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STEPHEN BRUNET
them as mockeries of real gladiators but wanted to show that they had
the skill and determination to obtain a distinction that any male gladiator
would have been glad to have earned.
2. The other possible artistic representation of female gladiators is a
funerary relief from Maastricht showing a victorious gladiator facing a
defeated gladiator. both of them wearing the same type of helmet and
using identical round shields and short swords. The suggestion that
these figures were women was made by Wiedemann,58 but he did not
give any reasons for his interpretation. and the published photographs
provide no grounds for thinking that the figures represent women.
Much more plausible is Junkelmann's proposal that the two gladiators
were essedarii. 59 This does not necessarily I' Ie out that they were also
women. but this kind of detail is not likely to have escaped Junkelmann's
notice given the amount of study he has devoted to analyzing
artistic representations involving the gladiatorial games. But even
granted that Wiedemann was correct, the Maastricht relief and the
Halicarnassus relief would confirm what we learn from the literary
sources: the standard practice concerning female gladiators was to
match them against other women. not against dwarfs or. for that matter.
against men of any type.
OBSERVATIONS AND CONCLUSIONS
One implication to be drawn from the above list is that Nero's reign
was not the first time that female gladiators had appeared in the arena.
So while Dio and Tacitus considered it reprehensible that Nero forced
noblewomen to fight in the arena, they did not consider it unusual for
women of other social classes to fight as gladiators. Petronius (presuming
a Neronian date for the Cena Trimalchionis) also gives the impression
that female gladiators were not an entirely new feature in the
time of Nero. The ultimate treat for the aficionado Echion was not the
chance to see a regular female gladiator-that was something he seems
to have already seen-but a woman who was going to fight as an esse-
left-handed gladiator at Pompeii." ZPE 114 (1996) 194--196.
58 Wiedemann (above, n. 4) 53 n. 117,112, fig. II. Elsewhere (38-39) he seems
to think these gladiators were men, suggesting that the defeated gladiator in this
relief was shown with his knees together and legs turned in because this effeminate
pose marked his inferiority.
59 M. Junkelmann, Das Spiel mit dem Tod: So kampften Roms Gladiatoren
(Mainz am Rhein 2000) fig. 178. Junkeimann discusses the evidence for the nature
of the essedarius on Il6-Il9. The most famous example of this type of
gladiator is the woman who is scheduled to fight as an essedarius in Petronius'
imaginary festival (see above, II. I in the list of evidence for female gladiators).