Pompeii (50 page)

90. The arena of the Amphitheatre. The front rows of seating for the elite are clearly visible, marked off from the main seating behind. The main entrances for gladiators and animals lie at either end of the oval fighting space.

The plan of the building as it was buried in 79 gives us a good idea of how the Amphitheatre worked. The seats surrounding the display area were carefully ranked. The front rows were reserved for the local elite, who enjoyed spacious seating and a ringside view – though at the cost of sometimes being uncomfortably close to the action and to the wild animals on the loose. The women were probably relegated to the very back, if the rules that were introduced by the emperor Augustus in Rome applied, and were enforced, here too. Spectators entered the building by different routes, according to where they were sitting. Those in the main seating area made their way up the steep stairways on the outside of the building, which led onto a walkway that ran round the top of the seating. From here they would take the appropriate stairway down again to their place. Those in the posh seats went in through one of the lower entranceways, which led to an internal corridor running around the perimeter of the arena. From here they would take one of the series of stairways that led up to the front rows of seating. On this system the rich would never have had to cross paths, or rub shoulders in the mêlée, with the great unwashed. And just to be on the safe side, there was a hefty barrier in the seating area between the places reserved for the elite, and the rest above.

The main ceremonial way-in was the entrance on the north side, decorated with statues. The gladiators and animals would also have entered and left here, or at the opposite end, to the south. Unlike in the Colosseum at Rome, there were no cellars or underground passageways beneath the floor of the arena which could accommodate the waiting fighters (human or animal) and then release them through trapdoors when their turn came, into the spotlight above. The only place in this design for either men or (small) beasts to wait before their fight were the cramped rooms, (
a
), by each of the main entrances. Any larger animals must have been caged up outside, forming a mini-zoo, no doubt to the amusement, and terror, of passing spectators.

What has been lost? First the wooden seats. Even in the Amphitheatre’s final phases, the seats were not all made of stone. Where the areas of grass now are, the seats were wooden. The stone versions had been added piecemeal, through the benefaction of various local officials. When Quinctius Valgus and Marcus Porcius first built the monument, the structural frame was in masonry, but all the seats were in wood. More disappointingly, the paintwork has also been lost. When the building was first excavated in 1815, brightly coloured decorations were discovered covering the curtain wall that surrounded the arena, just below the seats of the elite. These all disappeared in the cold weather of the following winter – but luckily not before they had been copied by artists working on the site.

The pictures showed a wonderful array of mythological figures (a Victory balancing on a globe and holding a palm branch, to symbolise success, was a recurring element) and images of gladiatorial equipment leaning against paintings of statues. But the main panels evoked the combats of the arena. There were scenes of wild animals charging through a mountain wilderness, reminiscent of the hunts that were staged there (and of the scenes on some garden walls). The artist had indulged his fantasy by including lions which, so far as we know, were never actually part of the display at Pompeii, even if they roamed the audience ’s imagination.

Of course, there were gladiators too. One of the paintings shows the start of a bout (Ill. 91). The referee stands in the middle between two gladiators who are not yet fully kitted out for their fight. The one on the left is blasting a note on a large curved horn with an ornamental handle to signal the start of proceedings. Behind him a couple of attendants wait with his shield and helmet. On the right his opponent is already equipped with his shield, though his attendants have still to hand over his helmet and sword. A pair of Victories hover in the background, waiting to award palm branch and wreath to whichever one is the winner. Another image depicts the end of a contest between two rather burlier fighters. The loser has dropped his shield, carries a hopelessly buckled sword and has blood pouring out of his left arm.

91. The start of a bout. The lost paintings on the curtain wall of the arena included this scene of a pair of gladiators during the preliminaries to their fight. Interestingly the referee and support staff easily outnumber the fighters themselves.

This particular decoration was installed in the last years of the city, after the earthquake of 62 – for, unlike both the theatres, the Amphitheatre was in full working order at the time of the eruption. That famous painting of the riot in the Amphitheatre in 59 CE (Ill. 16) would suggest that the new scheme replaced a less complex design. If we can trust the artist’s accuracy, at the time of the riot the curtain wall was decorated with a painted pattern to imitate marble, a common Roman conceit. But whether it is a question of imitation marble or gory scenes of combat, we find that the austere monochrome image of the surviving ruins belies, as so often, the vivid, even garish, original appearance of the monument.

The Amphitheatre did not stand alone. Some parts of the festivities connected with gladiatorial shows would have spilled over into the so-called Large Palaestra next door – a generous open space, surrounded by colonnades with a swimming pool in the centre and shady avenues of trees. Its original date and function are uncertain, though the size of the tree roots indicates that they had been planted about a hundred years before the eruption. One theory is that its main purpose was to provide an exercise ground for the city’s youth; or at least for the wealthy boys, who may – following the policy of the emperor Augustus – have been organised into a paramilitary ‘corps’ (a cross between the boy scouts and the territorial army). There is, in fact, precious little evidence for this. The graffiti surviving on the colonnades suggest instead a much more mixed set of leisure and business uses, from shady park to open-air market and school. It must have come into its own when there were 20,000 people in the Amphitheatre, offering a place for a break, for eating and drinking, and for the lavatory. So far as we have been able to tell there was no latrine in the Amphitheatre: 20,000 people and nowhere but the stairs and corridors to take a piss.

Advertisements for forthcoming shows in the Amphitheatre, painted in the same style and by the same signwriters as the electoral slogans, give us all kinds of information about who the sponsors were, what the programme contained, how long it lasted, what facilities or extra attractions might be laid on. This evidence can sometimes be combined with memorials on tombs, where families might boast about the generosity of the deceased in financing shows. For gladiatorial spectacles and wild-beast hunts were a major part of the culture of benefaction we have already noticed in the town. Elected officials would stage these shows during their year of office. So would civic priests, or even in one case we know of an
Augustalis
. So too, for that matter, might men, like Livineius Regulus in 59 CE, looking to curry favour with the locals, for motives good or bad. Occasionally the advertisements make a point of stressing that the shows are to be put on ‘at no public expense ’. Perhaps it was normal practice for the city council to make some contribution to the cost too. Either way, there is no sign that any charge was made to those attending. This looks like free entertainment.

One especially lengthy series of shows extending over five days was advertised in the poster painted on a street wall by that active Pompeian signwriter Aemilius Celer (Ill. 92). It was on this occasion that he chose to inform his readers that he was working ‘alone by the light of the moon’ (p. 79). The advertisement ran in typical wording:

Decimus Lucretius Satrius Valens, permanent priest of Prince Nero, the son of the emperor, is presenting twenty pairs of gladiators. Decimus Lucretius Valens his son is presenting ten pairs of gladiators. They will fight at Pompeii on 8, 9, 10, 11, 12 April. There will be a wild-beast hunt according to the usual rules and awnings.

There is no doubt that this act of generosity was intended to enhance the prestige and reputation of Satrius Valens, whose first two names appear in letters about ten times as big as everything else. He was giving these games in his capacity as priest, but by including his son in the enterprise (albeit with half as many gladiators to his name) he was no doubt also intending to give the younger man a leg-up in the politics of the local community. The place and date are very simply stated. There was obviously no need to specify that the show was to be held in the Amphitheatre. We know that in many Italian towns, including Rome itself, the forum could be used for shows, and we have already seen one occasion when animal displays were conducted in the Pompeian forum. But the distinctive combination of gladiators and wild-beast hunt must have been enough to tell people where to go. The crucial message to get across was that the occasion was to be held
at Pompeii
. For the walls of the town carried advertisements for shows at other local venues – Nola, Capua, Herculaneum, Cumae – for those who could be bothered to make the trip. People did not need to be told a precise time either. So long as they knew the date, they could rely on a standard kick-off time.

92. An elegant advertisement. Careful work by the sign writer Aemilius Celer, advertising gladiatorial games put on by Decimus Lucretius Satrius Valens. (The translation).

Five days is the longest series of gladiatorial shows we know of at Pompeii. Many are advertised for just a single day, some for two, three or four. Even if we were to assume that most of the elected officials, plus some priests, chose to provide these bloody games as their benefaction to the town, and even allowing for some extra performances perhaps put on commercially, there could hardly have been more than twenty days of shows in the Amphitheatre each year. Most of the time it must have been empty and locked up, or taken over for anything else that could use a large open space. Pantomime perhaps?

How, in the case of the games of Satrius Valens and son, the gladiators and the hunt were spread over the five days is puzzling. We do not know how long each pair would keep going. But on other occasions just a single day’s show features thirty pairs of fighters plus a hunt. So do we imagine that Satrius Valens’ generosity consisted mostly in spreading his fighters more thinly across the allotted time? Or did the gladiators appear on more than one day? Some advertisements specify that ‘substitutes’ will be provided, to take the place of a dead or wounded fighter, and sometimes it is clear that individual gladiators went into battle several times in the same games. Maybe Satrius Valens had that in mind. But did he have access to enough spare animals to present hunts on each of five days?

At the end of the advertisement we learn that the hunt is to be conducted ‘according to the usual rules’ (
legitima
). The point of this is not at all clear, though some historians imagine that it means little more than ‘the hunt that normally goes with a gladiatorial show’, or just ‘a regular hunt’. We also learn that the awnings will be in use over the building, to bring shade to spectators if it turned out to be a hot sunny day, and presumably at extra cost to the sponsor. Even in the balmy Mediterranean climate, the weather seems to have been on the mind of those who planned these events. From the recorded dates, it seems that the hottest months of July and August were not favourite times for the shows. But wet weather could be a problem too. Some advertisements add the cautious warning: ‘weather permitting’.

Satrius Valens and his son (assuming that it was they who chose the wording) make no mention of one other extra that many wealthy sponsors of the games include:
sparsiones
. This is a term that can mean anything ‘sprinkled’ or ‘showered’ over the audience. Sometimes it was perfumed water sprayed over the audience in their seats, sometimes little presents thrown into the crowd (as at a modern Christmas pantomime before Health and Safety regulations prohibited it). Such a flourish was perhaps beyond even this family’s generosity, over five days.