations de cochers et de chevaux sur des mosaïques, des fresques ou encore des objets dits du quotidien (manches de couteaux, lampes à huile, coupes en verre…) conservés dans plusieurs musées à travers le monde. Après une présentation des sources dont nous disposons sur les spectateurs des cirques romains et des difficultés d’interprétation qu’elles posent, cet ouvrage propose dans un second temps une analyse du comportement des foules dans les cirques durant les jeux, principalement à Rome, en s’appuyant aussi sur des recherches récentes concernant les réactions des supporteurs dans les stades de football de nos jours. Enfin, la dernière partie de cette étude est consacrée aux relations entretenues par les empereurs romains avec les jeux du cirque et leurs spectateurs. Elle met en évidence les nombreux intérêts, mais aussi parfois les inconvénients, que présentaient ces divertissements de masse pour le pouvoir politique dans la Rome impériale. The public’s state of excitement during the chariot races in ancient Rome appears, in some respects, as commonplace in many passages of ancient literature that have come down to us. However, the enthusiasm aroused by these shows in Rome, as in the provinces of the Empire, is confirmed not only by the ruins of ancient circuses still visible today in Rome and elsewhere in Europe or North Africa, but also by a large number of representations of charioteers and horses on mosaics, frescoes, or even everyday objects (knife handles, oil lamps, glass bowls, etc.) held in numerous museums around the world. The first part of this volume presents the sources which we have on the spectators in the Roman circuses and the difficulties of interpretation that they pose. The second part of this work proposes an analysis of the behavior of the crowds in the circuses during the games, mainly in Rome, which is based in part on recent research concerning the reactions of supporters in modern football stadiums. Finally, the last part of this study examines the relationships maintained by the Roman emperors with the circus games and their spectators. It highlights the many advantages, but also sometimes disadvantages, that these mass entertainments presented for the political establishment in imperial Rome.
Spectacular Tropes: Representations of the Roman Arena
2018
This paper will focus on the construction of representational tropes depicting the ancient Roman arenas and those involved with them, particularly within the spectacles of gladiatorial battles. The conceptions of representation within the arena influenced how differing Roman social groups perceived one another through social ideals and identities. I will analyze this by looking at three major methods of representation from the ancient Roman world: (1) literary sources, (2) epigraphical materials (inscriptions and graffiti), and (3) visual sources (mosaics and reliefs). These sources reflect the different characteristics of the Roman arenas and are defined by various social contexts, displaying how different ideals relating to the arena and its performers were valued within greater Roman society. I will examine these ancient ideals on representation by relating them to anthropological and sociological concepts related to the representation and public perceptions of athletes and sport...