Draft of an article published in the 100th issue of Ancient Warfare Magazine.
Rome, 167 BC
A political duel unfolds between two provocatores (challengers) on the Capitol. On one side, a military tribune, youthful, sleek and recently returned victorious from Macedonia. On the other, a deformed old man.
The victory of the tribunus militum, an ambitious noble named Servius Sulpicius Galba, seems assured. His fierce oratory persuades legionaries to occupy the Capitol and prevent other citizens from entering the voting area. The assembly is to vote on a measure to confirm the Senate’s decision to award Lucius Aemilius Paullus a triumph.
Paullus has decisively defeated the Macedonians in battle at Pydna (168 BC), received the surrender of their king and taken an immense fortune in plunder. King Perseus awaits his final humiliation, to be paraded as the ultimate prize of war in the triumphal procession that will culminate at the great temple to Jupiter, on the very hill now occupied by the legionaries. Paullus is a stern disciplinarian of the old school and, worse, far worse in the opinion of the soldiery, he is considered niggardly: the riches of Macedonia have yet to be distributed.
Galba served in the Second Legion at Pydna and he hates Paullus. What benefits have accrued to you in your victory over the Macedonian phalanx, he demands of the legionaries. None, he cries. You are worse off than the men you defeated! Reject the measure and deny Paullus his triumph.
The vote is held on the following day and, unsurprisingly, the first tribe (voting division) blocks Paullus’ triumph. Then, a minor commotion. Like a cuneus (wedge) on the battlefield, a determined band of citizens forces its way through the legionaries. The tribunes of the plebs, the unhappy magistrates nominally in charge of the hijacked proceedings, accede to the request of the old man leading the band to halt the vote and allow him to address the assembly.
Honestae Cicatrices
The old man was Marcus Servilius Pulex Geminus, a plebeian grandee of immense prestige. His had been a lifetime of service – as soldier, priest, magistrate and senator, and the behaviour of Galba and the legionaries disgusted him. Age had not robbed his voice of power or dulled his intellect. Pulex furiously shamed the legionaries into ratifying the Senate’s decision: it was not merely Paullus’ triumph, it was their triumph, too! And when the legionaries did triumph, their share of the booty was generous, but, because of their dalliance with Galba, less than it might have been (Livy 45.35-40).
The final section of Pulex’s speech was crucial in winning over the rebellious legionaries. It reveals much about the Roman military mindset and the respect in which duellists were held.
Pulex concluded by denouncing Galba as a spiteful speaker of lies. He also drew attention to the tribune’s smooth and unblemished body. Why? Galba’s lack of scars suggested he had not been in the thick of it at Pydna. His lack of visible wounds implied cowardice.
Roman warriors were in the habit of baring their chests and displaying honestae cicatrices (honourable scars). Marcus Porcius Cato, the fearsome censor, may have been part of the band that boldly forced its way on the Capitol (cf. Aulus Gellius 1.23.1). He was proud of scars earned in combat since the age of 17 (Plutarch, Elder Cato 1.5). Cato fought his first battle in 217 BC; Pulex was ages with Cato and could present a mass of scars, all to the front of his body. Scars to the back, no matter the circumstances in which they had been received, were dishonourable because they suggested the bearer had turned and fled from the enemy.
Writing about the Roman cavalry of an earlier age, Polybius notes that they fought without body armour (6.25.3). They were supremely agile and could mount and dismount with ease, but were ‘nearly naked’ and thus exposed to even greater danger in battle. However, a cuirass would prevent the acquisition of glorious scars on the chest. Marcus Manlius, better known as Capitolinus for his heroic defence of the Capitol against the Gauls in 390 BC, bore 23 scars, some of which would have been gained as a teenager. Capitolinus killed and took the spoils of two opponents in single combats fought before the age of 17 (Pliny, Natural History 7.103 with McDonnell 2006, 196).
On the Capitol in 167 BC, Pulex declared that he had challenged and defeated 23 enemies in single combat. He had the wounds to prove it. He loosened his toga, revealed the scars on his torso, pointed to each in turn and regaled the legionaries with tales of how they had been won. The scars were essentially dona militaria (military decorations).
It was perhaps for his dexterity in combat or skill in horse riding that the young Marcus Servilius Geminus acquired the nickname Pulex – the Flea. He was certainly animated that day on the Capitol, to the extent that his toga fell completely open and revealed ‘that which should remain hidden’. This was potentially disgraceful. The Romans were not comfortable with full nudity. The Greeks, on the other hand, were. When the Athenian pancratiast Dioxippus defeated Coragus in a single combat before the court of Alexander the Great (326/5 BC), he did so nude, his body oiled, although one supposes that, as was customary for athletes to maintain decorum, his manhood was infibulated (Diodorus 17.100; Curtius 9.7.16-26).
Servilius Pulex’s unfortunate condition, a massive scrotal hernia, could, from a distance, be mistaken for something else. The legionaries on the Capitol roared with laughter; Pulex must have reminded them of a comic actor with a ridiculous fake phallus. The old warrior was in no way perturbed by his tumor inguinum. It was, he declared, another honourable wound, caused by sitting on horseback day and night. It had never prevented him from serving the Republic at home or abroad! He then dared Galba to disrobe and reveal his unscarred body, which of course he would not (Livy 45.39.7-9).
Monomachists
As a Greek, Polybius was struck by the importance of single combat in Roman military culture (6.54.3-4). The Greek and Macedonian tradition of monomachy stretched back to the heroic age of Achilles, but duels were rare in the era of the phalangite. A notable exception occurred during a battle in Aetolia in 289 BC. The Macedonian general Pantauchus challenged his opponent Pyrrhus of Epirus to single combat. As a descendant of Achilles, the Epirote king could not refuse.
Single combat was often a young man’s game, a means for hot-headed youths to acquire glory and a reputation. As noted above, Manlius Capitolinus fought two duels before the age of 17. Pantauchus was 60 years old, Pyrrhus half that. Yet the Macedonian was still mighty and fought with the courage worthy of one who had served Alexander the Great. Pantauchus succeeded in wounding Pyrrhus, but ultimately he was no match for the king’s youth and fury (typical features of accounts of single combats in Antiquity). Pantauchus fell back severely wounded, his thigh and neck cut by Pyrrhus’ sword. Pyrrhus was restrained from delivering the killing blow, but his army was elated, charged forward and overwhelmed the Macedonian phalanx (Plutarch, Pyrrhus 7.4-5).
The era of the hoplite throws up two striking examples. The Athenian general Phrynon, a former pancratiast, and the Argive mercenary captain Eurybates, a pentathlete, had celebrated victories at the Olympic games. Phrynon was killed in a single combat with Pittacus, ruler of Mytilene at Sigaeum in c. 607 BC. Phrynon was a huge man (as the losers in single combats, starting with Goliath, always seem to be) and his reputation as an expert fighter preceded him. Pittacus, taking no chances in a duel that would settle a dispute between Mytilene and Athens over territory, hid a net behind his shield and tangled Phrynon up in it (Plutarch, Moralia 858a-b; Diogenes Laertius 1.74). Eurybates was in the service of Aegina in the 480s BC when, following the gradual destruction of his force of 1,000 men, he embarked on a series of single combats against Athenian opponents. As a pentathlete, his skill with the javelin probably contributed to his victories in three duels. Eurybates finally succumbed to his fourth challenger, Sophanes, who subsequently became famous for feats against the Persians at Plataea (Herodotus 6.92, 9.75). It is not known if Phrynon or Eurybates expired in a state of heroic nudity.
Immortal and Insulting Warriors
Livy’s account of the Pulex’s speech dispenses with the details of his many single combats. But the descendants of Pulex knew and, in the later second and first centuries BC, issued silver denarii that commemorated to his deeds. Pulex is depicted fighting on foot and on horseback, brandishing sword and lance: he is the epitome of virtus (masculine excellence). Two of the coins – one depicting a long-haired mounted swordsman, the other a barbarian warrior equipped with a scutum-type shield – may allude to duels with Gallic champions (Crawford, Roman Republican Coinage nos 264/1, 327/1).
The Gauls were particularly dangerous opponents because they did not fear death. They believed in the immortality of the soul and that it passed from one body to another. Duelling, whether among themselves, or with foreign enemies, was a favourite pastime. And the combat was not merely physical, much effort was put into insulting opponents (Diodorus 5.28.5-29.3). The Gauls delighted in singing their own praises and in mocking their enemies. If an opponent did not understand the Gallic tongue, no matter. Impolite gestures served to enrage and humiliate the enemy (Livy 7.10.5).
That single combat in the Ancient World was often an elite affair is exemplified by the status of the warriors discussed above, but it was not the exclusive preserve of aristocrats, generals and kings (cf. Polybius 6.39.4). And insulting opponents was hardly just a Gallic custom.
In the run up to the battle of Munda (45 BC), a Pompeian legionary named Antistius Turpio challenged anyone who dared to meet him in single combat. Ferocious (ferocitas) in demeanour and magnificent with a burnished shield and shining decorations, Antistius taunted that no-one in Caesar’s army was his equal ([Caesar], Spanish War 25). The anonymous author of The Spanish War, probably a junior officer in Caesar’s army, was swept up in the glory of the occasion and compared Antistius and Pompeius Niger (the Caesarian who accepted the challenge) to the legendary duellists Achilles and Memnon, but one suspects he was rather coy about what Antistius actually said. The inscriptions on sling bullets from the siege of Perusia (41-40 BC) are indicative of how legionaries mocked and swore: cocksucker, wide-arsed and other obscene comments about sexual submissiveness and effeminacy (CIL XI 6721, 9a-b & 11). Such was the language of provocatio on the field of glory.
Further Reading
R. Cowan, For the Glory of Rome (revised edition 2017)
J.E. Lendon, Soldier and Ghosts: A History of Battle in Classical Antiquity (New Haven 2005)
M. McDonnell, Roman Manliness: Virtus and the Roman Republic (Cambridge 2006)
S.P. Oakley, ‘Single Combat in the Roman Republic’, Classical Quarterly 35 (1985), 392-410
W.K. Pritchett, The Greek State at War. Part IV (Berkley 1985)
H. Van Wees, Status Warriors: War, Violence and Society in Homer and History (Amsterdam 1992)