To fight as a gladiator held such appeal to some Romans during the early empire that they actually were ready to incur the legal stigma of infamia (infamy) just in order to participate as gladiators. But there were not only men who were drawn to the lure of the arena, even women fought as venatores (beast-hunters) and gladiators in the Roman games. The roman historian Cassius Dio informs us that in the early empire during the reign of Nero even men and women from the equestrian and senatorial rank participated in the arena in increasing numbers. This often overseen fact that women would appear as participants in the gladiatorial games in the Greco-Roman world is just another signifier that we have to re-evaluate our knowledge of the women of antiquity and their social outlooks. The fact that women participated is in a sense nothing new for the modern scholars, who have tended to view the evidence in the light of the lacking material and appearance in the ancient sources and have been content to explain the phenomena as something of a novelty, which does not tell us much about the romans or their society at all. But what does the appearance of women in the gladiatorial games tell us about the Romans view on gender roles in the arena? How did a female gladiator differ from a male gladiator in the Roman empire? With an intersectional perspective and a close-reading of the texts referring to female and male contestants and gladiators this study has showed that the roman elite observed the female gladiators with overwhelmingly negative attitudes if they where of higher social status. In this case they differ little from male gladiators. But attitudes concerning female gladiators were not all bad, especially if they were of no prominent class, some were even praised for their bravery and likened with Amazons or even Heraclese
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:uu-323817 |
| Date | January 2017 |
| Creators | Seger, Joacim |
| Publisher | Uppsala universitet, Antikens kultur och samhällsliv |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | Swedish |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
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