An essedarius was a type of

gladiator A gladiator ( , ) was an armed combatant who entertained audiences in the Roman Republic and Roman Empire in violent confrontations with other gladiators, wild animals, and condemned criminals. Some gladiators were volunteers who risked their ...

Ancient Rome In modern historiography, ancient Rome is the Roman people, Roman civilisation from the founding of Rome, founding of the Italian city of Rome in the 8th century BC to the Fall of the Western Roman Empire, collapse of the Western Roman Em ...

who fought from a

chariot A chariot is a type of vehicle similar to a cart, driven by a charioteer, usually using horses to provide rapid Propulsion, motive power. The oldest known chariots have been found in burials of the Sintashta culture in modern-day Chelyabinsk O ...

. The word was used in Caesar's

Gallic Wars The Gallic Wars were waged between 58 and 50 BC by the Roman general Julius Caesar against the peoples of Gaul (present-day France, Belgium, and Switzerland). Gauls, Gallic, Germanic peoples, Germanic, and Celtic Britons, Brittonic trib ...

to describe

British British may refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * British people, nationals or natives of the United Kingdom, British Overseas Territories and Crown Dependencies. * British national identity, the characteristics of British people and culture ...

charioteers, who were driven over the battlefield, throwing spears at the enemy, then dismounted to fight or launched themselves along the chariot yoke. There are few references to them in the literature. In

Petronius Gaius Petronius Arbiter"Gaius Petronius Arbiter"
Britannica.com. (; ; ; s ...

' ''Satyricon'', one fights to the accompaniment of a water-organ. Seneca remarks on the difficulty of recognising a dismounted essedarius; this has been taken to imply that their fighting from chariots was their most distinctive feature. Some, most, or all essedarii had drivers, and some chariot fighters may have been citizens;

Suetonius Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus (), commonly referred to as Suetonius ( ; – after AD 122), was a Roman historian who wrote during the early Imperial era of the Roman Empire. His most important surviving work is ''De vita Caesarum'', common ...

describes

Caligula Gaius Caesar Augustus Germanicus (31 August 12 – 24 January 41), also called Gaius and Caligula (), was Roman emperor from AD 37 until his assassination in 41. He was the son of the Roman general Germanicus and Augustus' granddaughter Ag ...

's annoyance at tripping and falling, distracted by the applause of the crowd when a successful essedarius freed the slave who had driven him. If the reported armaments and skills of the British charioteers in the Gallic Wars are a guide to the gladiator type, then essedarii normally fought with a

spear A spear is a polearm consisting of a shaft, usually of wood, with a pointed head. The head may be simply the sharpened end of the shaft itself, as is the case with Fire hardening, fire hardened spears, or it may be made of a more durable materia ...

and

sword A sword is an edged and bladed weapons, edged, bladed weapon intended for manual cutting or thrusting. Its blade, longer than a knife or dagger, is attached to a hilt and can be straight or curved. A thrusting sword tends to have a straighter ...

, with a small

shield A shield is a piece of personal armour held in the hand, which may or may not be strapped to the wrist or forearm. Shields are used to intercept specific attacks, whether from close-ranged weaponry like spears or long ranged projectiles suc ...

for defense. They might also have worn a manica for arm protection. Like any other gladiator, a successful essedarius could buy their freedom - or have it bought for them. Beryllus of Nemausis, in Gaul, was freed after his twentieth match, in the early 1st century AD, with money from his wife ( CIL 12.3323). She was probably a freedwoman.

References

{{Reflist Gladiator types

See also

References