Juvenal’s scorn is directed at the autocrati, those gladiators who took to the arena for profit, or for sheer thrills. The gladiator was an paradoxical figure in the Roman Empire; on the one hand, they were the superstars of their day, admired for their skill and daring. On the other, they were lowest echelon of society – indeed, a common punishment for criminals was to be sentenced “ad ludi” – to the arena.

The first Emperor to have staged games involving the gladiatrix was the much-reviled Nero. Whilst entertaining a Parthian noble named Tiridates, Nero was so impressed by the man’s refusal to lay aside his dagger when approaching the Imperial dais, that he held a series of games in his honour. Cassius Dio tells us that it was

“a most brilliant and costly affair, as may be seen from the fact that on one of the days not a person but Ethiopians — men, women, and children — appeared in the theatre.”

That the gladiatrices were all of African origin seems not have concerned Cassius Dio a whit; however, this first entertainment seems to have whetted Nero’s appetite for the sight of women fighting in the arena. Dio tells us in a later account

“There was another exhibition that was at once most disgraceful and most shocking, when men and women not only of the equestrian but even of the senatorial order appeared as performers in the orchestra, in the Circus, and in the hunting-theatre, like those who are held in lowest esteem. Some of them played the flute and danced in pantomimes or acted in tragedies and comedies or sang to the lyre; they drove horses, killed wild beasts and fought as gladiators, some willingly and some sore against their will.”