a troupe of famous Greek actors to perform some of the great classical plays. In the middle of the first performance, a man rushed into the theatre to say that some gladiators were fighting in the circus. In ten minutes, the Greek actors were playing to an empty house. After that the reformers gave up.
Although Caesar had staged the games simply as a popularity getter, they gave him an idea. He said to Dolabella, one of his top advisers, 'This is a perfect way to try out new weapons and fighting techniques. Our legions will be fighting tribes from all over the world. Let's pit captives from different tribes against each other, each using his own weapons.'
This opened up a whole new era in the games. Not just a few professional gladiators fought but whole battles were staged. Tattooed Britons fighting from chariots went out against German tribesmen; African Negroes with shields and spears took on Arabs fighting from horseback with bows and arrows. Thracians who used scimitars and had little, rough shields strapped to their left wrists engaged the heavily armed Samnites. Once the entire arena was planted to resemble a forest, and a company of legionnaires, condemned to the circus for various military misdemeanors, had to march through it while Gauls in their native costume and with their native weapons ambushed them. An engagement was staged between war elephants and cavalry to get the horses accustomed to the big animals. Meanwhile Caesar and his general staff sat in the imperial box and took notes. The winning side was generally given its freedom, which ensured a good fight.
Julius Caesar might be called the father of the games because under him they ceased to be an occasional exhibition of fairly modest proportions and became a national institution. By the time of Augustus, the people regarded the games not as a luxury but as their right. Under the old Republic, the games lasted for sixteen days: fourteen chariot races, two trials for horses, and fourty-eight theatricals. By the time of Claudius (50 a.d.), there were ninety-three a year. This number was gradually increased to a hundred and twenty-three days under Trajan and to two hundred and thirty under Marcus Aurelius. Eventually there were games of some kind or other going on all the time. In 248 a.d. the crowd didn't go to bed for three days and nights. Augustus and several of the other emperors tried to limit the number, but it always produced mob uprisings. Marcus Aurelius disliked the games but in his official position had to attend, like a president opening the baseball season by throwing out the first ball. He used to sit in the royal box and dictate letters to his secretaries while the games were going on. The mob never forgave him, any more than a modern crowd would forgive a president who sat transacting official business with the bases loaded and Mickey Mantle at bat. Marcus Aurelius was one of the best emperors Rome ever had, but as a result of his contempt for the games, he was also one of the most unpopular.
Claudius, who was probably insane, was very popular. He loved the games and used to make a great point of pretending to add up the betting odds on his fingers (although he was an excellent mathematician) as did the crowd. He also used to jump into the arena to berate the gladiators for not fighting hard enough, send people in the crowd notes asking what they thought of some particular gladiator's chances, and tell dirty jokes. Both Caligula and Nero, probably the two worst rulers in history, were greatly mourned by the crowd because they always put on such magnificent games. Nero, who used to light the arena at night by crucifying Christians and then setting fire to their oil-soaked bodies, was especially beloved. Even after he was forced to kill himself by the Praetorian Guard, the people refused to believe that he was dead. For years opportunists kept cropping up, claiming to be Nero, and always got a following of people who remembered what wonderful games the insane emperor had provided.
CHAPTER THREE
The demand of the crowd, not only for bigger and better games but also for novelties, kept increasing, and the government was hard put to it not only to provide elaborate enough spectacles but also to think up new displays. Possibly the most elaborate demonstrations of all were the naumachia or naval combats. Julius Caesar originated these displays in 46 b.c., digging a special lake in Mars' Field on the outskirts of Rome for the show. Sixteen galleys manned by four thousand rowers and two thousand fighting men fought to the finish. This spectacle was later surpassed by Augustus in 2 b.c. He had a permanent lake built for these fights, measuring 1,800 feet long by 1,200 feet wide, on the far side of the Tiber River. Marble stands were constructed around the lake for the crowd. Traces of this gigantic construction project still remain. One engagement was between two fleets of twelve ships, each with crews of three thousand men (beside the rowers), to commemorate the Battle of Salamis. The men on the oposing fleets were dressed like Greeks and Persians. Later, Titus gave a naumachia on a lake that could be planked over. On the first day gladiators fought on the planking. On the second, there were chariot races. On the third, the planking was removed and a sea fight took place, in which 3,000 men were engaged.
The greatest naumachia of all time was the naval engagement staged by Claudius. As Augustus' lake was too small, the mad emperor decided to use the Fucine Lake (now called the Lago di Fucino), some sixty miles to the east of Rome. This lake had no natural outlet and in the Spring it often flooded many miles of surrounding country. To overcome this trouble, a tunnel three and a half miles long had been cut through solid rock from the lake to the Litis River to carry off the surplus water. This job had taken thirty thousand men eleven years to finish. For the dedication of the opening of this tunnel, Claudius decided to stage a fight between two navies on the lake. The galleys previously used in such engagements had been small craft with only one bank of oars. For this fight, there were to be twenty-four triremes (three banks of oars), all regulation ocean-going warships— and twenty-six biremes (double bank). This armada was divided into two fleets of twenty-five ships each and manned by nineteen hundred criminals under the command of two famous gladiators. One fleet was to represent the Rhodians and the other the Sicilians, and both groups wore the appropriate costumes.
Nineteen hundred desperate and well-armed men could be a dangerous force if they decided to band together and turn against the crowd, so the lake was surrounded by heavily armed troops. In addition, a number of regiments were put on rafts equipped with catapults so they could sink the galleys if necessary. The hills around the lake formed a natural amphitheatre and on the morning of the fight the slopes were covered with over 500,000 spectators. As the lake was several hours' trip from Rome, the crowd brought their lunches and picnicked while watching the fight.
Fortunately, it turned out to be a nice day. As the lake was nearly two hundred square miles in size, the fight was restricted to the southwestern section, the rafts being lashed together to form a semicircle across the lake and mark the limits for manoeuvring. The Emperor Claudius sat on a specially prepared dais in a superb suit of golden armour covered with a purple cloak, while the Queen Mother, Agrippina, in a mantle of cloth of gold, sat beside him. In addition to the infantry surrounding the lake, there was also a detachment of cavalry mounted on magnificent Sicilian steeds drawn up behind the royal family. In order to handle the mob, the slopes had been divided into sections, each section under the care of a magistrate. A big tent had even been put up to care for the wounded after the battle—after all, prisoners were scarce and the survivors could always be used again in other spectacles. As matters turned out, the tent served another purpose. Fifteen women in the crowd gave birth during the fight and had to be cared for in the tent. It is an interesting example of the mob's passion for these fights that women in advanced pregnancy travelled sixty miles from Rome so as not to miss the naumachia.
The signal for the onslaught was given by a silver Triton that rose from the lake and blew on a golden conch shell. This mechanical contrivance must have taken some doing, but it was nothing to many of the tricks that the Romans were able to dream up. If they had expended the same amount of skill and ingenuity in improving their weapons, Rome might never have fallen. At the conch-shell signal, the two fleets approached the royal dais: drums beating, trumpets blowing and the crews saluting with their weapons.
The triremes were about a hundred feet long, each equipped with an iron beak or ram in the bow. In the bow was reared up a long beam with a spike on one end and the other end fastened to the foredeck by a heavy hinge. This was the corvus or 'crow.' When the corvus was dropped on an opposing galley, the spike sank into wood and held the two ships together. It could then be used as a gangplank for boarders. The ships carried a single square sail which was effective only if the wind was dead astern. Julius Caesar records how astonished he was when he saw the Venetii ships tack but for some reason or other it never occurred to the Romans that this maneouvre might be handy for a sailing ship and they never changed their galleys-rig.
As a result, the galleys depended almost entirely on their oars. The rowers were not in the holds of the galleys but sat on a sort of superstructure projecting over the ships' sides. This was to give the men greater leverage with the oars, for moving one of those big ships even with fifty rowers must have been a tough job. There
