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paradeisos

a walled park where wild animal hunts took place. A Persian concept adopted by the Greeks after the conquests of Alexander the Great.

tricliniumtablinumparadeisos

1.11

Photo courtesy Steven L. Tuck.

The gladiators probably represent one component of a set of games he hosted as aedile (a low level public official) at Pompeii, most likely in the year he died. That panel shows the connections between local elites and games that they sponsored, and demonstrates the close ties between their games and personal identity. Hosting games was as important for a Roman politician as hosting dinners and receiving clients. The use of spectacle imagery in the domestic sphere also reinforces these conclusions about its critical role in projecting personal values and identity. The most common composition is a pair of gladiators engaged in combat as seen in the painting from the Tomb of Vestorius Priscus. The gladiators are almost universally armed and armored in ways that conform to the known categories of gladiators, giving these otherwise generic scenes a specificity that is probably important to the patron or audience. These images seem to represent one of three stages in gladiatorial combat: the initial clash with both combatants on their feet facing each other, an intermediate stage when one combatant is disarmed, on the ground or facing possible defeat, or the conclusion of a bout with the defeated either subdued, wounded and surrendering, or dead.