Ludi Gladiatorial: Training schools and professional training surrounding combat spectacles

Abstract

BACKGROUND: From funerary rituals to amphitheater spectacles, gladiators played social roles that changed along the VII century B.C. and the V century A.D. in Ancient Rome.
OBJECTIVE: Historically and educationally focused, this text aims to analyze training schools (Ludi gladiatorial) as a formative model for the ways of fighting, arming, physical preparation, the structure used in spectacles, fighting, and living rules, and ultimately, the professionals inside roman combats.
METHODS: Therefore, I undertook bibliographical research through the works of Veyne (2009, 2015), Poehler (2013), Garraffoni (2008), and the Site of the Pompeii Archeological Park, among other works that could help me understand gladiators’ training and trajectory to meet their contemporary roman society needs. Though considered part of infamous life, gladiators were requested to participate in commemorative religious and military rituals and in entertainment held at amphitheaters, thus, institutionalizing the places destined for training and the troupe (familiae gladiatoriae) to satisfy the roman and non-roman social, cultural, and administrative contexts.
RESULTS: Training schools were the institutions that served for physical preparation, technique and coexistence between different subjects (lanista, trainers, fighters and fans) and institutionalized the fighting profession through presentations in local cities and in troupes in the surrounding cities and spread images of fighters, athletes and gladiators evidencing the fame of these representatives of the infamy class; however, they also reveal the formative model to youngsters by referring to the courage to “go down fighting”, bordering on heroism, whether for military and political purposes or for disciplinary and punitive ones.
CONCLUSION: In that institution, the gladiator’s training model was rooted by funerary rituals (munus), religious celebrations, war conquests and punishment for those considered “outside the Roman law”, let us not forget to mention that this model was an example of virility, strength and fame, luring young ones and volunteers from Ancient Rome and institutionalizing gladiatorial combat throughout the whole Roman imperial domain.