URI, VINCIRI, VERBERARI, FERROQUE NECARI
“I will endure, to be burned, to be bound, to be beaten, and to be killed by the sword”
Sacramentum gladiatorium, the oath of the gladiators
- Petronius Satyricon 117
deutsch

This is the spine-chilling oath of the gladiators. Roman gladiators were technical fighters who were recruited from the slaves and prisoners of war of Rome. They had little or no control over their destiny in an era where human blood and life were cheap. A few were freed as a reward for their service in the arena.

Recent academic opinion is that many or most fights between experienced gladiators did not result in a death of the looser, as sportsmen they were highly valued as showmen and heroes. However the result was usually quite different for combat between an experienced gladiator and a prisoner of war or criminal.

Gladiatorial fights were set not only in the major arenas and the colosseum at Rome but also as the entertainment at private parties.

Josephus, a London classics scholar, writes The passage cited in support the remark is in the fifth book of Strabo's Geography. Strabo was writing about the time of Tiberius, and said about the Campanians (who lived between Latium and Naples): "As for the Campanians, it was their lot, because of the fertility of their country, to enjoy in equal degree both evil things and good. For they were so extravagant that they would invite gladiators, in pairs, to dinner, regulating the number by the importance of the dinners." I haven't been able to summon up the Greek text, so I don't know how accurate this translation is, but it's probably as good as you can get. There's also a reference to something in Nicholas of Damascus, supporting the same idea, but I currently don't have his text, even in translation.

This suggests possibilities of fighting for the sexual gratification of the Master of the house and subsequent sexual activities following directly on from the fighting. At an individual, a Master might obtain a gladiator from the local gladiator school or ask his own slaves to fight in gladiatorial style as an entertainment, he might obtain noxii (prisoners) as expendable opposition and - as shown in some of the movies - celebrity gladiators would also fight as entertainment. The sexual morals of Rome varied through the Imperial and Republican epochs and certainly included celebration of the athletic male physique and sexual relations between men.

Many people enjoy writing about the thrust and kill but to me although this is the dramatic and climactic dénoument of the gladiator's life, the surrounding circumstances and lifestyle that support the arena activity are just as much of interest. Killing takes but a moment or two (I am told) but living takes a lifetime.

There are many imagined short - and maybe sweet - descriptions of the final moments of gladiators in the arena but how would one live, endure and survive in a regime inhbited by characters such as manacled Nubians, the surviving and omnipotent (to gladiator slaves) Lanista, and with other gladiators in the barracks. And during the time of three homosexual Roman emperors of the second century AD: Trajan, Hadrian, and Antoninus. Imagine what would be the day to day training, the pleasures, the alliances and the intrigues... the sexual openness between athletes doomed to die; the routine sexual gratification, exploitation and humiliation of the situation where "carpe diem" living for the moment had real meaning but also the opportunities for pleasures and career advancement where great bodies are both valued and routinely trashed.

We know from other man to man combat situations that there is both a harnessing of sexual energy to fuel fight agression (see my pages sports masochist fitness training routines and Gut-punching and boxing - sparring) but this is in tension with a shift in morality that comes from the combat situation (see Press reports of prisoner, interrogation and military recruit abuse),

The immersive experience games that now exist don't have a sexually open glaiator game, not even a gladiator training game, nor is there a even yet a novel or long form gay porn story on this topic... either ancient Roman or science fiction.

That's the imaginative leap I would like someone to take and put forward a complete gladiator lifestyle. › Do get in touch if you have information, fantasies or opinions about Roman gladiators, their lives, training and techniques and their training. I'm keen to meet to train and fight.

Roman gladiator fiction

• A Day in the Arena is my completion of a story begun by gladiator Dan.
• Slaves of the Empire by Aaron Travis, is excellent but regrettably about the only sustained (long-form) gay male SM fantasy set in and around the Colosseum. It fills the gap between the historical record and contemporary gay porn.
• Gladiator School by Keith Gordon & Ben Elliott. Gladiators on the web has some good gay stories.

  

• Popular historical fiction series known in the UK as "The Eagles" and in the US as "The Gladiator", cover illustrations by Richard Clifton-Dey. This series relates the heroic but savage and bloody life of fictional Roman gladiator Vulpus (The Wolf), arena name of Markus Julius Brittannicus, son of a disgraced Roman citizen. All were credited to "Andrew Quiller". I've found these to be good reads. Stories well told, professionally written and researched. Quite enough blood, adult detail and sex for my taste. They give a much fuller impression of Roman life than we get from the history books, an immersive description of the lifestyles and mores of another empire, similar (but historically anchored) in the way that science fiction authors describe future worlds. Historical fiction is a powerful way of bringing the past to life that hasn't been entirely superseded by big budget Hollywood CGI films nor academically justified re-enactments. Review copyright squaddie John © 2007.
  1. The Hill of the Dead (1975) by Laurence James writing as "Andrew Quiller".
     The first adventure of THE EAGLES, a sensational new series set in the savage days of Imperial Rome.
     'The man screamed as the blade caught him at the centre of the delicate knee joint, slicing through skin and flesh, cracking the bones, and hacking the cartilage apart.'
     Rome A.D. 81. The screams of his admirers echo across the crowded Colosseum as the gladiator Vulpus brings another opponent to the point of death. Wounds gape, blood seeps into the burning sand and the mob howls for the kill. Vulpus raises his sword. And freezes. For the man before him is no stranger. And the gladiator's thoughts turn inwards, back eight years to the sun-baked fortress of fearful report. Back to Massada...
  2. The Land of Mist (1976) by Ken Bulmer writing as "Andrew Quiller".
     'He went over backwards, his dusty tunic flowering crimson as the horses trampled him down. He was kicked and flung a dozen yards, cartwheeling over and over, one arm severed by the razor-sharp battering of hooves...'
     The brutality of life as a charioteer does not move Vulpus the Fox, As a gladiator he has seen many perish. But there are some deaths that live on in the mind. Deaths that recall the mist and savagery of a conquered land called Britain. Deaths that preserve the memory of a beautiful princess who once was raped and tortured. Hideous, lingering deaths forged in the white heat of vengeance.
  3. City of Fire (1976) by Angus Wells writing as "Andrew Quiller".
     'He was suddenly quiet, his voice low and earnest, forcing knowledge of his purpose into the broken skull below him. "You killed her. You and the others. Raped and murdered her, just as I kill you now..."'
     There is no escape for those upon whom the gladiator Vulpus desires to visit vengeance. And the man who has butchered more opponents than any fighter in Imperial Rome possesses the terrifying skills which can inflict a cruel, draw-out death. Among the brothels and arenas of Pompeii he seeks out the next victim in his relentless hunt for the man who tortured and slayed a beautiful British princess long ago. But as he corners his quarry, a grey volcanic dust begins to fall onto the doomed city...
  4. Blood on the Sand (1977) by Laurence James writing as "Andrew Quiller"
     'A red-tipped spike of wood sprang from the middle of the gladiator's body, shreds of flesh and gristle hanging from the splintered end. Blood jetted from the gaping wound...'
     As the gladiator Vulpus the Fox, idol of the blood-hungry crowds, celebrates another victory in the arena, he remembers the beginning of his brutal career, when the Emperor Titus summoned him to be his personal champion. And he remembers how, one by one, pitilessly, he hunted down the men who owed him a debt of blood. How he trapped them. How he made them die - slowly, in torment, in darkness and alone...
  5. Sea of Swords (1977) by Ken Bulmer writing as "Andrew Quiller"
     'Burning blood dribbled down the stakes. The line of men staked and obscene in the fading light looked like some macabre frieze from a temple of devils. Only Marcus still resisted, and his resistance must soon cease . . .'
     His hunger for vengeance satisfied, Marcus Britannicus remains the emperor's champion in the arena. And the emperor has other uses for his deadly skills. Soon he is sent beyond the outermost reaches of the empire, to the barbaric land of Dacia, where his mission is to bring to safety the voluptuous daughter of one of Rome's allies. But first Marcus must face the treachery and the perverted tortures of the Dacian king Druras. Druras - the Impaler.

I am also seeking traditional style tuition and correction in Latin, the language of Rome.›

Links of interest: All links that go to other sites are not part of my site. I am in no way responsible for their content

• Discipline and punishments of the Roman legions
• Saturnalia - the Roman winter solstice orgy
• Irrevocable SM slave contracts - recording and enforcing a slave's consent and commitment
• Gladiators on the web Homoerotic pictures, movie reviews and stories of male on male combat [US]
• Roman Gladiatorial Games Brooklyn College Classics Department [US]
• Gladiator Images University of Texas [US]
• Gladiatorial games
• A very British gladiator
• Gladiators fought by the book
• Institut Ars Dimicandi France (archive pages)[F]
• Istituto Ars Dimicandi ® - events, photos and videos [It]
• Ludus Gladiatorius Living History Society
• Collegium Gladiatorium - gladiator (gladiátor) reenactment - includes videos [Hungary]
• Gladiators: Heroes of the Roman Amphitheatre
• Rome: the amphitheatre University of Wales [UK}
• Gladiators and Caesars British Museum
• Gladiators (Encyclopaedia Romana)
• Video shares
  • Demetrius and the Gladiators
  • Colosseum, Rome's Arena of Death
• Gladiatoren [D]
• Die Gladiatorenkämpfe oder munera [D]
• Arenafighter message board - movies, fiction, chat. I have severe misgivings about the knifing fantasy culture, which is not my thing and definitely not a safe and sane fantasy. Probably not sexual either in the way that interests me.
• An elementary Latin course accompanied with a detailed grammar based upon Kennedy's Public School Latin Grammar

• Gut punching - recreational brutality
• Fight or flight response to bondage
• Canyon rim crucifixion and flogging [fantasy]

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