Gladiators: A Day in the Life

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Speaker 20 Hey guys, I hope you're doing well. I'm all good here.

Speaker 20 I'm just back in from a quick food shop and about to sit down and start putting forward some ideas for the rest of the team regarding upcoming Ancients episodes going into early 2026.

Speaker 20 I've had a look at the stats, I've seen what episodes have been really popular with you, and comments and feedback, what you've really enjoyed, and also certain suggestions that you've been sending in over the past few months, what you'd really like to see on the podcast.

Speaker 20 So, we're going to be taking all of that into consideration when we plan out what we're going to be releasing on the podcast in the coming months into 2026 and i cannot wait to share them with you in the meantime today's episode we're going back to ancient rome and we're exploring a day in the life of a gladiator who was set to fight in one of those big spectacles of ancient rome in an arena like the colosseum a gladiatorial fight a day at the games We're exploring all of that.

Speaker 20 What do we know about our day at the games from the viewpoint of a gladiator with our guest, Dr. Harry Sidebottom.
He is a lecturer in ancient history at Lincoln College, Oxford.

Speaker 20 He's also a prolific writer of historical fiction. He's a best-selling author.
And as you're about to hear, he's a lot of fun.

Speaker 20 I loved recording this chat with Harry, and I hope you enjoy it just as much as I did recording it.

Speaker 22 Let's go.

Speaker 21 The Colosseum.

Speaker 23 One of the most majestic constructions from the Roman world. Imagine it full to the brim with spectators, Romans of all ranks, eager to see the games.

Speaker 23 But today, you're not one of the viewers, you're the entertainment.

Speaker 19 You're a gladiator.

Speaker 21 Today, gladiators are one of the hallmark symbols of ancient Rome.

Speaker 23 These sexy yet infamous fighters who clashed in sand-covered arenas to the roars of the crowd, who fought for the pleasure of others. So, what do we know about the gladiator's routine?

Speaker 23 How did he prepare for an upcoming fight in the arena? What do we know about the fights themselves? And is there any truth behind them saying the phrase, We who are about to die salute you?

Speaker 23 This is a day in the life of a gladiator, with our guest, Dr.

Speaker 21 Harry Sidebottom.

Speaker 22 Harry, it is a pleasure to have you you on the podcast today.

Speaker 19 Thanks very much. Pleasure to be here.

Speaker 22 Now, when someone thinks about Rome, it is a classic image that comes straight into your mind, isn't it? These macho fighters with sword and shield or trident and net and so on.

Speaker 22 It has become such a clear image of ancient Rome. Now, why do we think that?

Speaker 19 Why is it so popular now? Why is a gladiator the iconic image? I think it's the alienness of it. We watch contact combat sports, but not ones where people actually die.

Speaker 22 And do we also get a sense both in ancient writers and with people today,

Speaker 22 there's a fascination with gladiators, but also a revulsion at the same time?

Speaker 19 Yeah, absolutely. And in the ancient sources, there is this weird paradox.
They're both utterly reviled. They're the lowest of the low.

Speaker 19 They're slaves or free men who've reduced themselves to the status of slaves. But at the same time, they're glamorous and indeed sexy in the ancient world.

Speaker 22 Now, with your book, you've kind of explored the story of gladiators by plotting what 24 hours in the life of a gladiator might have looked like.

Speaker 22 To tackle this, and also, let's say it's the night before the games, and then they're fighting in the games themselves.

Speaker 22 What types of sources do you have available to reconstruct a day in the life of a gladiator?

Speaker 19 Well, you have to pull them together from lots of scattered places.

Speaker 19 Obviously, the main one, you couldn't create a story without the literary sources. Unfortunately, we don't have a single literary source that walks us through the 24 hours of the games.

Speaker 19 What we've got are anecdotes or stories scattered in literature. And then we've got the archaeology, gladiatorial barracks, the Colosseum and amphitheatres.

Speaker 19 Crucially important, a lot of visual material, lots and lots of images from the ancient world.

Speaker 22 And do we find those visual objects much further than just Italy itself, given how far and wide the gladiator sport, it was exported across the Roman Empire?

Speaker 19 Yeah, absolutely. I mean, only this spring I was in northern Greece, in ancient Macedon, where there's a fantastic new museum in a place called Veria.

Speaker 19 And I didn't know it was there, but there's a whole wall of gladiatorial tombstones with images. Absolutely fantastic.

Speaker 19 As you say, they're everywhere from York and northern Britain right across the Euphrates.

Speaker 22 And those objects themselves, you mentioned there.

Speaker 22 So you have things varying from gladiator tombstones to small, from what I can remember, these little gladiator figurines, almost little gift objects that you might take away from a day at the games.

Speaker 19 Yeah, absolutely. And people think that's what they are.
Some of the small ones and the lamps with gladiators on. Literally, it's a souvenir of your big day out at the games.

Speaker 22 Before we go into the 24 hours themselves, a bit of background. Do we know much, first of all, about the origins of gladiatorial combat and how it comes to ancient Rome?

Speaker 19 Kind of yes and no, because the ancient writers claim to know.

Speaker 19 where it comes from and the trouble is they give us two different stories so some ancient writers go yep, it's definitely from Campania in the south, it's an import.

Speaker 19 And others go, yes, it's an import, but it's from Etruria in the north. And we have no real way of knowing which is actually true.

Speaker 19 The key thing is that Romans thought gladiatorial combat was imported from somewhere else. And that's probably not.

Speaker 19 you know, shifting the moral responsibility as we would if we had something, you know, as violent and bloody as that.

Speaker 19 It's actually more a weird Roman idea that we Romans, we take things from the rest of the world, people we've conquered. We take the best things and we adopt them and adapt them.

Speaker 19 Do you know, we make them even better.

Speaker 22 And so do we know what the original purpose then was of these gladiatorial fights when the Romans first encountered them, whether it be further north, as you mentioned, in Etruria, like Tuscany area, or further south in Campania, so near modern-day Naples today?

Speaker 19 Yeah, we do. Unfortunately, none of the evidence is contemporary.
It's Romans looking back, but they're all insistent.

Speaker 19 originally gladiators fought at funeral games, which of course opens up endless modern speculation about why are they an offering to the dead.

Speaker 19 The ancient Romans, by the time they're writing the anecdotes, they don't know themselves. So the odds on us finding out are pretty much, I think, entirely zero.

Speaker 19 But yeah, there's a strong link to funerals.

Speaker 22 I don't suppose you've ever been to Pestum, have you, Harry?

Speaker 19 I have many years ago, yeah.

Speaker 22 And have you seen those beautiful wall frescoes you have from that site?

Speaker 22 And I think when you get to the Lucanian period so in the in the fourth century BC there are some beautiful images of warriors fighting each other yeah there are and they seem to be remarkably gladiator like and they seem to be matched pairs fighting each other rather than battle sequences but it's fascinating isn't it that kind of debate about where gladiators came from whether it was an ancient Greek city like Pestum or further north in Etruria but just to have that visual evidence there long before the gladiators become the dominant kind of blood sport of ancient Rome that you have it elsewhere in ancient Italy.

Speaker 19 Yeah, absolutely. And looking at it the other way round, it's amazing that visual images, then, as you said earlier, spread all over the empire.
They're really popular images to have.

Speaker 19 And, you know, kind of weirdly in things like a mosaic in your dining room, which is not something probably any person want.

Speaker 19 I mean, boxing promoters, I don't know, maybe they do have photos of boxing on the wall in their dining room, but guys and animals dying.

Speaker 19 But I think that homes in on really why the Romans did it and how they probably altered it.

Speaker 19 In the link with funerals remains down to the end of the Republic, down to the reign of Augustus, but it gets more and more tenuous.

Speaker 19 What it's really about is the guy giving the games, trying to win popularity from the crowd.

Speaker 22 I was going to ask, so what motivated senators and then later emperors to hold games? But is it that central P-word? Is it popularity?

Speaker 19 I think it is.

Speaker 19 And under the Republic, the senators really need votes of the people we often think of it as this kind of aristocratic oligarchic clique and in some ways yeah they're the guys who hold high office but we tend to forget that they only get into office because the plebs vote them there and putting on glatural shows is a way of getting votes getting that popularity you need to become the next rung up on your cursusonorum as it was called the ladder of officers you start at Questa.

Speaker 19 See if I can remember it. Quaesta.

Speaker 19 Then Ideal or Tribune of the Plebs, then Praetor. Then you get to be one of the two consuls the year.
Hey, the year's named after you, you're immortal.

Speaker 19 Really hardwired into the psyche and self-fashioning of the senatorial elite.

Speaker 22 And does that need for popularity from hosting gladiatorial games, does it increase when you get to the time of the emperors, even though maybe you could argue that they're safer in their position in the fact that they're not having to go to an emperor office or be elected to become emperor once a year.

Speaker 19 Yeah, I think it increases all the way through. I mean, under the Republic, the scale of gladiatorial fights put on, it's inflationary.
You have to put on a bigger show than the previous guy.

Speaker 19 And you have to put on a more novel show, have different acts, different animals in the morning, different types of gladiators, more of them.

Speaker 19 The emperors inherit that and they have to take it over because they've supplanted the senatorial elite as the patron of the Roman city plebs.

Speaker 19 And if they don't put on games, it will not necessarily completely undermine their regime, but it will make it deeply unpopular.

Speaker 22 So let's now start going through those 24 hours of a gladiator at one of these great games, let's say, of the early imperial period. If we could start.

Speaker 22 with the nights before Harry, because I've got in my notes these two words. Cana libera.

Speaker 22 What is this?

Speaker 19 Right. That's one of my favourite bits.
Kena Libera, I suppose you can translate it literally as the free dinner.

Speaker 19 It's not free in the sense gladiators get it for nothing because their rations are probably given to them for nothing anyway. It's unlimited dinner.
For once, they get a really, really

Speaker 19 nice, upper-class, fine dining experience. But the weird bit about it is the public can come in and watch them eating.
And that really is quite odd. It's an odd social ritual.

Speaker 19 And there are any number of modern, really sort of deep theories about it. It's raising the status of the people who may die tomorrow.

Speaker 19 What it was really about, I think, is actually affecting the gambling odds. The guy who's scared, can't eat, can't choke his food down, he's out at 66ers.

Speaker 19 Whereas the guy who's calmly ordering his affairs, eating a reasonable amount, not drinking too much, yeah, he's become the odds-on favourite. I'm sorry, I've come from a racing family in Newmarket.

Speaker 19 I've just slipped into the language of tattersaurs there. But I think that's what it's really about.
It's about gambling.

Speaker 22 What types of people do you think then would come to watch these Gladiators E? So, would it be the people who are making the bets, who are behind the stools at the games before they fight?

Speaker 19 Yeah, I think it's the real aficionados of the sport, you know, the die-hard fans. There is another subgroup which is utterly bizarre to our thinking.

Speaker 19 One of the places where we know about Kenalibre Kenelibra is Plutarch. We know him best as, you know, the guy who Shakespeare took the stories from for the tragedies.

Speaker 19 But what he saw himself as was a moral philosopher. And he has this wonderful anecdote of going to the Kenalibra to watch people, the gladiators eating, as a lesson in moral philosophy.

Speaker 19 Because you can learn about human nature. when it's under extreme pressure.
He says something like, well, you know, any student of philosophy has done this, haven't they?

Speaker 19 Which kind of implies there's a subgroup of people who aren't, you know, keen gamblers or keen aficionados. They're going there to learn a life lesson.
And that really is utterly bizarre.

Speaker 22 So you've got betting house owners, gamblers, you know, the die-hard fans standing alongside sage philosopher-like figures watching all these gladiators eat this we will find dining food.

Speaker 19 Yeah, I think the philosophers stand out easily.

Speaker 19 They're the guys who don't wear a tunic, have a long beard, long hair, their whole outward appearance going, look, the external world means nothing to me. I'm all about the inner man.

Speaker 19 Hence, I don't bother to get a haircut or wash too often sometimes.

Speaker 22 Do we know much about the gladiators themselves that would have been partaking in this dinner? Would they have never seen these extraordinary foods presented to them before?

Speaker 22 Would they have come from quite a low background?

Speaker 19 Yeah, they would have done. Superficially, it depends how long they've survived, how many ketalibra they've gone through.
There are four sources of gladiators. One, prisoners of war.

Speaker 19 Two, people convicted of really nasty crimes. And they actually, of course, being condemned to a gladiatorial school is an act of clemency because they could have just been killed outright.

Speaker 19 They have a chance of survival. The third type would be slaves who are sold into gladiatorial school.
And the fourth type is...

Speaker 22 surprising to us maybe free men who volunteer and we do have a few examples of the free men who volunteer don't we?

Speaker 19 Yeah, quite a few. I mean, it's, well, we can't do percentages.
We just don't have the Tristan, you know, you can't really do statistics for most ancient history.

Speaker 19 The numbers are statistically tiny. But yeah, I mean, if you kind of pretend the sample we've got, yeah, up to maybe 25% are free men.
Wow.

Speaker 22 And what would have motivated them to kind of throw away their freedom and become a gladiator?

Speaker 19 Right. You want the ancient answer.
From Horace, the poet. Okay.
He'll tell you what it is. He does tell you what it is.
They're morally bad people. There you go.

Speaker 19 They're just very bad people. They're probably rich young men who have fritted away their fortune they've inherited on things like food, drink, women.

Speaker 19 And they now have no choice but to be a carriage driver or become a gladiator.

Speaker 22 A carriage driver or a gladiator. I love those two options.

Speaker 19 Two options, both bad. If you're an upper-class Roman, can you get any lower?

Speaker 19 Probably, if we strip out the moralising, grinding poverty would be damn good reason.

Speaker 19 It's easy for us to think about the Romans as sort of terribly eating doormice brains and wearing togas and living in lovely villas.

Speaker 19 90% of the population live on or all too often below the subsistence level. If you volunteer as a gladiator, at least you'll be fed and really well fed for as long as it lasts.

Speaker 19 And maybe you'll survive and come out the other end. Maybe you'll get rewards on the way.
And maybe if you're good, you'll get adulation from the crowd. I argue in the book, thrill seeking.

Speaker 19 Certain young guys are addicted to extreme sports. And what's much more extreme than fighting another guy with a bladed weapon? I wouldn't know.
I've never done it myself.

Speaker 22 No, we don't do that here on the Ancients podcast, at least not yet. We haven't gone to

Speaker 22 those extremes.

Speaker 22 But it is interesting, though, isn't it, kind of exploring the different ways that people could become a gladiator and also hearing more about them sitting around one of these last supper ideas with this beautiful food in front of them.

Speaker 22 Do we have much idea about how different the food was at that supper compared to what they had every day in the gladiator barracks?

Speaker 19 Yeah, we do actually. I mean, we don't have, which would be handy, a nice menu for the flash Kena Libre.

Speaker 19 But what we do have, we know their diet, their normal diet. And it's really unappealing.
It's a bean and barley stew. And it's designed to bulk them up, to make them heavy.

Speaker 19 The idea being, put it in modern medical terms, would be to build up a thick layer of subcutaneous fat.

Speaker 19 So essentially, they can take a wound and bleed in a visual way, but the blade doesn't actually hit any vital organs because they're really, really chunky, heavy-set guys.

Speaker 22 So almost like natural body armor that they're adding with the diet that they were fed.

Speaker 19 Yeah. It also had various other unfortunate knock-on effects.

Speaker 19 According to the Austrian forensic pathologist who studied gladiators' remains from a cemetery in Ephesus, which is now modern Turkey, obviously, their diet also led to them having incredibly bad teeth and hence very bad breath.

Speaker 19 And they've in a very sensible way compared it with the teeth of skeletons of the normal population of ancient Ephesus. Gladiators, lousy teeth.

Speaker 22 Doesn't quite add up to the very sexy nature of gladiators that we have down to the present day, that they were also sex symbols.

Speaker 19 Yeah, they were. They're a million miles from the ancient ideal of male beauty and desirability.
They're heavy-set, if not fat, guys with bad teeth, bad breath.

Speaker 19 Their rigorous training ends up like tennis players, one arm and shoulder, much more developed than the other. They're covered in scars and the sort of warts where the helmet rests on their nose.

Speaker 19 But at the same time, they were thought of as sex symbols.

Speaker 19 Although, the pieces of evidence that are always wheeled out in most popular books here are some graffiti from Pompeii about Ratiarius, a net and trident funiter who nets the young girls and his mate, who's a Thracian type of gladiator equipment.

Speaker 19 And he, as he has it put, sorts out the girls in the morning, the afternoon, and the evening. These are quite often in serious scholarly books, these words are scribbled by a breathless groupie.

Speaker 19 Maybe not, because they're actually found in the gladiator's barracks. These words are scribbled by these guys themselves.
This is two men indulging in sort of competitive sexual boasting.

Speaker 19 I get more women than you do. But having said all which, yeah, there's a lot of literary evidence that gladiators were seen as sex symbols.

Speaker 19 And that is odd, considering they are not conventionally attractive men in the classical view. The bites and the scars and the wounds is probably the hint.

Speaker 19 I mean, perhaps gladiators are the ultimate bit of rough trade.

Speaker 22 I might also ask, sorry, one last question on this supper, this Cana Libra, because it's so fascinating to hear about. What would the Roman elites have thought about it?

Speaker 22 Seeing, you know, these rough and tough gladiators of much lower status to them, seeing them all of a sudden eating...

Speaker 22 the types of food that they would have been accustomed to in their own villas and great houses in the city.

Speaker 19 That's a really good question. I don't think they'd have been too disturbed because it's the one-off nature of the thing.

Speaker 19 It's rather like in some British regiments, the once a year, the officers serve the men their food.

Speaker 19 It's the world turned upside down, but by turning it upside down just once in a really defined time, you kind of reinforce what's normal.

Speaker 19 So part of the ceremony idea, I guess, is that if it's being regulated, if it's being controlled, people perhaps are not as fussed about it than they might otherwise be absolutely unless of course you're a christian bishop sain john chrysostom the golden mouth has in one of his interminable and rather depressing homilies of being good you christian flock he says if you see gladiators not unfortunately in a canalibra but in an inn getting blind drunk and seeming to enjoy themselves don't for a minute mistake them for being happy because they will burn in hellfire and so on all right well let's move on from the cana Libra and move on in the story.

Speaker 22 So they're going to go and fight in the arena the next day. Do we know what would happen next? I mean, where would they go to sleep?

Speaker 22 What do we know about that evening and that night just before they went to the arena?

Speaker 19 Security arrangements in those five gladiatorial barracks that have been archaeologically discovered seem actually pretty minimal.

Speaker 19 Usually, the veterans were probably quite free to sleep anywhere they wanted, which would of course further their sex symbol ambitions. The night before,

Speaker 19 yeah, they're confined to the barracks and closely watched. And presumably,

Speaker 19 under the emperors, in a school owned by the emperor, they're guarded by soldiers. In a private barracks, they're guarded presumably by veteran gladiators who are no longer themselves in the arena.

Speaker 19 And yeah, they're pretty closely monitored.

Speaker 19 There's a story in Seneca of a beast fighter who, the night before he's meant to go into the arena, actually goes into the communal latrine in the middle of the night.

Speaker 19 It's because it's the only place he isn't observed. And then he revoltingly chokes himself to death with the famous sponge on a stick that Romans wipe their bottoms with.

Speaker 22 This is the famous sponge on a stick suicide story, and it's linked to a beast hunter the night before a fight.

Speaker 19 Yeah, absolutely. And the weird thing is that Seneca wheels this famous anecdote out as an example of extreme moral goodness.

Speaker 19 The moral here is if you want to kill yourself, and Stoics are very keen on killing yourself if you do it rationally for the right reasons.

Speaker 19 You know, you're intermittently ill, you're in intolerable pain, you wish to spare yourself and your family something worse.

Speaker 19 And he's making the point. You can always find the means.
to take your own life, even as this gladiator did. And not only is he a beast fighter, he's a barbarian prisoner of war.

Speaker 22 you know he's a hairy german i suppose the argument really underlying even a scum like that can show moral goodness at the ultimate test you mentioned earlier how there were five gladiatorial barracks that have been discovered so i presume one of them is in pompeii isn't it so do we know much about the the layout of these homes of the gladiators and how they were structured yeah um there are actually two in pompeii

Speaker 19 and there's of course the famous one just over the big modern road from the Colosseum, the Ludus Magnus, which actually you can see half of is exposed. It's wonderful.

Speaker 19 They all tend to have a similar pattern. They're not identical, mainly because some are converted from private houses or other buildings.
It seems to be a central courtyard, ringed by gladiatorial.

Speaker 19 We always translate it as cells. I mean, sleeping quarters.
Cells sound more, you know, darkness, chains, Spartacus film.

Speaker 19 They don't seem to be much worse than the barracks of soldiers in many ways.

Speaker 18 And we're back live during a flex alert. Oh, we're pre-cooling before 4 p.m., folks.
And that's the end of the third.

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Speaker 22 So they go to sleep at the barracks the night before. They're watched closely by, as you mentioned, either veteran gladiators or soldiers to make sure they don't kill themselves or try to run away.

Speaker 22 And then you get the day of the games themselves. Harry, do we know when the actual events would begin?

Speaker 22 Do we know what would happen early in the morning, both for the gladiators and, I guess, for the spectators who are about to arrive at the arena?

Speaker 19 Yeah, absolutely.

Speaker 19 The whole thing kicks off, well, for the spectators, before dawn, we have anecdotes of people queuing to get in. I think, I've also put it in the book.

Speaker 19 Imagine yourself as a gull flying over Rome and you're looking down at the Colosseum. All the roads around it are going to be thronged with people getting in.

Speaker 19 Only the elite are guaranteed, you know, the right and best seat, their seat. The spectators need to be in because the first event at dawn is a big parade.

Speaker 19 We don't know where it went in Rome, but in Corinth and other places, we know it wounds through the town, ends up at the amphitheatre where the games are being held, and then comes onto the sand itself.

Speaker 19 You've got musicians, you've got floats, as it were. You've got the gladiators kitted out in their very best kit.

Speaker 19 And you've got incense and music. It has

Speaker 19 it's not a religious parade per se, but it does have religious connotations too. It's a big event.

Speaker 19 And then after the parade, there's the testing of the weapons, a ritual testing that the swords are sharp. We know quite about that because of two anecdotes about two supposedly good emperors.

Speaker 19 And rather worryingly, the stories are almost identical. The good emperor has discovered a senator or two is plotting against him.

Speaker 19 And so when the weapons are brought up to the imperial box, he gives the sharp swords to the men who are conspiring against him.

Speaker 19 as an act of faith and trust and then says by the way i know what you're up to as a way of pardoning them. So, you've got this whole ritual in the morning, and

Speaker 19 then you have, I argue, in the book, the famous gladorial oath. Those who are about to die salute you.

Speaker 22 Ah, okay. So, it's sorting fact from fiction.
So, do you think that the gladiators would have said that in their ornate armor, right in the centre?

Speaker 22 Everyone's taken their seat before any events have begun. The first thing they would do is do that oath to the emperor.

Speaker 19 Yeah, I'm breaking ranks with virtually every scholar who studied this recently.

Speaker 19 They're all going, no, no, we only hear about this oath once, and we only hear about it once, because that's the one time it was ever said.

Speaker 19 But we learn about it in an anecdote about Claudius giving some games, and Claudius ruins the whole affair by then trying a badly timed joke.

Speaker 19 You know, they do the, you know, we are about to die, salute you, and Claudius sort of giggles and goes, or not. And the characters go, great, it's a pardon.

Speaker 19 Well, damn weapons and then Claudius has to bribe and threaten and limp round cajoling them to fight the anecdote's recorded because of Claudius's bad joke and that outcome rather than oh it's the only time it's said it's a wonderful act of theatre and the whole day is an actor theatre that's a great way to kick it off So almost that oath part of the story, because it's not the central message almost, it's the fumbling around by Claudius.

Speaker 22 People who would have heard heard that story would have just kind of taken the oath as fact.

Speaker 22 You wouldn't need to explain it any further because they just knew that happened at the beginning of every gladiatorial combat that happens at the Colosseum.

Speaker 19 Absolutely spot on, Tristan. It's not explained.
It's just there. And then we get into the anecdote.
Bad jokes and limping.

Speaker 22 I'd like to ask a bit more about this ornate armor because this also sounds really, really fascinating. So do we think that would have been when the gladiators awoke that morning in the barracks?

Speaker 22 I mean, we probably don't have the information available, but can we imagine almost a very ceremonial event of them donning on all of this beautiful armor that presumably they didn't wear that often when they were just training beforehand?

Speaker 19 Presumably, either the Lanista, the man in charge, or the veterans, or their cellmates helped them arm and equip. And no, you're absolutely right.
Of course, they wouldn't be wearing this to train.

Speaker 19 This is the sort of stuff that's too ornate and too valuable for anything other than the ring itself.

Speaker 22 How long do we think they would have been training for before their lanister, their master of the barracks, decided that they were ready to fight?

Speaker 19 Hard to give a hard and fast answer, but we know how long a man could be condemned to a gladiatorial school. And it is five years maximum, of which only three will they be fighting.

Speaker 19 So it depends how long,

Speaker 19 as it were, the first year they're being trained, which we don't know.

Speaker 22 Should we also highlight, they're an economic investment, aren't they?

Speaker 22 The fact that they're not being served the worst foods, as you highlighted earlier, they're served foods that serve a purpose of armoring them up naturally.

Speaker 22 I mean, everything, you know, their accommodation, their food, their armor, and the cana libra that we mentioned earlier, it's all paid for, it's all covered.

Speaker 22 But because the gladiators themselves, they're an economic investment.

Speaker 19 Yeah, huge economic investment. We've got an inscription from the reign of Marcus Aurelius.
Marcus Aurelius attempted a price cap on gladiators.

Speaker 19 And the figures, obviously, people take them as if, you know, this is how much a gladiator cost. Well, no, he's doing a price cap.
I actually presume they cost rather more.

Speaker 19 I mean, if you're doing a price cap, austerity in the age of gladiators, you don't set it at the real high level. But yeah, they can vary hugely.

Speaker 19 I mean, at the cheapest level, they're a couple of thousand sesterces,

Speaker 19 but they can go up to tens of thousands of sesterces or more. They're a serious economic investment, and you want to make sure they do you proud in the ring.

Speaker 22 Okay, so it's the morning. This procession of gladiators and presuming the beast hunters, would they be there as well in the procession, Harry, at that time? Do we think they'd all be together?

Speaker 19 Yes, we do, but we don't have any hard and fast evidence. The nearest we can get is some animals in the procession.
If animals are there, it's highly likely the beast fighters.

Speaker 19 Beast fighters are kind of second string in popularity. The gladiators are the big deal in the afternoon.
The beast fighters in the morning, they're important.

Speaker 19 And indeed, some provincial shows, they replace gladiators altogether. They're cheaper.

Speaker 22 So if we've got that scene first of all, when they're all together at that procession before the events themselves begin, they do their oath to the Emperor or whoever's in the box.

Speaker 22 You're throwing your head above the power pet there, Harry. Happy to say.
What happens next? Especially for those gladiators, they've got to wait until the afternoon.

Speaker 19 So where are they led off to?

Speaker 22 Where are they, dare I say, stored until their events take place?

Speaker 19 Well, we think they're stored in the Coliseum or the big arenas that have sort of substructure. We think they're stored down there.

Speaker 19 But of course, we don't actually, we'd have no actual evidence of where they're waiting, presumably getting more and more keyed up before the event. We can't actually definitely say.

Speaker 19 We know the animals are stored down there. Highly likely the gladiators, the human performers are as well.

Speaker 22 Well, Harry, talk us through the day at the games and the events that happen. Shall we start first of all with the events in the morning? And these are the beast hunts.

Speaker 19 Yep, absolutely. Man v.
animal, trained men. I mean,

Speaker 19 this is not executions. This is beast fighters, trained huntsmen fighting animals.
It's also animals v. animals.

Speaker 19 And the Romans really seem to delight in making species of animals fight that in nature didn't fight. Ah.
So you can end up with some exotic mismatch.

Speaker 19 What's going on here, of course, is the Roman Empire

Speaker 19 symbolizing its control over nature. And similarly, the more exotic the animals you can put in the arena, the better.

Speaker 19 Have you a provincial show, I don't know, somewhere, somewhere in backwater like Britain, you've probably got a few bulls, maybe a couple of bears.

Speaker 19 But the big deal in Rome and the big centers, African animals, lions.

Speaker 19 Also from the East, you want panthers, you want tigers, you want crocodiles. If possible, a rhinoceros would be great.
It symbolises the geographic spread of the empire.

Speaker 19 In fact, there's even one source that claims Arctic bears in Rome. Wow.
Yeah. I mean,

Speaker 19 probably means polar bears, but I guess, you know, Scotland is pretty Arctic if you're looking at it from Roman eyes. So maybe it's just a Scottish bear, a Caledonian bear.

Speaker 19 But yeah, the more exotic, the better for the beast fights the morning. But not all the animals are actually going to die.
Some are just exhibited because they're so rare and exotic and unusual, or

Speaker 19 they can do tricks. The Romans have a soft spot for elephants.
They love elephants. Elephants that can, like

Speaker 19 the now long-gone chimpanzees tea party thing, elephants that can have mime human diners, a civilized dining party, elephants that can juggle, elephants that can be mock gladiators, which is rather

Speaker 19 presumably with sort of some stage kit on and maybe balancing on their rear legs.

Speaker 22 It's almost a bit of a circus event that you could have in the mornings, as well as, you know, the actual more gory stuff of either beast on beast or trained hunter on beast.

Speaker 19 Yeah, absolutely. How about elephants that can write Greek in the sand with their trunks? No, really? Yeah.

Speaker 22 Is there stories of that? Yep.

Speaker 19 How about tightrope walking elephants? One that walks a tightrope down from the top of it's actually actually Pompey's theatre, down to the sand.

Speaker 19 I mean, that would add a certain frisson of, well, fear for the people in the stands under it, surely.

Speaker 22 Harry, I don't know if you're just mocking me now or if this is actually true. I mean, I've never ever heard those stories before.
I mean, can we, should we take them with a barrel full of salt?

Speaker 19 Yes.

Speaker 19 Yes, they're in ancient sources. Did they actually happen? Actually, the tightrope walking elephant, yeah, probably.

Speaker 19 As always, in any ancient history, you have to judge each anecdote on the source it's in the purpose it's serving in that source and so on but yeah all the stories are in ancient writers and some might be true well let's move on then to midday because

Speaker 22 this also feels like another gruesome part of the events but maybe one that even for romans was a bit too gruesome for lots of them to stomach. What are we talking about?

Speaker 19 We're talking about the executions at midday. Dehumanized criminals being executed in bizarrely inventive ways.

Speaker 19 I mean, usually if you're a criminal who's convicted of a capital crime, you get beheaded if you're a citizen, supposedly a nice quick death. And if you're not, you get crucified.

Speaker 19 Now, neither of those are very visual. I mean, just beheading guys is not a big visual spectacle for lunchtime.
Crucifixion can take days.

Speaker 19 So what they do is they come up with lots of other ways of killing people, throwing them to wild animals being one, burning them alive being another, and

Speaker 19 acting out bits from Greek myth where the condemned criminal somehow or other is convinced to act out a myth. So we have Orpheus.

Speaker 19 Obviously in the myth he's torn apart by women who've been maddened by the god Dionysus. The Romans, however, don't do that.
They have him torn apart by a bear. Gosh.
Yeah, it's odd.

Speaker 19 And then there's icarus you know you wheel him out on a crane strap some wings to him and drop him oh

Speaker 19 god tristan that's the response of everyone i tell that anecdote to it's just pure macabre it's the blackest joke ever it's pure tarantino it's just dreadful yeah or the tunica molesta the evil or molesting tunic These are criminals acting out the death of Hercules.

Speaker 19 Hercules in the myth, his wife is tricked into giving him a poisoned shirt. The pain is so intolerable, he burns himself to death.

Speaker 19 In the arena, instead, you have a man with an inflammable tunic put on, which is then set fire to, and you watch him run around. Do I sound too much relish in the description there?

Speaker 22 No, you don't, Harry. This is the part that I think.

Speaker 22 Doing a day at the games, and even before we get to the gladiators, it really highlights how different, you know, so many Romans were and what they expected at a day at one of these events.

Speaker 22 It is not just gladiators fighting each other.

Speaker 22 It is so much more horrific than that at times. And I can understand why, even for some Romans, they would leave at lunchtime, right? Because they just couldn't stomach.

Speaker 22 It was almost, that was just one step too far for many of them.

Speaker 19 That's what we think. But we're basing it on just Seneca.
Right. Okay.
And Seneca actually says they throw the criminals to the crowd at lunchtime, and it's a terrible thing.

Speaker 19 Actually, that has led to lots of modern online nonsense about the crowd actually ripping the condemned criminals apart themselves. No, no, no.
He means he's thrown to their base passions.

Speaker 19 Some may well have left. He does talk of half-empty stands.
In the same passage, he also talks about people who go specifically and enjoy the executions.

Speaker 22 Half empty, also half full, then.

Speaker 19 Yeah.

Speaker 22 What else would be happening in the crowds as these events going on? Especially if people had in mind they knew that the big event was still to come, that the gladiators were still to come out.

Speaker 19 Would there be people going around just telling them who was about to fight and what the betting odds were and so on would there be that active economic kind of monetary aspect going on all the time yeah i think there would although they're no bookmakers there's no parimutuelle or tote they're not turf accountants as they're called it's more like i don't know 1700s horse racing in england the bets are wagers but you know there are odds involved in the wages i think there would be a lot of people putting side bets laying bets off and just talking about what was to come because the gladiators are the big draw.

Speaker 19 And, of course, you've probably got a programme which lists, you know, at least the big name fighters who will be on this afternoon.

Speaker 19 It's like when I went to Nebboth and you sat through a lot of lousy bands to see the good ones at the top end of the bill.

Speaker 22 I was going to say an analogy of it's almost like a football match where you have the halftime entertainment to kind of keep you at your seats, but you're just waiting for the teams to get back out there.

Speaker 22 Maybe slightly different, but I know what you're talking about there, Harry. Well, then let's go on then to it's after lunch.
The moment has arrived. The gladiatorial bouts are about to begin.

Speaker 22 Harry, do we have any rough idea generally how long this part of the event would last? Did it take up the whole of the afternoon? Was it just a few hours? Do we know anything about that?

Speaker 19 The timings are tricky. I think it depends how many matching pairs of gladiators are fighting.
We do know that probably didn't last longer than 10 minutes and quarter of an hour.

Speaker 19 So it really depends how big the show is, how many gladiatorial pairs will be exhibited. Now this is where Hollywood always gets it very wrong is that in Hollywood it's always a mass battle.

Speaker 19 There's dozens of guys out there all at once and it's carnage, there's blood splatter everywhere, they all get hacked to bits. Yeah, there were mass battles, but they were incredibly rare.

Speaker 19 And the only ones we know anything about are incredibly rare ones given by emperors when they wanted to put on a particularly spectacular show.

Speaker 19 Usually any gladiatorial contest, there are two fighters, it's a duel, there are two referees out on the sand with them. And it's also really not necessarily about death.

Speaker 19 The outcome isn't always death. The intention is they should be exhibiting skill, endurance, courage, and they're quite likely to survive.

Speaker 22 Now, Harry, you mentioned something really interesting there, which are the two referees.

Speaker 22 This is something you normally never, ever see, but there were, alongside the two gladiators themselves, there were these officials, dare we say, keeping an eye on every sword and spear thrust and so on.

Speaker 19 Yeah, absolutely. Often found in visual representations.
They have a special costume, as a referee in any sport does. So you know, absolutely sure who they are.

Speaker 19 In their case, it's a white tunic with a couple of probably purple or coloured stripes down the front and a big stick.

Speaker 22 It's a stick, isn't it? They always show the big stick.

Speaker 19 Possibly the big stick was used to kind of encourage some of the more reluctant fighters. But in visual imagery, the referee always appears at the key moment when one gladiator has submitted.

Speaker 19 One of the referees steps in and uses his stick to either to symbolically hold back the victorious gladiator.

Speaker 19 So he doesn't kill the guy before the man who submitted can appeal to the giver of the games and the crowd.

Speaker 22 Feels a pretty dangerous job if you've just got a stick and you're against two men who've been trained in their weapons for months on end, very sharp weapons, who are also in the midst of maybe the red mist has descended after fighting for so long and you're just trying to hold them back with the stick.

Speaker 19 Mind you, I suppose we do think that most of the referees would be ex-gladiators themselves. Ah,

Speaker 19 these are the sort of super veterans.

Speaker 19 So maybe there's from the gladiatorial school where some instilled respect, just like rugby players, no no matter what you say, you have to put the word sir on the end of it when talking to the referee.

Speaker 19 Maybe there's this kind of indrilled thing, hardwired thing.

Speaker 19 Actually, interesting, taking that slightly to one side, we only have one anecdote from the whole Roman Empire of a gladiator ever hurting a member of the audience.

Speaker 22 Interesting. So, what's that story?

Speaker 19 It's from Valerius Maximus and his collection of anecdotes. It's set in Sicily in the theatre in Syracusa.

Speaker 19 The story is that an equestrian, second rung down in the Roman social order, has a dream the night before gladiatorial fight that he'll get killed by a Retiarius, a net and trident fighter.

Speaker 19 And his friends go, don't be ridiculous, come along to the games.

Speaker 19 He sits in the front row and blimey, he sees the man from his dream and he tries to leave and his friends go, oh, it's a dream, don't be silly.

Speaker 19 And sure enough, the Retiarius mistakenly corners and doesn't kill his opponent. He kills the spectator.

Speaker 19 The whole story is really dubious because the Rettiarius in this anecdote kills the spectator with a sword.

Speaker 19 Rettiari didn't carry swords. Well, yes.

Speaker 22 And a sword thrust has got to be pretty bad if you can miss your opponent to actually hit someone in the crowd, considering there must have been a bit of a barrier between them as well.

Speaker 19 Yeah, it's an unlikely anecdote, but it is the only one we have. Gladiators don't turn on the crowd or even try to because their lives depend on the crowd at this point.

Speaker 22 You mentioned Retiarius there. So let's explore some of the key classes of Gladiator and what types of classes they would afford, because it's normally not same against same, is it?

Speaker 19 No, it's not normally. I mean, the basic division is big shield fighters, small shield fighters.
It's Marcus Aurelius in his usual miserable, joyless way in his meditations.

Speaker 19 He goes, you know, thank goodness my tutor taught me to never be a fan of either.

Speaker 19 along with everything else that's you know having fun sex the body anything that makes human life bearable he didn't like it it's all about duty yeah so you've got the small shield fighters the hoplomachoi they're men with a spear and a small shield then you have things like the the momelo who has a big shield and a sword most are armed with sword and shield the retiari the net and trident fighters very distinctive probably included under small shields even though they don't really have a shield at all but an armed guard.

Speaker 19 But yes, they tend not to fight the same armor type, although they can. And you tend to get matched pairs.

Speaker 22 Harry, is there any evidence for the Rhino Machoy, for the Rhino fighter, that I'm sure many of us might have seen recently?

Speaker 19 Yeah, I know you're referring to Gladiator 2, even though I haven't seen it. No, there isn't.
There's evidence for rhinos very rarely in the Coliseum, but I believe in the movie they're riding them.

Speaker 19 No, no.

Speaker 22 I think they've got a big flail as well. It's quite something, but yes, maybe that's a bit too far.
But they did have mounted gladiators, didn't they? Or chariot riding gladiators.

Speaker 19 They could be on special occasions yep they had both esidarii are the chariot riders and equitase mounted ones they're fairly common throughout the empire because there's a super book called artimodorus's how to be a dream diviner from the second century ad

Speaker 19 which um has lots of people dreaming about fighting gladiators the book's in greek the audience is greek and yeah it shows the type of gladiator you dream of fighting if you're an unmarried man indicates the character of your wife And then nine types of gladiator, and eight of the nine are really bad.

Speaker 19 So you've only got one chance of having a wife who's at all agreeable. If it's an Esidarius, the chariot-riding gladiator, your wife will be incredibly lazy.

Speaker 19 If it's a Retiarius, unfortunately, she'll be utterly promiscuous and wanton.

Speaker 19 And if it's a Dimarcheus, the one who fights with a weapon in each hand, this actually means your wife will be a cruel, malicious witch.

Speaker 22 So it's almost almost like zodiac signs, but much more infamous and with different types of gladiators.

Speaker 19 Yeah, with much more sexism and violence.

Speaker 22 Artemidorus is such a strange source. I think he also, a bit of a tangent, but I think he talks about

Speaker 22 what types of sexual position were acceptable and which weren't. And then he kind of has a hierarchy of which are worse than others as well.
He's a very bizarre source, that man.

Speaker 19 It's a bizarre source, but what a line into popular thinking.

Speaker 19 He claims all these dreams of case studies he's either got from books or illiterate dream diviners of the microphones.

Speaker 19 And essentially, in the Greek half of the Roman Empire, people were dreaming some seriously weird stuff. I mean, feeding cheese to your penis.

Speaker 19 Oh, and by the way, these dreams could be had by women too, which makes it even odder. Because Sigmund Freud was all over him.
You know, hence the Oedipus complex.

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Speaker 22 If we go back to the end of the fight, so it's been going on for, let's say, 10-15 minutes. One of the gladiators has finally been defeated.

Speaker 22 He's on the ground, and the referee is kind of basically saying he's out for the count and holding the other guy back. What would happen next?

Speaker 19 Right. The defeated gladiator then should appeal to the giver of the games.

Speaker 19 The giver of the games, in turn, utterly expected he will listen to the opinion of the spectators and they will call you know death or life

Speaker 19 and then the giver of the games will do the famous turning his thumb bit and he will make that decision.

Speaker 19 And Cafe was really vague there about the turning of the thumb because modern scholars are unanimous in their view that the modern idea of thumbs up means life, thumbs down death is the wrong way around.

Speaker 19 However, I don't agree.

Speaker 22 Again, Harry, the two big things, you're going against the tide here.

Speaker 19 Well, I am, yeah, in this one, because we have two sources that talk about turning the thumb and don't say which way it turns.

Speaker 19 The modern scholars, once you've got through the seminal scholarly article, which has a lot of weird stuff about phallic imagery in it, the argument is that thumbs up means death because the killing blow would be up into the throat.

Speaker 19 Now, the problem with that is it just doesn't fit the archaeological evidence.

Speaker 19 Once again, back to the gladiators gladiator's cemetery in Ephesus, almost all the people who died there were killed with a blow from above and behind downwards.

Speaker 19 So I think the modern popular image, all right, Hollywood is right. And in this case, the scholars are wrong.
Thumbs up did mean life. Thumbs down does mean death.

Speaker 19 If you get the thumbs down as a gladiator, you're expected to meet that fate. in a calm, stoical way.
Cicero says, have you ever seen a gladiator begging for his life after that? He doesn't answer it.

Speaker 19 It's meant to be a rhetorical question. The answer is meant to be no.
But I guess there is no way out at that point. So you might as well.

Speaker 22 Maybe that goes into that idea of the referees being, you know, people that they respected, maybe veteran gladiators and so on, to potentially give them a bit of courage right at the end if they're right next to the people that they've lived alongside for so long.

Speaker 19 Yeah, I mean, I guess it's sort of in military history terms, you know, the buddy group bonding thing.

Speaker 19 You don't at the last moment want to appear unmanned in front of the guys, as you say, you've lived with, trained with, who've trained you. You might as well die.

Speaker 19 And there is always hope because you might at the last minute be spared. Cicero, again, there's always hope out on the sand.

Speaker 22 And so the fights happen. Some gladiators die.
Many others who are defeated are spared. And so it seems like the majority of gladiators would survive a day at the arena.

Speaker 22 Do we know what would happen to them next once they're taken off the sand in the arena?

Speaker 19 The dead go out of apparently the gate of death and they are stripped of their armor.

Speaker 19 The winners and the spared go out of the gate of life and presumably go back to the barracks and get out of their armor, have a massage, eat a normal meal of horrible bean and barley stew.

Speaker 19 One of the weird bits is that there was a popular idea in the Roman Empire that the blood of a gladiator could cure epilepsy. Wow.
And their liver is very good for it.

Speaker 19 So they're kind of harvested for blood and livers, harvested for body parts, which is very strange.

Speaker 19 And it's clearly a real idea, which was almost certainly put into practice because most of our sources are medical writers. And of course, as doctors, they're saying this is ridiculous.

Speaker 19 It doesn't work. But it shows there was something they had to argue against.
So it was real.

Speaker 22 Once again, sorting fact from fiction, if a gladiator was coming off the arena floor, you know, he's exhausted, he's tired, he's sweating.

Speaker 22 Could we actually imagine people running up to him straight away with a vial or two, trying to collect as much sweat as possible to sell?

Speaker 19 I love that story. There's a brilliant article by an American scholar.
Apparently, this story goes back to an article in Sports Illustrated about 2000 AD.

Speaker 19 No, there is no evidence at all.

Speaker 22 So it's a legend.

Speaker 19 Utter legends. It's a modern myth.
It's a modern urban myth. Rumours do odd stuff.
The hair of a bride on her wedding day should be for good luck.

Speaker 19 Her hair should be parted with a spear that's killed a gladiator. But no, the sweaty aphrodisiac thing.
No, not really.

Speaker 22 Oh, well thought. Well thought, mister.
Now let me just go and collect that sweat off your brow.

Speaker 19 Sweat from you.

Speaker 22 Yeah, no, it doesn't sound quite right, does it? The final act of the games, the gladiators are off.

Speaker 22 Is there a last big act by the organizers of the games in the crowd, by the higher echelons of society.

Speaker 19 Oh, indeed, there is. I mean, this is what some people have come for: ritual gift-giving, the scattering of gifts to the crowd.

Speaker 19 And there's even a sort of mechanical device, it's like a rope-pulley thing called the line of riches.

Speaker 19 So, ropers can be wheeled out and with purses on, or pouches in that can be emptied, and things gifts are showered down on the spectators.

Speaker 19 Now, when emperors do it, if it's a bad emperor, Caracalla, Caligula, a Heliogabalus, the upper-class elite writers go, they just do it because they love watching people fight, fighting over the gifts.

Speaker 19 No, everyone does.

Speaker 19 Every giver of games does it. And you can get sort of things like fruit or little bits of nuts or tokens.
These are the good ones. You take the token in later and exchange it for the gift.

Speaker 19 You don't know what it is. And there's actually a black market in guys buying.

Speaker 19 taking a punt speculating you know i'll give you extra sterces for that token because it might be something really valuable, like £10 of gold, or it might be a joke, like a cabbage.

Speaker 22 Oh, so it's always like a bit of a lottery.

Speaker 22 A raffle almost, is it?

Speaker 19 Yeah.

Speaker 19 There's a wonderful mosaic from North Africa, which includes an inscription. It's after a beast fight.
It lists the gifts given, and

Speaker 19 this is what it's all about, the gifts to the audience. So you've got a complete day of this rounds off the day really nicely.

Speaker 19 Although you need to get out of the amphitheatre really fast, according to Seneca, because people fight over things and you might of course get mugged on your way out in this holiday atmosphere.

Speaker 22 Yes, exactly. There are also cases, isn't there, from Pompeii, you have different factions in the crowd supporting different gladiators.

Speaker 22 And if your gladiator from your city that you come from hasn't done very well, that could also breed trouble as well when you're exchanging insults.

Speaker 22 It's like leaving a football match today and it's been quite a tense atmosphere. And then whilst you're walking down to the station, you might actually mingle with some away fans.

Speaker 22 And, you know, most people are absolutely fine, but there'll be a select few who try and start something.

Speaker 19 Yeah, absolutely.

Speaker 19 And as you pointed out, there's a famous riot in Pompeii when the Pompeians and the people, spectators from a neighboring town, end up with a massive riot in which they kill a lot of people.

Speaker 19 Although, weirdly, most riots... that we know of, from spectator events in the Roman Empire, aren't gladiatorial.
It's actually at the circus, the chariot racing, or at the theatre.

Speaker 19 Especially pantomime artists who were actually kind of more like ballet than old pantomime. They had a lot of factionalism.

Speaker 19 I mean, it's very hard to imagine people rioting over ballet now, but once again, the alienness of the Romans.

Speaker 19 I think the reason that the crowds tend not to riot, be a bit better behaved at the gladiatorial shows, is the high level of security that's there.

Speaker 19 You need troops there because, let's face it, lions and trained killers pose more of a threat than a pantomime artist.

Speaker 22 Even Menristics as well. You know, they could even be a bit of trouble.

Speaker 19 Well, they can give you a nasty whacking.

Speaker 22 Oh, I can ask so many more questions. Only a couple more.
I will ask the gladiator freedom idea.

Speaker 22 I mean, was it regularly the case that some gladiators who won would be given their freedom, or did it really depend on who that figure was?

Speaker 19 Well, some certainly are given their freedom there and then, which of course is incredibly generous of the giver of the games. He's giving away an economic asset.

Speaker 19 And we do know that they are free at the end according to a ruling of hadrian at the end of five years they are free if they survived it kind of depends how what are your odds on survival and how often do you fight i mean if you only fight once or twice a year and you're only fighting for three years and the lethality of gladiatorial combat modern estimates vary between one in four chance of dying right out to one in 20 i of course go for a middle ground because i'm english I'll go probably one in eight.

Speaker 22 One in eight, one in 12, one or the other. Yeah, I mean, let's do the middle ground, absolutely, because they can't accuse you of going too far one way or the other.

Speaker 19 Exactly.

Speaker 22 Just boring, but that's what we like. So you have that, the end of the games.
Let's say they don't receive their freedom. You've either won the bout or you've lost, but then you've been spared.

Speaker 22 I mean, what would happen next? How long do you think before they'd be thrown back into the arena again?

Speaker 19 That's a really tough question.

Speaker 19 We do hear of a guy who fought during some games given by the emperor trajan he fought four times in the same games but the games lasted over a hundred days and it's you know the biggest games ever in recorded roman history it's hard to tell but there is one really good tombstone put up by the gladiator's widow Of course, technically not his widow because they're slaves and they can't legally marry, but there was claimed to be the widow, the woman of the gladiator.

Speaker 19 And this guy had been in the gladiatorial school for four years and he fought five times, once a year. Like modern boxers, there might be months and months between actually being in the arena.

Speaker 22 And just eating that, you know, the same food again and again, conditioning themselves to get ready for that one day in the arena. Yeah.
Harry, this has been absolutely fantastic.

Speaker 22 You've been on great form. Last but certainly not least, with these gladiatorial fights, we started by exploring the mysterious origins of them.
Is it a bit more clear-cut as to why and when they end?

Speaker 19 Well, I think it is, but again, no, not necessarily. The most popular scholarly reason now is money.

Speaker 19 In the third century AD, the great crisis, the Roman Empire,

Speaker 19 money becomes short. Yeah, I mean, an economic answer.
I actually kind of think that may well be a factor, but I think it's really Christianity.

Speaker 22 Christianity. Okay, yeah.

Speaker 19 I think it's Christianity. Not that thou shalt not kill bit of Christianity.

Speaker 19 It's much more that in the 300s AD, after the conversion of Constantine, against all the odds, his dynasty lasts for the best part of the next century.

Speaker 19 They're Christians, with the exception of Julian the Apostate, they offer tax breaks and advantages to the elite who will convert to Christianity, career advancement.

Speaker 19 And once you're a Christian member of the elite,

Speaker 19 you show your open-handedness, your munificence in different ways. You invest in different things and you, sure as heck, don't invest in paying for gladiatorial combat.

Speaker 19 So I think indirectly Christianity does seal the fate of gladiatorial combat.

Speaker 22 So thou shalt not invest in gladiators. Yeah.

Speaker 22 Okay, there we go.

Speaker 19 Yeah, thou shalt spend thy money in giving alms to the poor and building churches.

Speaker 22 Harry, this has been absolutely fascinating. Covered so much.
Last but certainly not least, your new book, All About What We've Talked About, The Life of a Gladiator, 24 Hours at the Games.

Speaker 19 it is called it is called those who are about to die gladiators and the roman mind harry it just goes to me to say thank you so much for taking the time to come on the podcast today tristan thank you so much for inviting me it's been fun

Speaker 21 well there you go there was the legendary dr harry sidebottom talking you through a day at the roman games and in the life of a gladiator who was competing at one of these great spectacles of ancient Rome.

Speaker 23 Harry, he is so much fun, and I hope you enjoyed this episode just as much as I did recording it. No doubt we will get Harry back on the show in the future.

Speaker 23 In the meantime, thank you for listening to this episode. Please follow the Ancients on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.
That really helps us. You'll be doing us a big favor.

Speaker 23 If you'd also be kind enough to leave us a good rating as well, well we'd really appreciate that.

Speaker 23 Don't forget you can also listen to us and all of History Hits podcasts at free and watch hundreds of TV documentaries when you subscribe at historyhit.com slash subscribe. That's all from me.

Speaker 21 I'll see you in the next episode.

Speaker 19 Hey, you.

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