A retiarius (plural retiarii; literally, "net-man" in Latin) was a Roman gladiator who fought with equipment styled on that of a fisherman: a weighted net (rete (3rd decl.), hence the name), a three-pointed trident (fuscina or tridens), and a dagger (pugio). The retiarius was lightly armoured, wearing an arm guard (manica) and a shoulder guard (galerus). Typically, his clothing consisted only of a loincloth (subligaculum) held in place by a wide belt, or of a short tunic with light padding. He wore no head protection or footwear.
The retiarius was routinely pitted against a heavily armed secutor. The net-fighter made up for his lack of protective gear by using his speed and agility to avoid his opponent's attacks and waiting for the opportunity to strike. He first tried to throw his net over his rival. If this succeeded, he attacked with his trident while his adversary was entangled. Another tactic was to ensnare his enemy's weapon in the net and pull it out of his grasp, leaving the opponent defenceless. Should the net miss or the secutor grab hold of it, the retiarius likely discarded the weapon, although he might try to collect it back for a second cast. Usually, the retiarius had to rely on his trident and dagger to finish the fight. The trident, as tall as a human being, permitted the gladiator to jab quickly, keep his distance, and easily cause bleeding. It was not a strong weapon, usually inflicting non-fatal wounds so that the fight could be prolonged for the sake of entertainment. The dagger was the retiarius's final backup should the trident be lost. It was reserved for when close combat or a straight wrestling match had to settle the bout. In some battles, a single retiarius faced two secutores simultaneously. For these situations, the lightly armoured gladiator was placed on a raised platform and given a supply of stones with which to repel his pursuers.
Retiarii first appeared in the arena during the 1st century AD and had become standard attractions by the 2nd or 3rd century. The gladiator's lack of armour and his reliance on evasive tactics meant that many considered the retiarius the lowliest (and most effeminate) of the gladiators, an already stigmatised class. Passages from the works of Juvenal, Seneca, and Suetonius suggest that those retiarii who fought in tunics may have constituted an even more demeaned subtype (retiarii tunicati) who were not viewed as legitimate retiarii fighters but as arena clowns. Nevertheless, Roman artwork, graffiti, and grave markers include examples of specific retiarii who were apparently reputed for their skill as both combatants and womanizers.
History and role
Roman gladiators fell into stock categories modelled on real-world precedents.Duncan 204. Almost all of these classes were based on military antecedents; the retiarius ("net-fighter" or "net-man"),Baker 53.Ward 39. who was themed after the sea, was one exception.Junkelmann 59. Rare gladiator fights were staged over water; these may have given rise to the concept of a gladiator based on a fisherman. Fights between differently-armed gladiators became popular in the Imperial period;Junkelmann 61. the retiarius versus the scaly secutor developed as the conflict of a fisherman with a stylised fish. The earlier murmillones had borne a fish on their helmets;Oxford Classical Dictionary, "Gladiators" the secutores with their scaly armour evolved from them. However, because of the stark differences in arms and armour between the two types, the pairing pushed such practices to new extremes. Roman art and literature make no mention of retiarii until the early Imperial period; for example, the type is absent from the copious gladiator-themed reliefs dating to the 1st century found at Chieti and Pompeii. Nevertheless, graffiti and artifacts from Pompeii attest to the class's existence by this time.Jacobelli 48. Fights between retiarii and secutores probably became popular as early as the middle of the 1st century CE; the net-fighter had become one of the standard gladiator categories by the 2nd or 3rd century CE and remained a staple attraction until the end of the gladiatorial games.Junkelmann 51, 59–60. In addition to the man-versus-nature symbolism inherent in such bouts,Duncan 206. the lightly armoured retiarius was viewed as the effeminate counterpoint to the manly, heavily armoured secutor. The retiarius was also seen as water to the secutor's fire, one constantly moving and escaping, the other determinedly inescapable.Auguet 78. Another gladiator type, the laquearius ("noose-man"), was similar to the retiarius but fought with a lasso in place of a net.Grant 60.
The more skin left unarmoured and exposed, the lower a gladiator's status and the greater his perceived effeminacy.Braund 159. Likewise, the engulfing net may have been seen as a feminine symbol.Edwards 93, note 47. The light arms and armour of the retiarius thus established him as the lowliest, most disgraced, and most effeminate of the gladiator types. Helmets allowed both gladiators and spectators to dehumanise the fighters; when an arena combatant had to kill a comrade-at-arms, someone he had probably lived and trained with every day, his opponent's helmet added an extra layer of separation. However, the retiarius was allowed no head protection; his face was visible to all.Junkelmann 68. The emperor Claudius had all net-fighters who lost in combat put to death so that spectators could enjoy their expressions of agony.Auguet 49. The retiarius's fighting style was another strike against him, as reliance on speed and evasion were viewed as undignified in comparison to the straightforward trading of blows.Baker 55–56. The retiarii lived in the worst barracks.Grant 60–61. Some members of the class trained to fight as Samnites, another gladiator type, in order to improve their status.Grant 61.
There is evidence that those net-men wearing tunics, known as retiarii tunicati, formed a special sub-class, one even more demeaned than their loincloth-wearing colleagues.Cerutti and Richardson 589. The Roman satirist Juvenal wrote that: So even the lanista's establishment is better ordered than yours, for he separates the vile from the decent, and sequesters even from their fellow-retiarii the wearers of the ill-famed tunic; in the training-school, and even in gaol, such creatures herd apart….Juvenal, Satires VI: Oxford text 1ff. "purior ergo tuis laribus meliorque lanista, in cuius numero longe migrare iubetur psyllus ab ~eupholio.~ quid quod nec retia turpi iunguntur tunicae, nec cella ponit eadem munimenta umeri ~pulsatamque arma~ tridentem qui nudus pugnare solet?" Emphasis added. Translation from Ramsay.
The passage suggests that tunic-wearing retiarii were trained for a different role, "in servitude, under strict discipline and even possibly under some restraints."Cerutti and Richardson 590–591. Certain effeminate men mentioned by Seneca the Younger in his Quaestiones naturales were trained as gladiators and may correspond to Juvenal's tunic-wearing retiarii.Seneca, Quaestiones naturales 7.31.3; quoted in Cerutti and Richardson 589–590. Suetonius reports this anecdote: "Once a band of five retiarii in tunics, matched against the same number of secutores, yielded without a struggle; but when their death was ordered, one of them caught up his trident and slew all the victors." The reaction of Emperor Caligula showed the disgust with which he viewed the gladiators' actions: "Caligula bewailed this in a public proclamation as a most cruel murder, and expressed his horror of those who had had the heart to witness it."Suetonius XXX. The fate of the retiarii is not revealed. This was probably not a standard competition, as real gladiators did not surrender so easily.Cerutti and Richardson 594. Rather, such tunic-wearing net-men may have served as comic relief in the gladiatorial programming.
Juvenal's second satire, wherein he deplores the immorality he perceived in Roman society, introduces a member of the Gracchus family who is described as a homosexual married (in female persona) to a horn player.Cerutti and Richardson 591. Gracchus later appears in the arena:Greater still the portent when Gracchus, clad in a tunic, played the gladiator, and fled, trident in hand, across the arena—Gracchus, a man of nobler birth than the Capitolini, or the Marcelli, or the descendants of Catulus or Paulus, or the Fabii: nobler than all the spectators in the podium; not excepting him who gave the show at which that net was flung.Juvenal, Satires II: 143ff. "uicit et hoc monstrum tunicati fuscina Gracchi, lustrauitque fuga mediam gladiator harenam et Capitolinis generosior et Marcellis et Catuli Paulique minoribus et Fabiis et omnibus ad podium spectantibus, his licet ipsum admoueas cuius tunc munere retia misit." Emphasis added. Translation from Ramsay.Gracchus appears once again in Juvenal's eighth satire as the worst example of the noble Romans who have disgraced themselves by appearing in public spectacles and popular entertainments:Cerutti and Richardson 592.
To crown all this [scandal], what is left but the amphitheatre? And this disgrace of the city you have as well—Gracchus not fighting as equipped as a Mirmillo, with buckler or falchion (for he condemns—yes, condemns and hates such equipment). Nor does he conceal his face beneath a helmet. See! he wields a trident. When he has cast without effect the nets suspended from his poised right hand, he boldly lifts his uncovered face to the spectators, and, easily to be recognized, flees across the whole arena. We can not mistake the tunic, since the ribbon of gold reaches from his neck, and flutters in the breeze from his high-peaked cap. Therefore, the disgrace, which the Secutor had to submit to, in being forced to fight with Gracchus, was worse than any wound.Juvenal, Satire VIII, 90.
The passage is obscure, but Cerutti and Richardson argue that Gracchus begins the fight as a loincloth-wearing retiarius. When the tide turns against him, he dons a tunic and a womanish wig (spira),Evans 90 translates this as "high-peaked cap", and Baker 56 as "queer, conspicuous arm-guard." apparently part of the same costume, and thus enjoys a reprieve, although this attire may not itself have been considered effeminate as it was also worn by the priests of Mars of whom Gracchus was the chief priest. The change of clothing seems to turn a serious fight into a comical one and shames his opponent. It is unusual to see a gladiator depicted this way in a satire, as such fighters usually take the role of men who are "brawny, brutal, sexually successful with women of both high and low status, but especially the latter, ill-educated if not uneducated, and none too bright intellectually."Cerutti and Richardson 593. The retiarius tunicatus in the satire is the opposite: "a mock gladiatorial figure, of equivocal sex, regularly dressed in costume of some sort, possibly usually as a woman, and matched against a secutor or murmillo in a mock gladiatorial exhibition."