The Gladiatorial Eagles : Roman Heroism and Single Combat - Article Published

Feb. 29, 2012 - PRLog -- The idea of single combat in the Roman Empire immediately evokes the powerful image of the gladiator standing over a downed opponent, his gladius raised for the glory of the patron of the games, the crowds embroiled with the bloodlust so easily awakened. What is less known is this gladiatorial ethos in the context of open battle. Instead of the mobs of the Empire, the spectators would be two opposing armies, cheering on their own champion.

It is little known, or at least, rarely described, the tendency of the early Roman Republican armies to engage in an act most commonly associated with their Barbarian counterparts, the art of single combat to decide an entire battle.

Most of the evidence available to testify to this Roman ‘Heroic Age’ are accounts written by Roman historians. However, these accounts are often contradictory and incomplete (Cowan, 2007). But if we take extreme care in peeling back the layers and various subtexts, it is possible to maintain the veracity of the stories as strong oral traditions that have been written down.

The heroic age of Roman single combat was on the very periphery when Rome stopped being a provincial backwater and started treading the boards of Empire. The act of using champions to decide a battles outcome was a vital component in the evolution of the army as a predatory force with strong idealistic notions.

First we must put early Rome as being in the immense shadow of Ancient Greece, and principally in this respect, the Heroic Age. Roman boys with aspirations of military glory would be swimming in literature that reinforces the idea of war as a romantic idyll. The glorification of violence was a staple part of a young boy’s education. Regaled with tales of Achilles and Hector, of Leonidas and his three hundred Spartans, these heroic and romanticised ideas of warfare were burned into their behavioural patterns and attitudes towards the art of war. This can be seen with the adoration of Julius Caesar and Pompey, two lions of the theatre of war who were adored for their actions. Pompey also had a penchant for heroic single action, but more of that in Part 2.

Beginnings.

Early Rome was heavily influenced by the context it was in, this context being its Mediterranean neighbours to the West, and its Gaulish counterparts to the North. Using champions to decide a battles outcome has taken predominance on many battlefields through time. Arguably the most famous is the legend of David (1010-973 BC) and his epic clash with Goliath: ‘And there went out a champion named Goliath, of Gath, whose height was six cubits and a span… And David put his hand in his bag, and took thence a stone, and slung it, and smote the Philistine in his forehead’ (1 Samuel 17, 4, 49). Slaying Goliath with a single stone in single combat earned King David immortality and is still a story taught today.

This trend then occurs in the Hellenic world, with the most famous example being the three hundred Spartan champions facing off against three hundred champion Argives (from the city ‘Argos’ in Peloponnesian Greece) in 546 BC. Herodotus in his ‘Histories’ tells us that this clash of champions was a device used to avoid an all-out and costly war between the two powerful city states.

After a brutal and hard fought battle between the six hundred champions, the contest ended with 597 combatants dead. Two Argives and one lone Spartan, interestingly, although to our minds the Argives seem victorious owing to having more than one man left alive and as such the two Argives immediately ran back to Argos to give news of the victory.

According to Herodotus however the Spartans claimed the victory as the Spartan was the last to leave the field (Herodotus, Book 1, p.31). Speaking of battles between champions, it would be most prudent to include arguably the most famous of them all, the duel between Hector and Achilles in Homers ‘The Illiad’. It is fair to say this is the ultimate battle between the ultimate warriors.

Both men are described as such in Homers wonderful rhetoric: ‘Hector had a sharp, long and weighty sword…braced himself and swooped like a high-flying eagle that drops to earth through the black clouds to pounce on a tender lamb or crouching hare’ and he goes on to say of the mighty Achilles: ‘Achilles poised and hurled his long-shadowed spear’ (Homer, Illiad, p.404). These are the stories that the Romans in boyhood would have so admired and desired to emulate.

The Emperor Commodus (161-192 AD) believed that he was incarnate of the Greek hero demi-god Heracles. His penchant for the bloody spectacle of the games and of bloodlust, (and one of the only emperor’s to actually partake) he was made famous in the movie ‘Gladiator’. Although a lover of theatrical bloodshed, Commodus was no military leader. He did not have designs on conquest; he merely had a twisted adoration for heroic action, which he would reconstruct through the medium of the Colosseum. Commodus actually appeared in the games. In 192 AD, the last year of his reign.

Read the rest of the Archaeology Press Release :
http://www.heritagedaily.com/2012/03/the-gladiatorial-eag...

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