(glancing around in mild bemusement)
Seriously, people. Where do you think we even got the word "sponsor" from?
In its original usage it meant a guarantor: someone who promised you that you were going to get something out of what they were doing.
Throwing a ludus / game or a series of games was expensive. Local (or national) Roman politicians put down good money to pay for the rental of the event space (you think the Colosseum was cheap to rent? Think again. The Imperials who built it liked to make their money back...), the wages (and overtime!) of the hundreds of venue support staff, the fees required by the fighting talent and the schools that owned them (or their own management, if they were free), and so forth.
Whoever was footing the bill for a given Game (or sequence of Games) was formally known by the title sponsor, and got to parade around the arena at the beginning of the game to remind people in the stands just who was fulfilling their civic duty by throwing this entertainment for them. The message was, "I'm doing something for you. Next election, don't forget to do something for me!"
And it was always political. Never lose sight of that. (Especially when a local political party promises to build you a nice new stadium if you elect them. The more some things change, the more they stay the same...)
(cc: @petermorwood) 😏
The individual gladiators and charioteers also had sponsorship, in the modern product-placement sense.
Ads were written on blank gable-ends often painted white for the purpose...
...and while the ones in that pic are political slogans, this one is an ad for the wines available at that shop...
...including prices ranging from two to four Asses.
The As was a Roman coin, so you lot at the back can stop giggling.
Other ads were outright endorsements (with appropriate payment, of course) and included stuff like "Felix the Thracian, five-time winner at the Saturnalia Games, says 'Tiburnian Olive Oil Keeps My Sword-Hand Swift!' "
Or "Diocles, Top Driver for the Green Team, uses Scaurus-brand garum at every meal!"
Ridley Scott was told about this during the making of "Gladiator", but ignored it as "unrealistic" - then went on to double the size of the Colosseum "for artistic reasons".
Considering how he's treated historical accuracy in later films, my response to his dismissal of graffiti and ads is this:
I made up Tiburnian olive oil, so it's (probably) fictional, but Scaurus-brand garum was real, and famous enough to appear by name in Pompeii mosaics.
Evidently the name carried weight, just like "Lea & Perrins Worcestershire Sauce".
There are other Worcester sauces, but L & P is THE Worcester sauce - or so they would like you to think - and used to be advertised as "not genuine without this signature".
Whether this was suggesting that all non- L & P Worcester sauces were in some way fake, or because there was a rash of Worcester-style sauces packaged to resemble L & P as closely as possible, I don't know,
However, as regards overly similar packaging (deceptive rather than outright deceitful, relying on accident or inattention more than fakery) take a look at this row of Ancient to Modern L & P...
...compared to another sauce called Henderson's Relish, and note that one label, AFAIK for US sale, refers to it as Worcestershire Sauce.
It's from a different county - Yorkshire not Worcestershire - and is made to a recipe so different it can be marketed as vegan, which real Worcester isn't because of anchovies, so it most emphatically isn't any kind of Worcester sauce at all.
And yet there's that bottle shape, also the label design and colour, so I wonder if, way back when, it was someone's deliberate choice.
The other sauce from Yorkshire is "Yorkshire Relish", made both in the usual thin style and also a thick version like HP Sauce (aka Brown Sauce or Steak Sauce).
Although the label isn't orange, both versions have easy-identification bottle shapes (long-neck cylindrical for thin, short-neck square for thick) characteristic for their contents.
It was apparently like that 2000 years ago, because archaeological finds...
...suggest that the one-handled, high-necked "footed" amphora shown on those mosaics was THE standard shape for garum-jars, thus an instantly recognisable form of product packaging.
Zoom in on each photo, and you'll see writing on the jars. Whether either or both read "Scauri" I can't tell, but if they're from Pompeii I'd make a small wager (maybe even, ahem, bet my As) that Aulus Umbricis Scaurus did indeed put his name - "not genuine without this signature" - on any jars which left his factory.
This one is ours. The shape isn't exact (too short) but pretty familiar...
...but though @dduane and I have racked our brains for what was originally in it (not garum!) we've come up blank. Currently it's full of lemon-infused olive oil, but if we ever buy some modern garum, we'll have somewhere obvious to put it. :->
*****
That short-lived but excellent series "Rome" got it just right. This ad for free wine and cakes is both commercial and political, so covers all bases - and ends with a hint that he gets to read that bloody Guild of Millers bloody slogan Every Bloody Time... :->
It cannot be overstated how much insight A. Umbricius Scaurus' obsession with branding has given us into Roman advertising.
In Pompeii, where he lived and had his factory, there are literally stones and small mosaics IN THE ROAD with his ads on them. The level of dedication the Condiment King of Pompeii put into his advertising, putting it into permanent and quasi-permanent forms, speaks to how much money and effort in Roman society went into advertising. Makes me wonder just how many wooden signs might have been about that were lost in the eruption.
