Gladiators in Juvenal's Sixth Satire

Author(s): M. D. Reeve
Source: The Classical Review, Vol. 23, No. 2 (Dec., 1973), pp. 124-125
Published by: Cambridge University Press on behalf of The Classical Association
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/707807
Accessed: 14-07-2015 04:04 UTC

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/
info/about/policies/terms.jsp

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content
in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship.
For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

Cambridge University Press and The Classical Association are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend
access to The Classical Review.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 152.74.16.35 on Tue, 14 Jul 2015 04:04:15 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
 124 THE CLASSICAL REVIEW

GLADIATORS IN JUVENAL'S SIXTH SATIRE

07 purior ergo tuis laribus meliorque sards et le trident des repousseurs (pulsa-
lanista, t(oru)m = des r6tiaires)' ;s (b) 'il y a une
in cuius numero longe migrare iubetur gradation dans le mouvement de la paren-
tpsillust ab teupholiot. quid quod nec thbse concernant la gladiature: si les r6-
retia turpi tiaires ne placent pas leur filet avec les
iunguntur tunicae, nec cella ponit tuniques des condamnds-r6tiaires, le gladia-
eadem teur libre, lui, ne met pas ses brassards avec
munimenta umeri tpulsatamque armat le trident des... (cod. O: tpulsatamque
tridentem armat tridentem)'.6 Unfortunately there is
qui nudus pugnare solet? pars ultima a distinct difference between these two
ludi translations, and it is by no means clear
accipit has animas aliusque in carcere either how he gets (b) out of the Latin or why
nervus. in (a) the 'gladiateur libre' should be putting
down someone else's trident.
THE segregation in the gladiatorial barracks Another puzzle is what Colin means by 'le
puts them a cut above the cinaedus-ridden gladiateur libre'. The evidence again:
household. How many classes are segregated ? 'Deux solutions nous paraissent possibles.
"
To start with, two: tpsillust and teupho- Nudus 6quivaut dtAo'set signifie ici le
liust, who probably stand for the retiariiand gladiateur depourvu d'armes d6fensives: le
the murmillones.'Then how many? Accord- r6tiaire. Nudus signifie "le torse nu" et
ing to Housman, 'the retiariussubligatus,"qui signifie le gladiateur en gen6ral oppose au
nudus pugnare solet", refuses to associate soldat (Tous les gladiateurs combattent le
with the retiariustunicatus'.2S. G. Owen, who torse nu). C'est cette dernibre solution qui
contested Housman's interpretation of the nous parait la plus si^re. Celui qui combat
tunica,accepted his translation: 'The ordinary nu est le gladiateur libre qui s'oppose au
retiarius,"qui nudus pugnare solet", does not tunicatus6voqu6 dans le vers io. Il y a une
put his arms-his net, shoulder-guard, and gradation...' (continuation in (b) above).
trident-in the same closet and chest with Even on the charitable assumption that he
the tunicaof the retiariustunicatus.'3 does not count the tunicatusas a gladiator,
J. Colin, in an article designed to illus- he appears to be accepting two different
trate the bankruptcy of literary exegesis and interpretations of qui nuduspugnaresoletat the
the necessity of turning to Realien for en- same time: that it means gladiators in
lightenment,4 seems to disagree, if his trans- general ('Nudus... signifie le gladiateur en
lations can be trusted: (a) 'de meme que les g6n6ral oppos6 au soldat') and that it means
filets ne sont pas melang6s a la tunique in- some or all gladiators other than tpulsa-
famante (des retiaires-forqats), de meme tamque armat ('le gladiateur libre, lui, ne
celui qui combat nu (le gladiateur libre) ne met pas ses brassards avec le trident des ...').
d6pose pas dans la meme cellule ses bras- If such confusion is what results from 35

x Knoche, Philologus, xciii (1938), 205 from the manly retiarii'.

n. 26. Other interpretations, of which
there are several, lead to insurmountable
difficulties in the following lines.
Housman's conjecture psellus ab euphonois
a piece of misdirected ingenuity no less
palaeographical than the conjecture of Leo's
that he derides on that score (p. xlviii of his
revised edition). It means 'the lisping from
the stentorian', i.e. supposedly 'the effeminate
from the manly', as though there were no
difference between calling someone ef-
feminate because he lisps and calling
someone a lisper because he is effeminate.
Furthermore, as he goes on to argue that
among retiarii only the tunicati were con-
sidered effeminate, he makes the passage
say quite impossibly 'the effeminate are
separated from the manly, and moreover
(quidquod)the effeminate retiariiare separated
2 C.R. xviii (1904), 397-
3 C.R. xix (1905), 355-
4 Atti della Accademiadelle Scienzedi Torino
lxxxvii (I952-3), 315-86, of which 343-77
deal with the gladiators. The last para-
graph of the article reads: 'Le siecle de la
linguistique s'est montr6 inhabile a r6soudre
les difficult6s de tels textes. Si paradoxal
que cela puisse paraitre a certains, c'est par
l'6tude des realiaque l'archdologue et le philo-
logue, s'ils se d6cident a collaborer, parvien-
dront a penetrer davantage dans la pens6e
des satiriques de Rome comme dans celle de
la plupart des auteurs anciens.' Friedlinder
for one, editor of Juvenal and author of a
Sittengeschichte Roms, would have raised his
eyebrows at 'le siecle de la linguistique'.
s p. 321.
6 p.
362.

This content downloaded from 152.74.16.35 on Tue, 14 Jul 2015 04:04:15 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
 THE CLASSICAL
pages of Realien,perhaps it is better to return
to the text. The reader who knows next to
nothing about gladiators will surely have
made two inferences by the time he reaches
the second nec: (i) two distinctions are being
drawn; (2) the first distinction is between
the user of the net and the wearer of the
tunic. When he has reached the end of the
sentence, however, he will have to retract
the first inference, because only three people
are being distinguished: the user of the net,
the wearer of the tunic, and the man who
fights naked. He now sets about interpreting
'nets are not kept with the disreputable
tunic, and the man who fights naked does
not put his shoulder-guard and t...4
trident in the same room'; and on reflection
he finds that he cannot make unambiguous
sense of 'in the same room' unless he ignores
the run of the sentence and identifies the man
ExeterCollege,Oxford
The Latin could mean that the man who
fights naked puts his shoulder-guard and his
trident in different places, but no one has
ever been attracted by that interpretation.
Cf. Housman's original translation in C.R.
xiii (1899), 266, which led him to declare the
passage 'absurdly frivolous': 'The retiarius'
net is not kept with his tunic, nor does he
put his galerus in the same cupboard as his
trident.' Two years later the absurdity was
too much for him, and in C.R. xv (19o0),
263-4, convinced that 'the words as they
stand are incapable of any other meaning',
he proposed an impossible emendation
(turpi<et)). Only when he learned that not all
retiarii wore a tunic did he change his mind
and adopt the translation cited in the first
paragraph of this article. In fact he need not
have departed so far from his original trans-
lation, because the sentence could mean
'nets are not kept with the disreputable tunic
(i.e. the retiariustunicatuskeeps his net and
his tunic separate), and the man who fights
naked puts his shoulder-guard and his trident
in different places'. Anyone who believes
that is what the author intended can ignore
the rest of this article, at the cost of admitting
that the passage is as frivolous as Housman
first thought.
2 All scholars who have discussed the pas-
sage hold that the tunic belongs to some class
of retiarii (other wearers of the tunic in the
arena are listed by Colin, 348-50).
Though Suet. Cal. 30. 3 is incontrovertible
evidence that a tunic could be worn by
This content downloaded from 152.74.16.35 on Tue, 14 Jul 2015 04:04:15 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
REVIEW 125
who fights naked with the user of the net.'
Finally he consults some expositor in the
hope of confirmation and discovers that his
second inference was mistaken as well: a net
is in fact used by the wearer of the tunic.2
What the whole sentence really meant, there-
fore, was that a retiariuswho fights naked
does not store his equipment in the same
place as a retiariuswho wears a tunic. Cursing
the author for using the passive iunguntur
when he could have spared him all this
trouble by using some active verb co-ordinate
with ponit, he passes on with relief to the un-
complicated problem of what class or classes
he is meant to understand by has animas.
On the evidence of O 7-13, then, some-
one must be convicted of incompetence.
Who is it to be-the reader, the expositors,
or the author ?
M. D. REEVE
retiarii, the monuments seldom show them
wearing one. See, however, E. Krtiger,
Rdmisch-germanischeKorrespondenzblatt,viii
(1915), 20-2; Abb. Io, 16, 16a, of H. Woll-
mann, Rom. Mitt. xxxii (1917), 147-67;
fig. 8 and plate vIII. I of Faccenna, Bullettino
del Museo della Civiltd Romana, xix. 37-75,
in Bull. Comm. Arch. Com. di Roma, lxxvi
(1956-8, pub. 1959).
The mosaic of the retiarius Kalendio,
printed from a drawing by Winckelmann,
MonumentiAntichi Inediti2 (Rome, 1821), ii,
plate 197, and partly reproduced from
Winckelmann by Daremberg-Saglio, s.v.
Gladiator, p. 1586 fig. 3581, and Colin,
365, fig. 6, can be found photographed in
Freijeiro, Archivo Espainol de Arqueologia,
xxiii (1950) 127-42 fig. 8. Judging from an
earlier photograph, Kriiger, op. cit., p. 21,
doubted whether Kalendio wears a tunic,
and certainly in the upper scene (not re-
produced by Daremberg-Saglio and Colin)
he is bare above the waist; but in the lower
scene, though his right shoulder is bare, his
left arm is wrapped in what seems to be
part of the garment that covers his loins. If
the two scenes are to be reconciled, he must
be wearing a tunic that begins at the outset
of the fight by leaving his right shoulder
bare (cf. esp. Faccenna, fig. 8) and ends in
disarray when he lies defeated; but as he
appears to have acquired some protection
for his ankles between the earlier scene and
the later, perhaps it is a mistake to look for
consistency.