Gladiator

A gladiator (Latin: gladiator, 'swordsman', from gladius, 'sword') was an armed combatant who entertained audiences in the Roman Republic and Roman Empire in violent confrontations with other gladiators, wild animals, and condemned criminals. Some gladiators were volunteers who risked their lives and their legal and social standing by appearing in the arena. Most were despised as slaves, schooled under harsh conditions, socially marginalised, and segregated even in death.

Quotes

 * Butcher’d to make a Roman holiday.
 * Lord Byron, Childe Harold, IV, cxli
 * Said of the dying gladiator.
 * Reported in: Bergan Evans, ed., Dictionary of Quotations (1968), p. 597

Classical and Foreign Quotations

 * Reported in: W. F. H. King, ed., Classical and Foreign Quotations (1904), nos. 204, 2445, 2702


 * Ave! Imperator, morituri te salutant.
 * Hail! Emperor, those who are about to die salute you!
 * Suetonius, "Life of Claudius", 21
 * Greeting of the combatants to the Emperor Claudius at a naval contest on the Lago Fucino. Claudius, instead of “Valete”, replied, “Avete vos”, as bidding them farewell: but the gladiators taking it in its usual sense, as, “Live! Long life to you”, refused to proceed with the show.


 * Saucius ejurat pugnam gladiator, et idem Immemor antiqui vulneris arma capit.
 * The wounded gladiator forswears fighting, and yet forgetting his old wound he takes up arms again.
 * Ovid, Epistulæ ex Ponto, 1, 5, 37


 * Tecum prius ergo voluta Hæc animo ante tubas. Galeatum sero duelli Pœnitet.
 * Think then on this before the bugles play; Once on the field, too late to shirk the fray.
 * Juvenal, 1, 168


 * Gladiatorem in arena capere consilium.
 * The gladiator is making his plans after having entered the arena.
 * Seneca the Younger, Epistulae, 22, 1
 * Proverbial. Taking counsel too late.