Those Who Are About To Die

24 hours in the life of a history book author: Gladiators and the Writing Mind...

Chapter 1: Tempus Postmeridianum (Afternoon). Oxford, England

The author pauses, waiting for his muses to gather. The air is cool, fresh, with the scent of cut grass and tree pollen blown in through an open window. The breeze seems to whisper to him: ‘remember, remember...’

He closes his mind to everything else and lets his sub-conscious take over. That’s the key: to remember.

His eyes shut, he reclines on the couch, silk dressing gown lolling open at the chest, mobile phone dictating app set to record, and he remembers...

“The gladiator takes counsel in the sand...” he begins, and the words flow out, his muses speak, and go and on... and on. Everything he has ever read about gladiators, every source, every rumor, peppered with other anecdotes of Roman life. His murmuring voice continues on for minutes, hours without hesitation, deviation or repetition, until finally, less than a day later: “...another pious friend would do the same for him.”

It is done.

What’s it all about?

Those Who Are About To Die: Gladiators and the Roman Mind by Harry Sidebottom, is a comprehensive but rather scattergun book on the subject, written with the general reader in mind.

The gladiator anecdotes are organised around the structure of a day, starting with dinner, then sleep, followed by the morning, with the gladiatorial show in the afternoon. It is a loose structure though as the chapters can contain all sorts of random titbits.

It feels like everything the author has ever known about gladiators has found its way onto the page, padded out with additional material on Roman life where gladiator specific references are sparse.

The result is a rather strange smorgasbord of Roman anecdotes, with gladiators as a unifying theme.¹

Rather like the introduction to this review, Sidebottom starts each chapter with a few imaginative paragraphs: what a gladiator might feel like as he fights, eats, sleeps and kills.

Dipping in and out

I struggled with this book at first, it was just too much of a jumble of bits and pieces for my taste.

I found that I enjoyed it more when I stopped reading it all the way through, and just dipped into the sections that seemed most interesting to me - handily all the different topics are clearly set out in the contents pages of the book so it is easy to select the parts you want.

So it worked much better when I treated it as an encyclopedia rather than a linear narrative: the “day in the life” thing isn’t consistent enough to provide forward momentum or a satisfying framework.

To help you judge whether this will appeal to you, I have put the full contents of the book into an expandable “details” element, which you can click to read. If enough of the sub topics look appealing, this is a good sign!

Fact or historical fiction?

One of the things I liked about Those who are about to die salute you is the gladiator myth-busting. Or more accurately the myth-busting-busting.

For example did gladiators really salute the emperor / presiding bigwig with the phrase ‘those who are about to die salute you’, just before they started fighting?

Sidebottom says: yes, why not?

There only a passing reference to the phrase in the sources: a single anecdote² told about the emperor Claudius who is said to have made a bad joke in response to the ‘those who are about to die salute you’ salutation, replying “Or not!”. This was taken by the gladiators to be a sign that they didn’t have to fight after all, and much cursing and cajoling was needed to get them back in the mood.

Sidebottom argues that because the phrase is incidental to the point of the anecdote (Claudius’ general idiocy), this makes it more likely to be true: why invent an incidental detail?

Apparently most other ancient historians are not convinced. The reader is free to make up their own mind.

Thumbs up?

Another big gladiator talking point is: was it thumbs up for life and thumbs down for death? Or the other way around?

Among modern scholars it is almost an orthodoxy that the popular belief that thumb down meant death, and up meant life, is the wrong way round. The certainty is misplaced.

Harry Sidebottom, Those who are about to die salute you

The author doesn’t explain why the certainty is misplaced so I guess it is just that there is very little evidence one way or another.

He goes on:

The gesture to grant life was more complex that a simple thumbs up. On the gladiator relief from Munich [see below] a hand emerges... The thumb is turned upwards, the first two fingers extended straight out. We recognise it as the Christian sign of benediction. That might be hugely important, and we will return to it in the last Chapter[^3]. Here it signifies missio, life.

Harry Sidebottom, Those who are about to die salute you

Intriguing! Unfortunately we are left hanging: I couldn’t see any references to this in the last chapter.

Here is the relief sculpture from Munich that Sidebottom is talking about with the apparent thumb single circled.

Relief sculpture from the Rome area. Gladiator about to kill a defeated opponent. Late first century BC Staatliche Antikensammlungen und Glyptothek München, inv. Gl. 364. Photo Renate Kühling.

And the same picture again zoomed in.

Same sculpture showing the detail of the ‘thumbs up’.

Again, make of that what you will!

Conclusion

If you want an extensive and more-or-less organised compilation of gladiator references from a respected Roman historian - padded out with other tangentally relevant Roman anecdotes - look no further.

If you are after an absorbing page turner that brings the world of the Roman gladiator to life, look elsewhere.

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