20 Gladiator Myths Rome’s Arena Fighters Would Want You To Forget

A popular cinematic image was that of a thumb turned down, signaling a person’s death. Though the Romans had a similar gesture, pollice verso, or “turned thumb,” described by the Roman writer Pliny the Elder, a thumb pressed in or hidden meant clemency, not the extended thumbs-down we know today. That’s because Hollywood took its cue from French painter Jean-Léon Gérôme’s 1872 painting Pollice Verso and basically copied it wholesale.

In 73 BCE, Spartacus, a gladiator of Thracian descent, staged an uprising against the Roman Republic, leading a massive army of slaves to wage what is now known as the Third Servile War. Although films have depicted him as fighting for the freedom of all slaves, according to the ancient Greek historian Plutarch, Spartacus’ real objective was to lead his men north, across the Alps, so they could make their way back to Thrace and Gaul. The revolt was ultimately crushed by the Roman general Marcus Licinius Crassus, and Spartacus himself perished in combat in 71 BCE.

Imagine a fight to the death between two combatants. In most cases, it wasn’t. According to epigraphic evidence that academics have examined, 80% to 90% of gladiators in the early and high empire survived their duels. Sponsors, known as editores, rented fighters from the owners of the schools. Should a hired fighter die or become crippled, the sponsor would be required to pay back up to 50 times the hiring fee. It was this punitive measure rather than humanitarian concerns that drove sponsors to save talented fighters even after they had been beaten.

There is a famous urban legend that gladiators’ sweat was collected and sold by women in ancient Rome as a beauty product. Classicist Maxwell Paule traced the story back to a misunderstanding of the Roman writer Pliny the Elder complaining about Greek gyms collecting the gloios, the oil and dirt scraped from their bodies during exercise, which was used for medicinal salves. The culture, the substance, and the purpose were all different. There is no evidence that gladiator sweat was marketed as a cosmetic product in ancient Rome, either in literature or archaeology.

In 52 CE, Emperor Claudius held a mock sea battle on Lake Fucinus with condemned criminals, not professional fighters. According to the Roman historian Suetonius, as the event got underway, the prisoners shouted, “Ave Caesar, morituri te salutant” (“Hail Caesar, we who are about to die salute you”). Claudius responded, “Aut non” (“Or not”), which they heard as a pardon, so they declined to fight. This phrase was never the gladiators’ standard greeting, having been documented here for the only time.

Women occasionally fought as gladiators in ancient Rome, usually as part of special spectacles arranged by wealthy hosts. A 2nd-century marble relief from Halicarnassus, now housed in the British Museum, depicts a match between two female gladiators, Amazon and Achillia. It shows the pair fighting with shields and swords and without helmets. The carving marks their honorable discharge, meaning both women survived. In about 200 CE, the emperor Septimius Severus banned them from the arena, allegedly because aristocratic men considered the practice beneath them.

The first recorded Roman gladiatorial games were held in 264 BCE. Brothers Marcus and Decimus Junius Brutus staged three dueling pairs of enslaved combatants in the Forum Boarium at the funeral of their father, Decimus Junius Brutus Pera. They did so to perform what they termed a munus, a “duty” which, in Roman belief, appeased the deceased man’s spirit by spilling blood on his tomb. In the ensuing two centuries, the solemn religious ceremony gradually morphed into secular political diversion and shed its association with funeral rites.

It wasn’t all slaves that filled the Colosseum, though. Free Roman citizens called auctorati represented around 20% to 50% of all combatants during the High Empire. They were paid volunteers, bound in contract to a lanista, a gladiator school proprietor, with bonuses, salaries, and glory to reward them if they could survive their service. They swore an oath “to be bound, burned, beaten, and slain by the sword.” Volunteering was often an attempt to pay off debts or achieve fame through celebrity status, as they willingly gave up their legal rights in exchange for a chance of wealth or fame.

Cinemas depict a warrior dragged away by a hook, then finished off with a mallet associated with the death god Charon. This was only done for noxii, malefactors sentenced to death at noon, often as feeding time for beasts. A pro fighter killed in the arena would be borne out on a litter through the Gate of Death, back to his school, and given a proper funeral by his collegium, a kind of funerary guild.

Commodus, Roman emperor from 180 to 192, appeared several hundred times in the arena in the attire of a secutor, a heavily armored gladiatorial type, and charged the state treasury a fee each time. He wasn’t in any mortal peril during these appearances, since ancient sources like Cassius Dio and Herodian, both of whom witnessed his rule firsthand, claim his opponents were given wooden swords or deliberately blunt weapons. Commodus kept up the charade for over a decade, and ancient writers treated his staged “victories” as proof of his vanity rather than his skill.

Roman authors nicknamed gladiators hordearii, or “barley-eaters,” and they earned it. A 2014 skeletal analysis of gladiators buried in Ephesus’ cemetery determined that gladiators ate a lot of barley, wheat, and beans, but barely any meat. Scientists believe that a high-carbohydrate diet resulted in the accumulation of subcutaneous fat that absorbed slashing blows, keeping them from reaching the vital blood vessels and nerves underneath. The resulting wounds would look more menacing than they really were.

Successful gladiators were stars and outcasts. By Roman law, they were marked with infamia, the same legal stigma that attached to actors and prostitutes. They were unable to vote, hold political office, serve in the army, or act as witnesses in court, and were subject to beatings by magistrates. But the crowd plastered their pictures on lamps and pub walls, hailing them as sports heroes and sexual idols.

Since an arena duel wasn’t a free-for-all, a fight did have a referee. A summa rudis, or chief official, and an assistant called the secunda rudis carried long wooden staves around the arena and could stop fights to repair armor, regulate weapons, or grant medical attention. A tombstone from Amisus for a gladiator named Diodorus mentions fans and fighters arguing even after Diodorus’s death about whether the referee’s call in his final bout was fair.

Roman writer Pliny the Elder described a post-match drink made of ash from charred plants diluted in vinegar and water. It seems like magic, but it’s true. Analysis of gladiator bones from Ephesus shows strontium and calcium contents approximately double those of other Roman citizens, suggesting they routinely consumed the mixture to increase their intake of bone-building minerals to recover quickly from training injuries.

In 157 CE, Galen of Pergamon, a Greek doctor who went on to become one of the most prominent names in Roman medicine, was appointed as the lead physician to a troupe of gladiators. He treated their injuries with stitches, deep muscle surgery, and disinfecting baths of red wine. He later wrote that his predecessor had lost 16 of these men to infected wounds, while during his own 4 years he lost only 5. The difference wasn’t accidental. Gladiators were valuable assets, and the wealthy men who owned them expected good care.

Gladiator fights were all about the clash of styles. Each gladiator would spend years training with one specific weapon, his armatura. But he’d be matched up against his opposite: a heavily armored secutor or murmillo against a nimble retiarius armed with a net and trident, or against a thraex wielding a short, curved sword. The eye holes on the surviving bronze gladiator helmets from the barracks at Pompeii are only an inch wide, so that the heavily armored gladiator can barely see anything, creating maximum tension.

Because Roman law regarded them as dishonorable pariahs, gladiators had to provide for their own. They formed collegia, fraternal associations funded by regular dues and administered by elected officers chosen from among the members. If a colleague were killed in the arena, the collegium paid for a proper burial. A stone was erected to memorialize him and list the number of bouts he fought, and his family received further financial support. Several of these gravestones survive today and are known to have been erected at places as far-flung as Pompeii, Salona, and Rome.

At the games, everything happened according to a precise schedule, and gladiators had only one shift. In the morning, there were hunts for wild animals performed by specialized hunters, called venatores. During midday, condemned criminals were executed, often by being thrown to wild beasts. This was strictly separated from sport, both legally and physically. In the afternoon came the real sport, where professional gladiators fought each other. The Roman writer Seneca the Younger explains this schedule.

Entry to the games was free. Editores, elite members of society who funded the games, usually wealthy politicians or emperors, covered the cost of admission themselves, a policy eventually summarized by the phrase “bread and circuses,” meaning free entertainment given in exchange for political support. Spectators picked up small pottery tokens, called tesserae, that acted as tickets to guide them to their assigned gates, stairs, and seats depending on their social standing. The Roman historian Suetonius wrote of this practice.

The Colosseum in Rome is one of over 300 stone amphitheaters discovered by archaeologists, spanning about 30 countries and regions, including Roman Britain, Gaul, Spain, North Africa, Greece, and Syria. Gladiatorial troupes brought this standardized sport to every corner of the Empire, so a gladiator might have his career spread across thousands of miles, subject to the same contracts, the same referees, and the same rules.

This content was created with the help of AI.