Gladiator Fights and Fishing in Ancient Rome
When I read Alan Baker's The
Gladiator: The Secret History of Rome's Warrior Slaves (New York, 2000), I was surprised
to learn that there was an ironic connection between the most common type of Roman gladiator
fights and the more or less gentle art of fishing. One part of the connection is pretty obvious.
Anyone who has ever seen a movie about ancient Rome should have noticed those gladiators who are
barefooted, armorless, and equipped with only a fisherman's net and a fisherman's trident but who
are fighting men with swords and shields. The guys with the nets used them to entrap, entangle,
or trip their opponents, and they used the tridents like large frog gigs. According to Baker
(p. 53), this type of gladiator was known as a retiarius, which is the Latin word that
means "net-fisherman." The other part of the connection to fishing was not so obvious. How
could a man wearing armor, a huge helmet, a stout bronze shield, and a sharp iron sword be
anything like the fish a net-fisherman was seeking? Again Baker has the answer. The man with
the sword was known in Latin as a murmillo, and that's the Latin word that means "a fish
warrior." These sword-fighters wore a helmet that had a decorative horse-hair crest shaped like
a kind of fish known as a mormylos. (p.53) The Romans thought that made for a perfect
match-up -- a fisherman against a fish who was more dangerous than the fisherman -- and that's
the surprising irony. How could anyone believe that a nearly naked fisherman would have a chance
against a guy with a sword?
