Power, Augustus assigned the games to the praetors and restricted the number of shows to two per year and sixty pairs (Dio, LIV.2.4).Įventually, presentation of the games was assumed by the emperors themselves as enactments of their own power. Of aristocratic wealth and prestige, the ritual lost much of its religious significance and became more overtly political. Grieving family, whose duty it was to present them. None of the money was being allotted to them (Dio, Roman History, XLIII.24).ĭuring the Republic, munera had been privately financed by the Theĭisplay was criticized, however, for its extravagance and the number slain, including several of Caesar's own soldiers, who protested that Victories in Gaul and Egypt, Caesar again hosted elaborate games at the tomb of his daughter Julia, who had died in childbirth eight yearsĮarlier (together with stage plays and beast fights, they included the first appearance of a giraffe). The rebellion of Spartacus, a nervous Senate limited the number of gladiators allowed in Rome (Suetonius, History, XXXIII.53: Plutarch, Life of Julius Caesar, V.9). Elected aedile in 65 BC, Julius Caesar commemorated his father, who had died twenty years before, with aĭisplay of 320 pairs of gladiators in silvered armor (Pliny, Natural Traditionally, munera were the obligatory funerary offerings owed aristocratic men at their death, although the games did not have They were introduced to Rome in 264 BC, when the sons of Junius Brutus honored their father by matching three pairs of gladiators. Games ( munera) originated in the rites of sacrifice due the spirits of the dead and the need to propitiate them with offerings ofīlood. Adopted from the earlier Etruscans, perhaps by way of Campania, gladiatorial

Spartacus gladiator of rome