Alexis M Christensen

The gladiator has become a popular icon. He is the hero fighting against the forces of oppression, a Spartacus or a Maximus. He is the "gridiron gladiator" of Monday night football. But he is also the politician on the campaign trail. The casting of the modern politician as gladiator both appropriates and transforms ancient Roman attitudes about gladiators.
Ancient gladiators had a certain celebrity, but they were generally identified as infames and antithetical to the behavior and values of Roman citizens. Gladiatorial associations were cast as slurs against one's political opponents. For example, Cicero repeatedly identifies his nemesis P. Clodius Pulcher as a gladiator and accuses him of using gladiators to compel political support in the forum by means of violence and bloodshed in the Pro Sestio.
In the 2008 and 2012 presidential campaigns the identification of candidates as gladiators reflects a greater complexity of the gladiator as a modern cultural symbol than is reflected by popular film portrayals and sports references. Obama and Clinton were compared positively to "two gladiators who have been at it, both admired for sticking at it" in their "spectacle" of a debate on February 26, 2008 by Tom Ashbrook and Mike McIntyre on NPR's On Point. Romney and Gingrich appeared on the cover of the February 6, 2012 issue of Newsweek as gladiators engaged in combat, Gingrich preparing to stab Romney in the back. These and other examples of political gladiators serve, when compared to texts such as Cicero's Pro Sestio, as a means to examine an ancient cultural phenomenon and modern, popularizing appropriations of that phenomenon. This paper explores the nature of this imagery and how it can elucidate and provoke questions about the roles of gladiators in both ancient Roman and modern American culture."

In 2011, the Sangro Valley Project (SVP) began new excavations on the outskirts
of San Giovanni, a farming community located in the southern Abruzzo, to further
the SVP’s stated mission of exploration of land-use patterns and cultural change
within the Sangro River valley. Since 1994, the SVP’s work in the Sangro Middle
Valley has focused on the region dominated by Monte Pallano, (1,020 masl), where
both field survey and excavation have revealed agricultural, domestic, and monumental
sites dating from the Iron Age to the Late Imperial period.
The site at San Giovanni is situated at the edge of a wide natural terrace on the
southeastern slope of Monte Pallano in fields that have been subject to extensive
agricultural use. We currently recognize two main phases of activity at the site:
(1) late first century B.C.E.–early second century C.E., and (2) late third–seventh
centuries C.E. The first phase consists of a small, private bath complex composed
of three structures (A, B, and C) constructed in an opus incertum technique with a
distinctive sandy mortar. Structure A, 4.30 x ca. 7.30 m, is poorly preserved and of
uncertain function. Structure B, 6.50 x 23.30 m, consists of four rooms, one of which
features an apse and doubled foundations, which suggests the use of a vaulted
ceiling. Structure C, 3.36 x 5.96 m, features a cocciopesto flooring with an unusual
rectangular void in one corner and a drain constructed of terracotta pipes and tiles.
It may have functioned as a cistern or pool. The identification of a bath complex is
further supported by the discovery of elements of a hypocaust system, including
circular pilae bricks and tubuli parietali. Ceramic material deposited within Structure
C indicates that it went out of use by the early second century C.E. Numerous
finds of domestic common and fine wares suggest that these structures constituted
part of an Early Imperial villa. The second phase indicates domestic and agricultural
activity currently defined by a midden of tile, ceramics, slags, bone, and a
series of foundations, Structure D, largely constructed in dry stone masonry. Portions
of Structure D, in opus incertum, may be reused from the previous phase. The
function and full extent of Structure D is currently unclear and requires further
excavation, but it appears to consist of at least five distinct spaces and to cover an
area of more than 90 m2.

The episodes of Horatius Cocles (2.10) and C. Mucius Scaevola (2.12-13.5) in Livy have been discussed by previous scholars in terms of the exemplary nature of the heroes’ virtus, or the magico-religious nature of the heroes’ physical deformities.  In relating these episodes, however, Livy relates details that seem not to have been present in earlier accounts.  This paper focuses in particular on Livy’s addition of the gifts of land that each man receives as a result of his heroism and identifies them as possible aetia of the two primary means of land distribution in the Roman Republic, namely colonization and viritane distribution.
Both Cocles and Scaevola receive gifts of land as rewards for their virtus, but Livy describes those gifts in different terms.  Cocles (2.10.12) is awarded “agri quantum uno die circumaravit” by the civitas and Scaevola is given the gift of “trans Tiberim agrum…quae postea sunt Mucia prata appellata” by the patres.  In his commentary, R.M. Ogilvie offers little explanation for these passages, except to say that the gift of land made to Cocles “may have been made to balance the Prata Mucia” (261) in the Scaevola episode;  Scaevola’s gift of land is then dismissed as “antiquarian curiosity” (262).  These gifts of land should not, however, be dismissed so easily; when the details of the gifts are examined more carefully it becomes clear that they succinctly describe colonial and viritane methods of land distribution.  In the case of Cocles the land distribution should be viewed as the initiation of a colonial foundation.  He receives the reward of as much land as he can plow around in a day.  This act is identical to the ritual prescribed in the Etrusca disciplina by which Romulus founded the city of Rome and which continued to be used for new urban foundations into the Empire (cf. Varro, Ling. 5.143, Plut. Vit. Rom. 11).  The gift awarded to Scaevola on the hand is described by the term prata.  Elsewhere in Livy, the term is ascribed to a small farm, the Prata Quincta, of four iugera cultivated by L. Quinctius Cincinnatus, (3.26.8).  The sources of these land gifts, the civitas and the patres according to Livy, may also reflect the source of the conflict between the plebeians and patricians in the fifth and early fourth centuries B.C.E.  Traditionally, the citizen body was responsible for initiating a new colony, as can be seen in the case of Cocles’ land grant (Salmon, 19), but the grant of Scaevola’s land by the patres may reflect the control of the elite over the ager publicus until a resolution of the conflict of the orders in the mid-fourth century. 
An understanding of Livy’s addition of the gifts of land to Cocles and Scaevola allow for a more nuanced understanding of previous scholarship on these episodes.  These men are exempla, but at the same time their magico-religious natures are a threat to Rome, by assigning them lands away from the city, their immediate threat to the stability of the new Republic is removed and at the same time their exemplary virtus may serve as a model of romanitas in newly conquered territories.  Furthermore, the significance that should be ascribed to Livy’s addition of the gifts of land to these episodes at the beginning of Book 2 becomes more evident as one traces the increasing agitation over the issue of land distribution develops in the book.

Ogilvie, R.M. 1965.  A Commentary on Livy.  Books 1-5.  London: Oxford University Press.
Salmon, E.T. 1970.  Roman Colonization under the Roman Republic.  Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

Title page for ETD etd-07272006-130323. Type of Document, Dissertation. Author, Christensen, Alexis M. URN, etd-07272006-130323. Title, From Palaces to Pompeii: The Architectural and Social Context of Hellenistic Floor Mosaics in the House of the Faun. ...