Suetonius

From Suetonius’ early-first-century writing to Cassius Dio’s in the second century, the few snippets of historical texts illuminating the gladiatrix share a unifying theme: social disgrace.

Suetonius detailed Emperor Domitan’s nighttime events, highlighting the grotesqueness of gladiatrices fighting in the shadows.

His biographer Suetonius, writing a few years after Tacitus, claimed Nero had “practiced every sort of obscenity,” from incest to murder.

Suetonius wrote that he cried out, “Qualis artifex pereo!”

The hall’s eventual ruins, which were later attested to as a latrine by the historian Suetonius, are located near and around the square.