Victory and Death: The Representation of Early Christian Martyrdom

Abstract

It is the emperor Geta's birthday in March, AD 203, the occasion far a lavish display at the amphitheatre of Carthage.¹ The morning's show is devoted to the spectacle of exotic animals being hunted in the arena, the afternoon to gladiatorial combats.² Around the middle of the day, the execution of a group of criminals is incorporated into the programme. The crowd roars as they are brought out into the arena; a mixed group of men and women who will be pitted unarmed against wild beasts.

The spectators of the Roman games are often able to influence the nature of what they are witnessing, and today is no exception. Some of the prisoners shout abuse at the Roman proconsul who has condemned them, and who now presides over the games. The crowd calls for them to be scourged by a line of gladiators, and it is done. Later, the stage manager of the day's entertainment misjudges the crowd's taste for eroticised violence. Two of the prisoners are women, a young woman from a wealthy family named Vibia Perpetua, and a slave named Felicitas. Perpetua and Felicitas are stripped naked and placed in nets to be dragged behind a maddened heifer. The audience objects, perhaps finding Perpetua's exposure particularly distasteful in view of her social rank, and upset by the sight of the recent mother Felicitas lactating. The women are hurriedly dressed in unbelted tunics, which obscure the shape of their bodies, before being returned to the arena. And so the spectacle unfolds. Bears and wild boars are set upon some of the prisoners. One man named Saturus is so soaked in blood after being mauled by a leopard that the spectators chant Saluum lotum! Saluum lotum! (“Well washed! Well washed!”), a mocking allusion to the Roman baths. Finally, any prisoners left alive have their throats cut by gladiators.