Pod Insights Let's Talk About Myths, Baby! | Greek Mythology & the Ancient Mediterranean SPECIAL! Ancient History 101: Gladiator Myths Busted! About this episode This is an episode of the Memory Collective podcast ANCIENT HISTORY 101 by Alexandra Sills! Find loads more episodes on endless topics in ancient history wherever you're listening to this (and more info here https://www.ancientalexandra.co.uk/ancient-history-101)... AVAILABLE NOW! The Odyssey: a Modern Retelling. https://geni.us/TheOdysseyBook Submit your question for the next Q&A via email http://mythsbaby.com/questions or a voice note https://www.speakpipe.com/LTAMB. Get ad-free episodes and so, so much more, by subscribing to the Oracle Edition at patreon.com/mythsbaby http://patreon.com/mythsbaby. Enter ourpodcast guest https://www.mythsbaby.com/contact form if you'd like to be on the show as a conversation guest!
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1:14 Speaker 02 Hello, welcome to Ancient History 101 with me, your host Alexandra Sills. I have no special guest with me today, because for this episode, I'm the expert. We're going to be talking about gladiators, and I've literally written a book about gladiators, and it is released this week. It is called Gladiators in the Greek World: How a Roman Bloodsport Took Ancient Greece by Storm. If you're in Europe or Australia, I believe it's released this week. If you're in the United States or Canada, I think you have to wait a few more weeks, but you can preorder it now. I'm really proud of it, and I really hope that you love reading it. Please do pick up a copy and tell me what you think.
1:57 Speaker 02 And to celebrate, I thought, why not do an episode on something that I know about? We will have an episode in a couple of weeks' time, where I talk about the book specifically. In a conversation with someone I believe you'll be familiar with, Laura Jenkinson Brown of Greek Myth Comics, who's come on to the show to talk about gods in epic poetry. But for this week, let's talk about gladiators in general. And I thought it would be fun to do quickfire myths and misconceptions, so that I can address the kind of misinformation that I have to deal with every single day, and give you a bit more information, a bit more context,
2:34 Speaker 02 so that we can clear it up once and for all.
2:38 Speaker 02 So, in no particular order, in at number 14, "Hail Caesar, we who are about to die salute you." If you've seen any Gladiator movies, if you've seen the series on Peacock, whose title was "Those About to Die", and I hate to say it, even some titles of history books, they all use this phrase, "Those who are about to die salute you." But did gladiators ever say it? Well, no. We do see the phrase in two separate histories from ancient Rome. One written by Sputonius, one written by Cassius Dio. And they use this term, "Hail Caesar, we who are about to die salute you." Moritur te salutant.
3:22 Speaker 02 So yes, we see the phrase in the sources. But who is saying it? That's the important question. And it's not gladiators. The fact that we have two historians writing about this specific event makes it really helpful for us because they're both giving information that tallies with the other. We can be sure that this is pretty much as it happened. And for start, we're not in an amphitheatre. Both historians say that this happened at a lake. Both historians say that this happened at a mock sea battle, an almacia. It happened in 52 AD, and this mock sea battle was hosted by the Emperor Claudius. Now, at these mock sea battles, you would have normal ships,
4:05 Speaker 02 sometimes on the river, sometimes on artificial lakes. And they would recreate famous sea battles. And this would entertain the crowds, right? Both historians say that all of the combatants on those ships were not gladiators. And this tracks because gladiators didn't do sea battles. Both historians clarify the people on board were convicted criminals and this was a form of execution. Because the Romans loved to make execution into a spectacle. Now Cassius Dio and Suetonius both say that the convicted criminals decided to hail Claudius and to give him the salute, we who are about to die salute you, as some kind of way to get out of it. To not have to fight and not have to be killed.
4:51 Speaker 02 So it's not a sign of respect. It's a kind of plea for mercy. And actually Claudius is recorded as replying with, or not. He wasn't interested in granting mercy. He wasn't interested in stopping the naval fight. And we never see this phrase used again. So it's convicted criminals condemned to die and not in an amphitheatre. They're not gladiators. Gladiators did swear an oath, but not to the emperor and not in the amphitheatre. They swore an oath when they became gladiators and they made it in the training barracks. So when you see this phrase being used in movies, television, history books.
5:36 Speaker 02 It's not authentic. It's not accurate. It's just buying into that myth. It's just using that emotive phrase to create some drama. And in my view, it's entirely unnecessary. In at number thirteen. This is quite a recent one and it's a myth that gladiators were obese. And even though it's a recent myth, it has caught fire. And again, you'll see people repeating this, gladiators were obese.
6:10 Speaker 02 So where does this myth come from and can we debunk it? The idea was first floated in an article dating from 2008. And it was a journalist talking to an osteoarchaeologist who had worked on a gladiator cemetery in Ephesus, Turkey. The archaeologist was discussing what they had discovered from these gladiator skeletons. Firstly, these men were all highly muscled. And we can understand that, right? They're gladiators. And then there was a discussion about diet. This is something that we can find out from teeth and bones. We can find out what people ate, what kind of things they were eating in their diet and in kind of what quantities.
6:50 Speaker 02 And the osteoarchaeologists were able to work out that the gladiators ate a huge diet that mainly consisted of simple carbohydrates, mainly beans and barley. And the archaeologists explained that this would probably very usefully have given them a layer of subcutaneous fat. And that fat is incredibly helpful. It's an energy store for the body. It gives you the stamina to get through a fight that lasts 15, 20 minutes, even up to half an hour. And as the archaeologist explained, it may have been a slight protection against some wounds. Now, it's important to note that in this article, the archaeologist in question does not use the word obese. He says there is a layer of subcutaneous fat.
7:34 Speaker 02 Everyone has a layer of subcutaneous fat. It just depends on how big it is. Again, if we look at movies, and I'm looking directly at Kit Harrington in Pompeii, he has, I'd say about 3% body fat in that movie, and he looks absolutely shredded. And that's the image of gladiators that we have, I suppose, because of movies. But to get down to that level is incredibly hard. We often hear in interviews about actors that go on these insane diets to get to that body type. And they'll usually mention that their main diet is steamed vegetables and salmon or chicken. I'm reminded of what Henry Cavill said about getting into shape for The Witcher.
8:18 Speaker 02 And he said that whenever he had a scene with his shirt off, he wouldn't drink water for three days to make himself look even more shredded. He also said that he was miserable, weak, had a shorter attention span, a shorter temper.
8:35 Speaker 02 And that it was generally unhappy. There is a reason why these actors don't keep that body shape their entire year. They get into shape for the movie and then they go straight back to what we call the dad bod. But because we're used to seeing them with these rippling six packs, we have started calling the dad bod fat. Which I think is unfair, and I think it's kind of the same thing going on with gladiators. An archaeologist says they had a level of subcutaneous fat. The assumption is made, oh, they didn't have six packs, they must be obese then, has kind of caught on. And to be fair to the guy, I don't think that's what the archaeologist was saying. Let's look at the ancient evidence.
9:20 Speaker 02 There was a doctor named Galen. He was most famous for being the private physician of several emperors. But he started his career as a gladiator doctor. He performed surgeries on these guys, he helped with their wounds. And he would have had a say in their training as well, from a medical perspective. In Galen's wider writings about medicine, he has a word for obese, polyzarchos, and he does not use it for gladiators. In fact, he describes the physique of the ones that he was treating in Pergamon, not entirely firm, a little bit fleshy. That doesn't mean obese. So I would suggest that gladiators did eat a lot of simple carbohydrates.
10:05 Speaker 02 But they also trained very hard. It would have been detrimental to their stamina and health if they had tried to get shredded. And that they probably had a physique that's a little bit closer to a rugby player or an American football player. In at number 12, let's keep the discussion going about diet, shall we?
10:27 Speaker 02 One of the other common misconceptions that I see floating around all the time is that gladiators only ate barley, and that this was some kind of special diet that was reserved for gladiators. It was cheap, it was filling, it was boring, but it was essentially fuel. Well, let's get into it, shall we? This is a myth that has sprung up from the ancient sources but has been exacerbated by that same osteoarchaeological research from Ephesus. Because yes, gladiators did eat a load of barley. We now know this, in Ephesus at least, from the osteoarchaeological evidence. But the interesting thing is, is that skeletons from civilians have been
11:08 Speaker 02 found in Ephesus, and the same tests have been done on their skeletons. And what do you know? It turns out that the diet of gladiators and civilians is almost identical. Everyone is eating huge amounts of barley. Everyone is eating a huge amount of beans, vegetables, not a lot of meat, a little bit of seafood. Because here's the thing, barley was a staple crop. It was cheap for everyone. It was easy calories for everyone. So everyone in Ephesus, and pretty much around the Mediterranean, they were all barley eaters. So first off, it's not something reserved for gladiators. Why do we think it is? There's a quote from
11:51 Speaker 02 Pliny the Elder that says, "Gladiators ate a lot of barley." The exact phrasing, and he uses a word to describe this, he says they were called "hodiarii," the barley eaters, or the barley men. And people have taken this quote and run with it. But when you look at the quote, it says, "They used to be called the barley men." Now, Pliny died in the eruption that destroyed Pompeii in 79. That's the first century AD. We're still quite early in the imperial period here. And if he's using the past tense, that early, it suggests that that nickname was already out of date when he's writing about it. Then
12:36 Speaker 02 Galen, who we've met before, he adds a little bit more context to it because he says, yes, they were called barley men, in Athens.
12:46 Speaker 02 So yes, we have two people writing that gladiators ate a lot of barley, but both of them are saying they used to have this nickname, and also that this nickname was very regionally specific. So we can't extrapolate the idea that all gladiators were eating barley and nothing but barley all the time. What we can say is there was probably a point before 79 AD when the gladiators in Athens were absolutely gorging on the stuff, but had probably since taken on a more balanced diet. So yes, gladiators ate barley, everyone ate barley, but they also ate other things. It's just that that was a staple crop that everyone would have eaten every day.
13:28 Speaker 02 At number 11, gladiator sweat was an aphrodisiac. And if that sentence has given you a bit of the ick, I apologize. This is a fact that always makes me laugh. The idea that the sweat would be scraped off of gladiators, put into small bottles and sold on to people as an aphrodisiac to use in the bedroom. Which is disgusting, but the ancients could be pretty disgusting when they wanted to be. And I see this repeated over and over again. It was even in a movie, The Horrible Histories movie. But it's not true. There is not a single ancient source for it. We do have an ancient source of gladiators and their bodily fluids.
14:14 Speaker 02 It comes from Kelsus and his work on medicine. And he says that people with epilepsy, if all other cures had failed, could try to drink the still warm blood from the cut throat of a gladiator, and that that would help with their epileptic seizures. He even goes on to say that this is a really unpleasant cure for an unpleasant situation, really emphasizing that this should be a last resort kind of treatment. So where do we get this idea of sweat? The ancient Greeks collected sweat, but they collected it from athletes, including boxers, wrestlers and pancratists.
14:54 Speaker 02 But in Greece, that was also used as a medicine, not an aphrodisiac. If we look at the idea of gladiator sweat being used to make people horny, we're not going to find any evidence for it in the ancient world. And in fact, if you track it back, it's a really new myth. It occurs at around the turn of the millennium in an American sports magazine. Someone just made it up and everyone has believed it. So stop believing it. It's not true. It's disgusting, which makes it appealing, but it's not true. Myth number 10, women could be feminist heroes of the arena. This myth also comes around a lot. You can't move for it on the internet. And you know, I get it.
15:36 Speaker 02 I understand why feminists today want to look into the ancient world and see women having a good time, being good at things, even if those things aren't in the female sphere. We live in a world where in most countries, the majority of sane people believe that women are capable of doing everything that a man can do in the workplace. And it is natural for us to want to back up that belief with evidence that it's happened all across the globe for millennia past. And what is a better symbol of feminism than seeing ancient Roman women,
16:16 Speaker 02 who are all too often voiceless, kicking butt in that most male of spaces, the Roman arena? And this enthusiasm, this over excitement, has caused even scholars who should know better to take tiny bits of evidence and to blow them completely out of proportion. So you will hear, women could be in the arena, they were respected, it was amazing. The problem is, is that when you take a look at this tiny, tiny amount of evidence, that's not what we see. In the literary evidence, yes, we see women being thrown into the arena, but they have no training and they don't know what they're doing. They're being thrown in there as some kind of punishment or as a joke.
17:00 Speaker 02 And I think this is really important because we need to understand that a gladiator was highly trained. They were experts in combat. If you throw anyone into a Roman arena, man or woman, put a sword in their hand, but they don't know how to use it, that person isn't a gladiator. They're a sideshow. When we read the evidence, in Rome, that's what the women were. They weren't gladiators. They were a joke. And what about in other evidence? We have hundreds of gladiator gravestones, not a single one for a woman. We have even more depictions of gladiators in art. We have lamps, reliefs, statuettes, mosaics, graffiti.
17:44 Speaker 02 And their evidence for women is really, really scarce. There's one statuette that's claimed to be a female gladiator. Personally, for me, it doesn't fulfill my criteria for what an artistic depiction of a gladiator should include. It doesn't include the elements that all of those hundreds of other examples do. So I'm not saying it's definitely not a gladiator. I'm just saying it's iffy. It hasn't convinced me. There is one piece of art that is convincing. It comes from Turkey. It's a relief that's now in the British Museum, because of course it is. And it's of two gladiators called Amazon and Achillea. And they are two female gladiators. And I don't think that they're a joke show either.
18:29 Speaker 02 Because they've been kitted out in the correct armour. They have the correct swords and shields which they are holding in appropriate manner. They're standing in an absolutely textbook pose. I think they were definitely gladiators. And if you want to know more, Amazon and Achillea have their very own chapter in my book. But apart from them, the evidence is slim. So yes, there may have been women in that arena, but we have no evidence apart from this one relief in Turkey that suggests that women were fully trained gladiators or that they received any respect. It's just this one stone in Turkey that seems to be a complete anomaly.
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20:59 Speaker 02 Misconception number nine. Gladiators fought animals. Again, we've seen it in the shows, we've seen it in the movies. Maximus has his tiger. Lucius has those dreadful baboons. And those who are about to die had that massive white lion. Animals were absolutely a fundamental part of a day at the games. But it was a separate event from the gladiators themselves. A day at the Colosseum, or amphitheaters around the empire, consisted of a morning of beast hunts, executions at lunchtime, and gladiators in the afternoon. So the morning had animals fighting animals. Sometimes animals were just paraded around, like a bit of a zoo. Or they had people hunting and fighting animals.
21:43 Speaker 02 Those people were called venators, hunters. And they were specially trained for that job. In fact, they had their own special training school away from the gladiatorial training schools in Rome. And again, this comes down to the idea of expertise. A gladiator isn't trained to fight animals, therefore it's going to be a really useless, boring fight. Romans wanted to see experts. The hunters trained specifically to deal with animals. That was their job. Gladiators trained only to fight each other. That was theirs. There is not a single piece of evidence that suggests that any man ever did both roles in an arena. And the same goes while we're at it, just to repeat.
22:28 Speaker 02 It's like the Moxie Battles. Different groups of people did different roles. And you couldn't chop and change. So yeah, absolutely, you had elephants, rhinos, crocodiles, big cats, bears and wolves. You had all of these animals killing and being killed in amphitheaters, but not by gladiators.
22:50 Speaker 02 Misconception number eight. Gladiator fights had no rules. It was just two men hacking each other to pieces until one of them died. Now, I wish we had the Gladiator rulebook. I wish that someone had thought to sit down, write it all out, and make sure that hundreds of years later monks would copy it until we had a copy that we could use today. That didn't happen. We don't have a list of the Gladiator rules. We have snippets here and there, in writings about other things that give us an idea of some of the rules, but definitely not all of them. So how do we know that there was a rulebook? Well firstly, every single fight had at least one referee.
23:31 Speaker 02 We know this from artworks that show the referees standing really close to the gladiators. They carried long canes that they could use to get in between the gladiators and pause the fight where necessary. Now, if a game has no rules, why would you need a referee? And these referees were important. So there were rules, probably for the protection of the participants, as well as to make sure that everything was played fair. We just don't know what they were. There was an ancient sport that had almost no rules at all, but that comes from the ancient Greek world. And that's called pankration, which was a kind of boxing/wrestling mashup that was complete carnage.
24:12 Speaker 02 There were two rules for pankration: no biting and no eye gouging, which meant that everything else: pulling your opponent's hair, breaking his limbs, scratching him until he bleeds, yanking on his testicles, choking him to death. All of these were absolutely fine in pankration. But from all of the artistic and literary evidence, it doesn't seem like gladiatorial combat was as much of a free-for-all. It seems to be, dare I say it, more civilized, more structured, and more formal.
24:48 Speaker 02 Misconception number seven. If the emperor pointed his thumb up, a gladiator is allowed to live. If the emperor pointed his thumb down, the gladiator must die. Who knew that fingers and thumbs would be so important in the arena? But they were. The idea of thumbs up, living, thumbs up, good, and thumbs down means bad and death, is something that we still do today. It's such a common idea that it's even used on Facebook to show whether we like or dislike something. But as you can imagine, the story is more complicated than that. And it all comes down to Latin. It is true that the emperor, or whoever it was in charge of putting on the games across
25:30 Speaker 02 the rest of the empire, was in charge of deciding whether a losing gladiator lived or died. And it is true that the thumb seems to have been involved. What we can say is that we don't have any evidence that says whether a thumb pointed up or down marked the difference. We're told that the person in charge of the decision held his thumb outturned. Pollicae versus outturned, not upturned, not downturned, just out, which is frustratingly vague. But it seems to mean that if the thumb was extended away from the hand so that it was visible, it doesn't actually seem to matter which direction it's pointing that makes the difference.
26:15 Speaker 02 It's whether the thumb is visible at all. Because if the thumb wasn't outturned, it would be hidden in the palm and you would show a fist. So if a closed fist signifies this man is allowed to live, the outturned thumb, in any direction, would suggest that this man is condemned to die. So next time you give someone a thumbs up or a thumbs down, just remember, it ain't Roman. You can have your thumb pointed wherever you want.
26:44 Speaker 02 Myth number six. The Romans were psychopaths who enjoyed watching men tear each other to shreds for their enjoyment. That's definitely the idea that we have, right? That the Romans had this bloodlust, that their favourite entertainment was watching death, because they enjoyed watching people die. But that's a massive oversimplification. When you scratch the surface of the ideology of the arena, again, it all boils down to expertise. Matches are estimated to last roughly 15 minutes on average. If you wanted to see someone die a horrific death, then why not just go to an execution? And executions did sometimes happen in the arena. It was one of the many places that executions could be performed.
27:28 Speaker 02 Why not just go and see that if the point was just to see someone die? Why waste 15 minutes fighting each other if one of you is going to die at the end? And that that's the main attraction? And the answer is that it wasn't the main attraction of the gladiatorial fights. The main attraction was the first 14 and a half minutes, the expertise. Rome was a martial society. They had conquered the whole Mediterranean and they did that through their army. They were obsessed with their military. They were proud of their military. They invested huge amounts of cash and resources into their military. Anything to do with the military was a massive priority. What does the military do?
28:12 Speaker 02 It fights people. The military had earned them an empire. Combat allowed them to keep that empire and to protect that empire. An empire was even more important to them. So for a society where even for those who never went on campaign in their lives, for a society for whom the military was so important to their everyday life as an imperial power, combat and combat excellence was really, really important. And gladiators are an extension of this. A martial society gathering together to watch the best of the best display their skills on a manufactured battlefield, the arena.
28:54 Speaker 02 Military excellence was what the Romans prided themselves most upon, so it does make sense that it was part of their entertainment culture as well. But calling it an entertainment culture is also a bit of an oversimplification because it wasn't just entertainment, it was also education. You could almost say that a Roman going to the Colosseum wasn't going to watch a blockbuster movie necessarily, as he was also going to see a documentary. The Romans knew that they had to be excellent warriors to maintain this massive empire that they had collected. And gladiators reminded them of all of the skills and traits that they needed to do that. So gladiators embodied everything that they hoped from their military:
29:38 Speaker 02 courage, fortitude, discipline, tactical thinking, endurance, strength, and bravery. These were the traits that the Romans held really, really dear. So a gladiator wasn't just a form of entertainment who was there to die, they were there to demonstrate all of these Roman traits that they held so close to their hearts. They were experts in all of these skills, so that the Roman spectators wouldn't just be impressed by them, but inspired by them. So no, the main attraction of gladiators was not that one of them was going to die at the end. The main attraction was the fifteen or so minutes where they showed how to attack, how to defend, and demonstrated all of these skills and traits.
30:22 Speaker 02 Which brings us on to myth number five. If the point wasn't to see death, then why did so many of them die? This is a myth that thankfully seems to be dying down now, but it's still repeated in certain circles, so I thought I'd include it anyway. We're going to talk about fatality rates. It is sometimes still repeated that gladiators either lived because they won, or they lost, which means that they died. But we know that can't be true because we've already talked about the thumbs meaning life or death, right? It was possible for a loser to walk away. There's even a Latin term for it which translates as sent away standing. Not all fights were to the death.
31:04 Speaker 02 There were some, they were called no mercy fights, but they seemed to be really rare. And in fact, a couple of emperors, including Augustus, even banned them. Although, like any ban, they never seemed to have lasted. It seems to be that if a fight was over and there was a clear winner, even if the loser wasn't dead or dying, the referee could pause the fight and the decision about whether someone lived or died if they had lost would be up to the person giving the games. So the emperor in Rome or a local magistrate at one of the amphitheaters across the rest of the empire. Or one of the gladiators could tap out. And they did this, and this is where the fingers are just as important as the thumbs.
31:45 Speaker 02 They did this by extending their pointing finger out towards the referee and to the person putting on the games. And we call this ad digitum, fighting to the finger. So if a gladiator knew that he wasn't going to win and he was giving up and essentially conceding defeat, he would hold out his finger. The referee would immediately stop the fight so that no more harm was caused and a decision would be made. Did this man deserve to live or did he deserve to die? So what are the reasons for keeping or killing a losing gladiator? It's not explicitly stated, but I'm going to make a suggestion that perhaps even though we know that gladiators had excellent doctors,
32:28 Speaker 02 Galen being one of them, there was a possibility that some wounds were fatal, if not immediately. It seems that gladiators were provided with medical care, but Roman surgeons weren't miracle workers. So it may have been the case in certain fights that if a wound was received that it was not possible to survive from even with medical intervention, then a quick merciful death in the arena was preferable to getting gangrenous and slowly dying of blood poisoning. Because that might take days or weeks and was unnecessarily cruel. So it's a bit like euthanasia in a way. Again, that's not explicitly stated, but gladiators were respected people and the Romans had this concept of an honorable death rather than a long drawn out painful one.
33:12 Speaker 02 A reason to save a losing gladiator would be that he had done his job perfectly adequately. Had fought really well. It's just that the other guy was just that little bit better. That doesn't mean that the guy deserves to die. It means that he goes away, keeps training, comes back and does better next time. On the flip side of that, gladiators who had shown cowardice might have been killed as a consequence. Gladiators who had fought unfairly or who had cheated might have been killed after the fight as a consequence. The crowd are really helpful here because they vocalised who they wanted to save and who they didn't think was worth saving.
33:50 Speaker 02 And the emperor, or whoever was putting on the games, was really keen to take their opinions into consideration when making his decision. The last thing you want to do is annoy several thousands of people at once. And the Romans did not like cheaters, they didn't like cowards, they didn't like anyone who fought dishonourably. So in those cases, if a gladiator was stupid enough to make himself insanely unpopular, he may have been signing his own death warrant. But the main reason not to kill every losing gladiator was that it was expensive. Everything comes down to money eventually, right? The emperor owned his own gladiators, so his games may have been slightly different, but for everyone else, it was the local magistrates or priests of the imperial cult putting on games for their town.
34:35 Speaker 02 So they were elected to the job and all of a sudden they found that their role included having to put on these games out of their own pocket. And gladiators were expensive. These magistrates and priests needed to lease their gladiators from a man who owned his own troop. For a good show, you needed several pairs of gladiators. And the man that owned the troop would negotiate these prices with you. We know that gladiators were ranked. And the ones at rank number one were far more expensive than the ones at rank number five. The ones in the first rank were usually the celebrity ones, the veterans, the ones that had some name recognition. They already had fans. Whereas down in the lower ranks, you had the ones that weren't quite as good.
35:20 Speaker 02 Maybe they were the newbies, weren't quite as famous, weren't quite as popular. They were cheaper. To put on a good show, you needed gladiators from across all ranks. You needed the rookies, you needed the cheaper ones, but you definitely needed some of the more expensive celebrity ones as well. And for a long time, the troop owners could pretty much charge whatever they wanted. Supply and demand. And they did charge what they wanted. They charged astronomical prices. So much so that a couple of times, various emperors had to step in and put a cap on how much you could charge for a gladiator. So if I'm putting on a games, I need to rent the gladiators. That costs a lot of money. And the money that I pay for that goes towards their appearance fee.
36:04 Speaker 02 I also need to provide prize money for everyone who wins a match. So that's already incredibly expensive. But what happens when a gladiator was killed? That troop owner loses his investment. And it is a huge investment. The owners of these troops have to pay for their food, their board, their training, their medical care. They need to pay for their equipment. They need to pay for their travel expenses. They need to recoup that money. So a gladiator, let's say, who's had a five-year career, is quite famous, bit of a celebrity, he's going to be expensive. The troop owner is going to charge more for him because he has spent those five years investing heavily into this gladiator.
36:46 Speaker 02 And if that gladiator doesn't come back alive, that's five years of money for that particular gladiator down the drain. So the troop owners came up with a rule. You pay once for a gladiator's appearance. That's the rental fee. But if you break it, you buy it. If that gladiator dies, the magistrate or the priest had to compensate the troop owner for the full worth of that gladiator. Market value. This meant that the cheaper, younger gladiators were also cheaper to kill because the compensation fee wouldn't be as high. So gladiators were actually incentivised to get better, to get more experience and more celebrity, because not only would that crowd argue against that person being killed,
37:30 Speaker 02 the magistrate would also not want to condemn them to death because they knew that they would be very, very expensive on the wallet. So fatality rates were actually pretty low, and most of it comes down to money. The fatality rates aren't the same across the empire, and they're not the same across the centuries. Nothing is fixed in stone in ancient Rome. But we can estimate that depending on the gladiator, depending on the place, depending on the time, each time he stepped into the arena, he had maybe a one in 10 chance of dying, up to one in five chance of dying. So it definitely wasn't a 50/50 thing. Misconception number four: gladiatorial combat was a Roman invention.
38:13 Speaker 02 Whenever you hear ancient Rome, I'm gonna guess that one of the images that springs into your head, completely unbidden, is one of a gladiator. They are the epitome of Romanness, right? If you go to Rome today, all of the souvenir stands will have mini colosseums. You can get cooking aprons that have the torso of a gladiator on. The Colosseum is the main tourist attraction, and up until recently, had loads of guys in cheap Halloween gladiator costumes hanging around outside the Colosseum, waiting for some tourists to take a photo of them and charging them of watching for it. Gladiators are Rome. It's the stereotype, and therefore we assume they must have invented gladiators. But did they? I'm sorry to say that they didn't.
38:56 Speaker 02 It seems that at least one civilisation on the Italian peninsula beat them to the punch. The first come from the south, Campania, where we see the cities of Naples and Pompeii, that kind of place. They seem to have had one-on-one combats as a form of entertainment before the Romans did. And we can see this in the tomb paintings from a place called Peistum, that predate what we know was the first gladiatorial fight in Rome itself. And further up the peninsula, there are people called the Etruscans. They also seem to have an earlier form of gladiatorial combat that we can see in artworks, that influenced and inspired Romans to copy them. We don't have enough evidence to say which civilisation had it first, or which was the one that the Romans copied.
39:42 Speaker 02 What we do know is that the Romans clearly saw it, thought, "We should have a go at that", and then ran with it and perfected it, and turned it into this huge multinational machine. But gladiatorial combat existed outside of Rome before it did in the city itself. Myth number three: all gladiators were slaves or prisoners of war. The first gladiators in Rome were definitely prisoners of war, and we know this because we have several historians writing about them. The first fights in Rome coincided with funerals. And not just any funerals either. These were the funerals of the consuls, the highest magistrates in Rome. The equivalent, almost, of a prime minister or a president.
40:26 Speaker 02 And when you were a consul, you were also automatically head of the army. And there were two consuls at any one time, even during the imperial period. When we see gladiatorial fighting starting in Rome in 264 BCE, it was the funeral of a consul. A consul who had recently had a successful campaign against some barbarians. And at his funeral, to demonstrate what a wonderful consul and military general he was, there were some of the prisoners of war from that particular conflict, and someone had the bright idea, "Let's make them fight by his graveside", to demonstrate the power. "This man is dead, and yet he is still exerting control over these conquered peoples."
41:08 Speaker 02 And for a while, prisoners of war were the gladiators. When they were captured, they came with their own arms and armour. They were already trained in warfare. They didn't need anything, apart from a bit of coercion. And then, not too long after, it was discovered that you could buy slaves and train them up yourself. Again, all you needed was a bit of coercion. But that doesn't mean that all gladiators weren't free. By the time of Augustus, there were many, many gladiators who were born free, or had been freed from slavery and then decided to be a gladiator. Which means that that career, for a lot of people, was a choice, where it hadn't been for previous gladiators. And in some gladiatorial troops, it was about a fifty fifty split between people who were free
41:53 Speaker 02 and people who were owned. So why would a free person sign up for this? And there are several answers, really. I think we can assume that some of them were adrenaline junkies, some of them wanted to be famous, and I'm guessing a lot more of them wanted a big, hard pile of cash. Which, when you think of it, are all reasonable, valid arguments. So for someone who wasn't owned, they could lease themselves out to the troop owner. And they could negotiate a deal. They might say, "You've got me for five fights", or "You've got me for two years", or "You've got me until I die", or "You've got me until I've earned X amount of cash". They'd sign the contract, and then they would belong to the owner for the period of that contract.
42:36 Speaker 02 Let's not assume that this was a career path that was encouraged for freeborn men. It wasn't, and it came with a huge reduction in social status, lasting forever. You couldn't shake the dishonor of fighting in the arena. But for those who didn't start with much reputation, or who didn't care about their reputation, it was worth it. And that brings us on to myth number two, that gladiators weren't paid, particularly the ones that were slaves. Because certainly from the imperial period, gladiators were paid. And some of them were paid incredibly well. Our best evidence comes from the reign of Marcus Aurelius. For centuries, the elite had been complaining about just how expensive putting on gladiatorial shows were,
43:19 Speaker 02 even though the audience was clamouring for them. It was a huge burden on their pocket. And as I said, up to a point, these troop owners could charge what they wanted. And Marcus Aurelius was working to stop that from happening. So he put caps on how much you could charge for a gladiator, as well as putting a cap on how much you could spend on a gladiatorial show. So it created a tiered system of how expensive and large a games could be. And in each of those tiers, there was a maximum price on a gladiator being leased. But one of the clauses in this edict was that gladiators were now able to negotiate how much of that appearance fee they got to keep.
44:03 Speaker 02 And Marcus Aurelius says, if it's a free-bought gladiator, they can negotiate to keep up to 25% of that appearance fee. If they are enslaved, they can negotiate up to 20% of that appearance fee. So let's say that I am a magistrate, living in the Roman Empire, and I have to put on a games. I really want to put on the most impressive games that I possibly can, because I am filthy rich and I want to be popular in my city. Marcus Aurelius has told me that I am only allowed to spend between 150 and 200,000 cestices on my games. Each gladiator of the top rank will cost up to 15,000 cestices each.
44:45 Speaker 02 Second rank, 12,000, third rank, 9,000, and so on and so on. So I have to look at my budget, which is fixed, and I have to work out how much I'm going to spend on the expensive gladiators and how many ones I'm going to have for cheap, because I can buy more of those for the same money. So I've sorted out my budget, I know how many gladiators of each rank I want. I then go to the troop owner. Now, the budget that I have does not include the money for any dead gladiators, so I need to keep that in mind. And it also doesn't include the prizes, the cash prizes for each winner, so I need to keep that in mind as well. Let's look at the gladiators. How much are they earning if these are the massive amounts of money being put on for games?
45:28 Speaker 02 Let's have two hypothetical gladiators. A freeborn gladiator who has risen up the ranks to, let's say, third palace, third rank, in 197 AD. They're fighting in a modest games, let's say in Thessaloniki, and he has managed to negotiate the full 25% of his appearance fee. That means even if he doesn't win, he is guaranteed 1,250 cestices. Now, in 197 AD, a basic foot soldier in the Roman legions was earning 2,400 cestices per year. So that means our middle-of-the-road, distinctly average gladiator could exceed the annual
46:08 Speaker 02 salary of a legionary by fighting two fights a year, and it doesn't matter if they win. Now, what about the enslaved gladiators? Because they're earning way less, right? Let's imagine a slave in the first rank, because it doesn't matter whether you're enslaved or freeborn, you were ranked according to your skills, not your social background. So he's a first rate, he's a celebrity, even though he is still enslaved. He's fighting in a massive amphitheatre, let's say one in Verona. He can only negotiate up to 20% of his appearance fee, but his appearance fee for one fight is 15,000 cestices, which means that he earns 3,000 cestices for one fight.
46:50 Speaker 02 So even though he's enslaved, he fights for 15 minutes and he earns more than a legionary who is in a fort for 12 months a year. As for the person who owns and operates the gladiatorial troop, the rest of that fee, 75 to 80% of it, is ploughed back into investing into the troop itself. So this means that gladiators, if they fought often and well, even if they didn't win, as long as they survived, they could earn significant amounts of money. So if you're a freeborn man with considerable debt, selling yourself for a couple of years to a gladiator school is actually quite a sensible way for trying to pay off your debts.
47:31 Speaker 02 So yes, gladiators were paid, not the excessive insane amounts that we see some charioteers getting paid, but they could potentially earn themselves a fortune.
47:42 Speaker 02 I started this episode with a cinema myth and I'm gonna end the episode with a cinema myth and it's one that drives me crazier than any other myth. It's that gladiators didn't need or care about having a helmet or a shield.
47:59 Speaker 02 Look at Russell Crowe. He had a helmet some of the time. I don't think I saw him pick up a shield once. Ditto for Paul Meskell. I don't think Douglas in 1960 had a helmet or a shield. Those about to die and star Spartacus have helmets and shields some of the time, so that's not too bad. But generally, the idea is, why would you pay for an A-list actor if you're gonna obscure their face with a helmet? And why would you pay for an A-list actor to get ripped if you're gonna hide their body with a shield? And I'm sure those fight scene choreographers would also argue that having no shields makes the fight look more dramatic. The problem is, is that it fundamentally misunderstands how combat happened in the arena.
48:43 Speaker 02 Gladiators had their arms and their legs protected. Their torsos were bare, and that is the complete opposite, actually, of a Roman legionary, who had their torsos covered but their legs and their arms weren't protected much at all. And it's this reversal that makes the shield so much more important to a gladiator, because the torso is the most dangerous bit to get stabbed. So is the head. That's why you need a helmet. The idea was that you would hold the shield so that the top rim came to the bottom of your helmet, and that the bottom rim came to the top of your leg guards. This means that if you were holding your shield in a defensive pose and you were wearing your correct armour, your opponent facing you should be able to see as little skin
49:28 Speaker 02 as possible. You should be looking like a tank, and that makes his job harder. He's got to find a chink in that armour. He's got to tire you out so that you lower that shield enough for him to get round the corner of it and stab you where it hurts. And, I'm sorry again, Russell Crowe, there's no point lifting your sword arm really high and bringing it down either in those big slashing motions, because then you're leaving your very vulnerable side of your torso completely unguarded. You don't want to leave anything unguarded. The shield is key. But the shield isn't just defence, either. The shield can be used offensively as well. It had a metal boss in the centre of it, so you can punch forward with it.
50:11 Speaker 02 You can slam the bottom rim down on your opponent's toe, or you can jerk your shield upwards and try and get him under the chin. The shield is not superfluous. You need it, it's important. Fighting without one makes the fight far too quick, far too easy. And you're not giving your gladiators enough of a chance to display that skill set that they've spent years honing. So if I had one wish, it would be that every single gladiator on screen from now on has his helmet firmly on, even if it masks his beautiful face, and that he's holding a massive shield in front of him, even if that obscures that six-pack that he's drunk no water for three days to get.
50:54 Speaker 02 And actually, if you go and see any of the gladiatorial reenactors working right now, and there are so many amazing troops working across the world, you will see that fighting with a shield can be visually dramatic. It can be exciting. And more than anything else, it shows off the skill and the stamina needed to fight like a true gladiator. These groups take replica equipment that weighs exactly the same, is made exactly the same, and they spend their time experimenting. Are you able to stab like this when you're holding that? Are you able to jump to the side when you've got these massive leg greaves on? What can you see when you're wearing the helmet?
51:38 Speaker 02 And through trial and error, they're able to mimic tactics just by using the equipment and doing what makes sense. It's a kind of experimental archaeology. Recreating ancient skills by working out just how is the best way to use this ancient equipment? You can find these groups on social media, they have videos online. Many of them perform at heritage sites across Europe. If you want to see the closest facsimile of gladiatorial combat that we have, don't watch a Ridley Scott movie, for the love of God. Go and watch one of these groups, they are amazing. And when you do, you will understand why I am so persistent about having the shields.
52:26 Speaker 02 So there you go. Those are the myths and the misconceptions that I certainly am confronted with the most when I'm talking to the public about gladiators.
52:35 Speaker 02 Let me know if any of them were new to you. Let me know if any of them surprised you. And if you want more detail, I talk about a lot of these in the book, which, as I say, is available now, either to order or pre-order, depending where in the world you are. Ancient History 101 is hosted and produced by me, Alexandra Sills, and we are a part of the Nemozni Memory Collective, your friendly group of creators and educators who spend our time making learning about the ancient world as accessible and engaging as possible. You should check out some of our sister shows.
53:12 Speaker 02 And if you've been enjoying Ancient History 101, please do let me know. I love to hear from you. And make sure you hit subscribe so that you don't miss any episodes by accident. We have new episodes every Wednesday. And in the meantime, you can join us on social media or our website. All the links are below in the episode description. Thank you for listening. I will see you next week when our expert guests return.
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