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Female gladiators in ancient Rome - referred to by modern-day scholars as gladiatrix - may have been uncommon but they did exist. Evidence suggests that a number of women participated in the public games of Rome even though this practice was often criticized by Roman writers and attempts were made to regulate it through legislation.

Female gladiators are often referred to in ancient texts as ludia (female performers in a ludi, a festival or entertainment) or as mulieres (women) but not often as feminae (ladies) suggesting to some scholars that only lower-class women were drawn to the arena. There is a significant amount of evidence, however, that high-born women were as well. The term gladiatrix was never used in ancient times; it is a modern word first applied to female gladiators in the 1800's CE.

Women who chose a life in the arena - and it does seem this was a choice - may have been motivated by a desire for independence, a chance at fame, and financial rewards including remission of debt. Although it seems a woman gave up any claim to respectability as soon as she entered the arena, there is some evidence to suggest that female gladiators were honored as highly as their male counterparts.

Role of Women in Rome

Women in Rome - whether during time of the Republic or the later Empire - had few freedoms and were defined by their relationship to men. Scholar Brian K. Harvey writes:

Unlike men's virtues, women were praised for their home and married life. Their virtues included sexual fidelity ( castitas), a sense of decency ( pudicitia), love for her husband ( caritas), marital concord ( concordia), devotion to family ( pietas), fertility ( fecunditas), beauty ( pulchritude), cheerfulness ( hilaritas), and happiness ( laetitia)...As exemplified by the power of the paterfamilias [husband or father, head of the house], Rome was a patriarchal society. (59)

Whether upper or lower class, women were expected to adhere to traditional expectations of behavior. Women's status is made clear through the many works by male writers which deal with the subject in depth and well as various legislative decrees. It is not known how women felt about their position since almost all the extant literature from Rome is written by men. Harvey notes that "we have almost no literary source that reveals a woman's perspective on her own life or the role of women in general" (59).

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The one exception to this is the poetry of Sulpicia (1st century BCE). In her first poem, celebrating falling in love, she says how she does not want to hide her love in "sealed documents" but will express it in verse and writes, "It is nice to go against the grain, as it is tiresome for a woman to constantly force her appearance to fit her reputation" (Harvey, 77). This reputation, of course, was forced upon a woman by males; first her father and then her husband.

Inscriptions make clear that some women chose their own path as female gladiators & it seems this option was open to them over a considerable length of time.

Sulpicia was the daughter of Servius Sulpicius Rufus (c. 106-43 BCE), an author, orator, and jurist who was famous for his eloquence. As a writer himself, his daughter's literary pursuits were most likely encouraged but this was hardly the case for most women. Even in her case, she was still under the control of her father and her uncle Marcus Valerius Messalla Corvinus (c. 64 BCE-8 CE). In her second poem, Sulpicia complains about Messalla's control over her in making birthday plans, writing that her uncle does "not allow me to live at my own discretion" (Harvey, 77).

Messalla Corvinus, like his brother, was also an author and an important patron of the arts. Sulpicia, then, was most likely brought up in an enlightened home where women could pursue literary endeavors and, based on her other poems, she also seems to have had the freedom to pursue a love affair with a man she calls Cerinthus who did not meet with the approval of her family. Even in this "liberated" environment, however, she still felt constrained and so it may be assumed a woman had far less freedom of choice in other more conservative homes.

Legislation Concerning Female Gladiators

It is due to the well-established patriarchy of Rome and women's place in it that scholars have had such difficulty accepting the concept of female gladiators. References to ludia are often interpreted to mean actresses in a religious festival - and this is an accurate interpretation - but the context of the term in some inscriptions makes clear that some women chose their own path as female gladiators and it seems this option was open to them over a considerable length of time.

In 11 CE the Roman Senate passed a law forbidding freeborn women under the age of 20 from participating in the games of the arena. This suggests the practice had been ongoing for some time previously. It should be noted that the decree specifies "freeborn females", not female slaves, who are assumed to have still been able to participate. Emperor Septemus Severus (193-211 CE) outlawed participation of any woman in the arena in 200 CE, claiming that such spectacles encouraged a lack of respect for women in general.

He was also motivated by the concern that women, if allowed to train as athletes, would want to participate in the Olympic Games in Greece; a prospect he found distasteful and threatening to the social order. Interestingly, his decree seems to have been motivated by the participation of high-born free women in the games - those who would have had all their material needs provided - who may have preferred the life of a gladiator to having their choices limited by male relatives.

Women were still fighting in the arena later in the 3rd century CE as evidenced by an inscription from Ostia, the port city near Rome.

In spite of the Severan decree, women were still fighting in the arena later in the 3rd century CE as evidenced by an inscription from Ostia, the port city near Rome. This inscription notes that the magistrate of the city, one Hostilianus, was the first to allow women to fight in the arena since Ostia's founding. The wording of the inscription specifies that Hostilianus allowed mulieres to fight, not feminae and so it may be that Hostilianus was able to get around Severus' law by some legal loophole whereby free born ladies of the upper class were still prohibited but lower-class women and female slaves could still participate in the games.

Gladiators & the Games

The gladiatorial games began as an aspect of funeral services. Following the interment and funerary rituals, paid fighters would engage in games where they would enact scenes from popular literature and legend - or from the life of the deceased - as a tribute. Harvey notes that "the term for these games was munus (plural munera), which connoted a duty or obligation as well as a gift" (309). These games became increasingly popular entertainment with the people and eventually lost their association with funeral rites. Aristocrats - especially those running for office - would sponsor games to win support and these events eventually grew to include official celebrations of an emperor's birthday, coronation, or other state events.

The first gladiatorial games were held in 264 BCE by the sons of the senator Brutus Pera to honor their father after his funeral. They would continue for the next few centuries until finally outlawed under Honorius in 404 CE. During this time, thousands of people and animals would die in the arena for the entertainment of the people.

Contrary to popular opinion and depictions in film, gladiators were not sent into the arena to die and most contests did not end in death. Convicted criminals ( damnati) were executed in the arena but most of those who fought there were slaves who had been highly trained and were quite valuable to their owners.

The Roman writer Seneca (4 BCE-65 CE) describes a noon show at the arena which took place during the intermission between the morning and evening spectacles. This would have been the time of day when criminals were executed. These would include those convicted of serious crimes, deserters from the army, and those who incited sedition or were guilty of blasphemy or various other crimes against the state. Christians would eventually be included in the noon intermission spectacles:

These noon fighters are sent out with no armor of any kind; they are exposed to blows at all points, and no one ever strikes in vain...The crowd demands that the victor who has slain his opponent shall face the man who will slay him in turn; and the last conqueror is reserved for another butchering. The outcome for the combatants is death; the fight is waged with sword and fire. ( Moral Epistles VII.3-5)

Seneca's description has become ingrained in the popular imagination as the paradigm of the games in the arena. Actual gladiatorial games ( Ludum gladiatorium) were significantly different and the outcome was not always death. The opponents were evenly matched and would fight until one of them dropped shield and weapon, lifting a finger to signal surrender. The individual who sponsored the games (known as the munerarius) would then pause the fight. At this point, the famous pollice verso ("with thumb turned") was given.

Gladiators certainly could be killed in their first fight in the arena but there are memorials & inscriptions which show that many fought & lived for years.

It is unclear whether the "thumbs down" meant death and it has been suggested the gesture was the munerarius' thumb drawn across his throat. The munerarius would consider the opinion of the crown before rendering a decision and could easily grant missio (allowing the gladiator to live) and call the contest with a decision of stans missus ("sent away standing") which meant a draw. More gladiators were spared at this moment than killed because, if the munerarius chose death, he would have to compensate the lanista (owner of the gladiator) for the loss.

Gladiators certainly could be killed in their first fight in the arena but there are memorials and inscriptions which show that many fought and lived for years. It has been suggested, in fact, that female gladiators were often the daughters of retired gladiators who trained them. Gladiatorial schools abounded in Rome since their founding in c. 105 BCE and more schools proliferated in the colonies and provinces as the empire expanded.

Upon entering a Gladiatorial school, the novice took a vow to allow himself (or herself) to be whipped, burned and killed with steel and gave up all rights to his - or her - own life. The gladiator became the property of the master of the school who regulated everything in that person's life, from diet to daily exercise and, of course, trained the person to fight.

At the same time, it does not seem that women trained with men in the schools and there is no record of a woman fighting a man in any of the shows. Female gladiators were most likely trained by their fathers or in private lessons with a lanista. Wooden swords were used in training by both men and women following the revolt of the gladiator Spartacus (73-71 BCE) who had used the iron weapons of his school to launch the insurrection. Men and women were trained in different types of combat and there were four types of gladiator:

The Myrmillo (Murmillo) had a helmet (with a fish crest), oblong shield and sword.

The Retiarius (who usually fought a Myrmillo): lightly armed with a net and trident or dagger.

The Samnite had a sword, visored helmet, and oblong shield.

The Thracian (Thrax): armed with a curved blade (a sica) and round shield.

Each gladiator was taught to fight in one of these four disciplines and the reward for excellence in combat could be fame, fortune, and a lifestyle which "respectable" women in Rome could never dream of. In a later passage from the Moral Epistles cited above, Seneca complains that the people always needed to have some form of entertainment going on at the arena besides the standard shows and this need may have initially been met by female entertainers fighting dwarves (Adkins & Adkins, 348). In time, however, women left off participating in these kinds of shows to become gladiators.

Physical Evidence for Female Gladiators

Discovered in 1996 CE and announced in September 2000 CE, the Remains of Great Dover Street Woman (also referred to as "Gladiator Girl") provided physical evidence to back up the substantial literary evidence from antiquity that women fought as gladiators in the arena. The woman's pelvis was all that remained of the body after cremation but the abundance of expensive oil lamps, together with other evidence of a large and luxurious feast and the presence of pine cones (burned at the arena to purify it after the games) all contribute to the conclusion that this was the grave of a respected gladiator who was a woman.

Aside from the Great Dover Street Woman, physical evidence for female gladiators comes from a c. 2nd century CE relief found in Bodrum, Turkey which clearly depicts two of them, the above-mentioned inscription found at Ostia, a ceramic shard (thought to have been a pendant), found in Leicester, England, and a statue of a female gladiator (of unknown origin but in the style of the Italian peninsula) currently housed at the Museum fur Kunst und Gewerbein in Hamburg, Germany.

The relief depicts two women - clearly gladiators - and gives their stage names under their feet as Amazon and Achillia. They were most likely gladiators who enacted the famous story of Achilles and the Amazon queen Penthesilea (from Biblioteca of Pseudo Apollodorus, 2nd century CE) in which Achilles slays the queen in battle at Troy and then falls in love with her and regrets his actions.

Above the two figures is the inscription indicating stans missus, meaning the women had fought to an honorable draw. These two would have been Myrmillo or Samnite gladiators based on their shields and swords. The two round objects by each of the figures' feet are thought to be their helmets; but what type of helmet is unclear. The women in the relief must have been popular performers to have merited the expense of the work.

The ceramic shard is inscribed Verecunda Ludia Lucius Gladiator which translates as "Verecunda the performer and Lucius the Gladiator". As noted, ludia can be interpreted as "female gladiator" and this ceramic has been claimed as proof that this Verecunda performed as one. Conversely, it could be interpreted to mean that she was simply an actress who was Lucius the gladiator's girlfriend.

The statue in Hamburg, which for years was interpreted as a woman cleaning herself with a strigil (a curved implement for scraping the body during bathing) is now understood as more likely a female gladiator holding a raised sica. The figure stands in a triumphant pose with the sica held high, bare-chested, in only a loincloth. This depiction fits the descriptions of female gladiators who, like their male counterparts, fought topless in only a loincloth, minimal armor protecting the shins and arms, and a helmet.

The statue is thought to represent a female thrax gladiator who has discarded her helmet in victory (as was common practice) and raised her weapon in triumph. Critics of this interpretation note that the figure is not wearing a greave (shin armor) and so is probably not a gladiator; but the band around the figure's left knee could be a fascia, a band worn to protect the knee under the greave.

Literary Evidence for Gladiatrix

There is also ample literary evidence to support the existence of female gladiators. The Roman satirist Juvenal (1st/2nd century CE), medical author Celsus (2nd century CE), historian Tacitus (54-120 CE), historian Suetonius (69-130 CE), and historian Cassius Dio (155-235 CE), among others, wrote on the subject and always critically.

In his Satires, Juvenal wrote:

What sense of shame can be found in a woman wearing a helmet, who shuns femininity and loves brute force...If an auction is held of your wife's effects, how proud you will be of her belt and arm-pads and plumes, and her half-length left-leg shin-guard! Or, if instead, she prefers a different form of combat how pleased you will be when the girl of your heart sells off her greaves! Hear her grunt while she practices thrusts as shown by the trainer, wilting under the weight of the helmet. (VI.252)

Tacitus notes:

Many ladies of distinction, however, and senators, disgraced themselves by appearing in the Amphitheatre. ( Annals, XV.32)

Cassius Dio expands on Tacitus' description:

There was another exhibition that was at once most disgraceful and most shocking, when men and women not only of the equestrian but even of the senatorial order appeared as performers in the orchestra, in the Circus, and in the [ Colosseum], like those who are held in lowest esteem. Some of them played the flute and danced in pantomimes or acted in tragedies and comedies or sang to the lyre; they drove horses, killed wild beasts and fought as gladiators. ( Roman History (LXI.17.3)

Conclusion

Scholarly consensus on the existence of female gladiators is far from uniform but the evidence from Roman sources weighs heavily on the side of accepting them as historical reality. The arguments against this claim largely hinge on interpreting ancient Latin texts and what certain terms - such as ludia - may or may not have referred to. Even so, it is difficult to understand how one can dismiss the relief of Amazon and Achillia or the literary and legal works which clearly indicate women's participation in the games as gladiators.

Women may have been considered second-class citizens by the patriarchy but this does not mean every woman accepted that status. Many high-born women were able to exert considerable control over their husbands, homes, and even at court. Juvenal, in the same book of his Satires noted above, makes clear exactly how powerful women could be, in fact, in controlling men who still believed they were the masters. In the case of female gladiators, it seems some women were not content even with that level of autonomy, however, and sought to control their own fate in the arena.

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Female gladiators in ancient Rome - referred to by modern-day scholars as gladiatrix - may have been uncommon but they did exist. Evidence suggests that a number of women participated in the public games of Rome even though this practice was often criticized by Roman writers and attempts were made to regulate it through legislation.

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Although their existence is often overlooked, female gladiators fought, died and could even win their freedom from the Roman arena.

In films like Gladiator, the depiction of Roman fighters within the Colosseum or the myriad other amphitheaters around the Mediterranean that hosted gladiatorial shows are often exclusively male. When women are presented in the arena today, they are often cast as victims. The example of the 3rd century CE early Christian martyrs Perpetua and Felicitas being killed within the amphitheater at Carthage is just one example. Film and TV might lead the modern viewer to see women as passive parts of the Roman games, but in reality, both literary and archaeological examples attest to the use of trained female fighters within the arena.

The use of the word 'gladiatrix' (pl. gladiatrices)is a pseudo-Latin term for these fighters not actually applied in antiquity. In reality, there was a great deal of ambiguity about how one should refer to them. The Roman satirists Martial and Juvenal employ the word ' ludia', which could also be used to refer to an actress or a theatrical dancer, but is most often used to refer to a gladiator's wife.

The status of these fighters is an oft-discussed point in the literature on these women. Those that were a part of the arena were given a debilitating legal and social stigma called infamia. Yet this did not stop some Roman elites from fighting anyways. The historian Tacitus notes that during the reign of Nero, there were high-ranking women who entered into gladiatorial combat and fought: "Many ladies of distinction, however, and senators, disgraced themselves by appearing in the amphitheater." Historian Barbara Levick has argued that the ban on elite women participating in the arena likely first came into effect under the emperor Augustus, in 22 BCE. We know that the emperor Septimius Severus re-banned elite women from fighting in the arena in 200 CE. Clearly there was a lure for both men and women.

Other women used in Roman games were brought in as an exotic (and quite racist) spectacle, as when Nero presented Ethiopian women as part of a set of games he put on at Puteoli ( Dio 62.3). Women appear to have participated in bear hunts called venationes as well. Many used swords and full armor when fighting during games put on in the early Principate. In other words, these women must have been just as skilled with a spear, a net or a gladius as many of the men put on display in the games.

The archaeological evidence for these female gladiators is admittedly sparse. A relief from Ostia (i.e. Rome's port) mentions a man who put on games with female fighters. Additionally, a relief (above) from the British Museum in London originally from Halicarnassus (modern Bodrum) supplies the best material evidence for these women.

It dates to the early Roman empire and depicts two women with fictional show-names that are not all that different from a WWE wrestler name today. Lots of male gladiators pulled their names from Homeric characters: Ajax, Patroclus and Hector are all attested names. The labels below the two women read in Greek "Achillia" (the female version of "Achilles") and "Amazon"--which is likely referring to the myth of Achilles fighting the Amazonian queen Penthesilea. Above the relief of these two armor-clad women is the Greek inscription ἀπελύθησαν ('they were freed'). This likely indicates they received a missio-- freedom from service within the arena for that fight alone.

As gladiator expert Kathleen Coleman has argued, the relief likely depicts a draw in the match, wherein a tie was declared by the umpire. They would have then returned to the barracks of the gladiatorial familia that they belonged to and lived to fight another day. Others have argued that the relief shows they were granted full freedom from the games altogether. It is unlikely that we can ever know the full circumstances, but the relief provides a vivid illustration to accompany the tales transmitted by many ancient sources.

The literary and material evidence collectively proves that the Roman arena was not exclusively populated by male fighters, as modern film and TV often suggests. Skilled women could engage in combat within the arena as well. By extension, there must have also been many enslaved and more invisible women who did not choose this life and whom we know little about today. These lower status female gladiators should be remembered along with the more elite women mentioned by our sources. Just as senatorial and equestrian men did, some Roman women were so enamored by the arena that they volunteered for gladiatorial combat in the hopes of hearing the crowd chant their name and celebrate their victories just as they had for the male stars of the Colosseum.
Further Reading on Female Gladiators:
Coleman, Kathleen. (2000) " Missio at Halicarnassus", Harvard Studies in Classical Philology 100: 487-500.

Fagan, Garrett. The Lure of the Arena: Social Psychology and the Crowd at the Roman Games. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011.

Levick, Barbara. "The Senatus Consultum from Larinum." The Journal of Roman Studies 73 (1983): 97-115.

McCullough, Anna. "Female Gladiators in Imperial Rome: Literary Context and Historical Fact." The Classical World 101, no. 2 (2008): 197-209.

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Female Gladiators Were A Part Of The Lure Of The Roman Arena Too

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Although their existence is often overlooked, female gladiators fought, died and could even win their freedom from the Roman arena. In films like Gladiator, the depiction of Roman fighters within the Colosseum or the myriad other amphitheaters around the Mediterranean that hosted gladiatorial shows are often exclusively male.

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Gladiators Didn't Die As Often As You Think

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Contrary to popular opinion, the chances of survival in gladiatorial games were higher than originally thought. In fact, only 1 in 9 fights ended in death.

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The Truth About Ancient Gladiators | Adam Ruins Everything

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Edpuzzle video lesson. Make any video your lesson. Take a video and crop it, add your voice or embed questions at any point.

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Ancient Rome's gladiators lived and trained in fortress prisons, according to an international team of archaeologists who mapped a school for the famed fighters.

Discovered at the site of Carnuntum outside Vienna, Austria, the gladiatorial school, or ludus gladiatorius, is the first one discovered outside the city of Rome. Now hidden beneath a pasture, the gladiator school was entirely mapped with noninvasive earth-sensing technologies. (See " Gladiator Training Camp.")

The discovery, reported Tuesday evening by the journal , makes clear what sort of lives these famous ancient warriors led during the second century A.D. in the Roman Empire.

"It was a prison; they were prisoners," says Wolfgang Neubauer, an archaeologist at Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for Archaeological Prospection and Virtual Archaeology who led the study team. "They lived in cells, in a fortress with only one gate out."

The discovery shows that even outside Rome gladiators were "big business," Neubauer says. At least 80 gladiators, likely more, lived in the large, two-story facility equipped with a practice arena in its central courtyard. The site also included heated floors for winter training, baths, infirmaries, plumbing, and a nearby graveyard.

The gladiators were clearly valued slaves, Neubauer says, kept apart and separate from the town of Carnuntum, which was founded on the Danube River by the Emperor Hadrian in A.D. 124 and later became a Roman stronghold.

"The find at Carnuntum gives us a vivid impression of what it was like to live and train as a gladiator on the chilly northern border of the Roman Empire," says gladiator expert Kathleen Coleman of Harvard, who was not part of the study team.

Although more than 100 gladiator schools were built throughout the Roman Empire, the only known remnants are in Rome, Carnuntum, and Pompeii (which had small, private gladiatorial grounds). Within the 118,400-square-foot (11,000-square-meter) walled compound at the Austrian site, gladiators trained year-round for combat at a nearby public amphitheater.

"They weren't killed very often, they were too valuable," Neubauer says. "Lots of other people were likely killed at the amphitheater, people not trained to fight. And there was lots of bloodshed. But the combat between gladiators was the point of them performing, not them killing each other."

The gladiators slept in 32-square-foot (3-square-meter) cells, home to one or two people. Those cells were kept separate from a wing holding bigger rooms for their trainers, known as magistri, themselves retired survivors of gladiatorial combat who specialized in teaching one style of weaponry and fighting.

"The similarities show that gladiators were housed and trained in the provinces in the same way as in the metropolis [of Rome]," Coleman says. The one gate exiting the compound faced a road leading to the town's public amphitheater, reportedly the fourth largest in the empire.

The fortress prison also undermines the image of gladiators as traveling from town to town in a circus-like setting, as seen in the movie Gladiator released in 2000. (Another film set in the ancient Roman era, , is opening this week.)

"They weren't a team," Neubauer says. "Each one was on his own, training to fight, and learning who they would combat at a central post we can see the remains of in our survey."

Neubauer expects to continue aboveground mapping efforts at Carnuntum, which is proving to have been a surprisingly large town.

Analysis of bones from a gladiator graveyard in Ephesus, Turkey, suggests that gladiators ate a largely vegetarian diet, Neubauer notes. The team hopes to eventually perform a similar analysis on bones from the gladiator graveyard in Carnuntum, in a further attempt to explore the real lives of these ancient warriors.

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Gladiator School Discovery Reveals Hard Lives of Ancient Warriors

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Ancient Rome's gladiators lived and trained in fortress prisons, according to an international team of archaeologists who mapped a school for the famed fighters. Discovered at the site of Carnuntum outside Vienna, Austria, the gladiatorial school, or ludus gladiatorius, is the first one discovered outside the city of Rome.

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Gladiators, Chariots, and the Roman Games [ushistory.org]

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Gladiators, Chariots, and the Roman Games

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A Roman gladiator was an ancient professional fighter who usually specialised with particular weapons and types of armour. They fought before the public in hugely popular organised games held in large purpose-built arenas throughout the Roman Empire from 105 BCE to 404 CE (official contests).

As fights were usually to the death, gladiators had a short life expectancy and so, although it was in some respects a glamorous profession, the majority of fighters were slaves, former slaves or condemned prisoners. Without doubt, gladiator spectacles were one of the most-watched forms of popular entertainment in the Roman world.

The Romans were influenced by their predecessors in Italy, the Etruscans, in many ways. For example, in the use of animal sacrifice for divining the future, the use of the symbolic and organising gladiatorial games. The Etruscans associated these contests with the rites of death and so they had a certain religious significance. Although the first privately organised Roman gladiator contests in 264 BCE were to commemorate the death of a father, the later official contests discarded this element. Vestiges of the religious origins did, however, remain in the act of finishing off fallen gladiators. In this case, an attendant would strike a blow to the forehead of the injured. The attendant would wear a costume representing Hermes the messenger god who escorted souls to the underworld or Charun (the Etruscan equivalent). The presence of the divine Emperor himself, accompanied by priests and the Vestal Virgins also lent a certain pseudo-religious air to the contests.

Gladiator games were a bloody entertainment & the gladiator contests were literally a matter of life & death.

Kings of Entertainment

Roman gladiator games were an opportunity for emperors and rich aristocrats to display their wealth to the populace, to commemorate military victories, mark visits from important officials, celebrate birthdays or simply to distract the populace from the political and economic problems of the day. The appeal to the public of the games was as bloody entertainment and the fascination which came from contests which were literally a matter of life and death. Hugely popular events were held in massive arenas throughout the Roman Empire, with the Colosseum (or Flavian Amphitheatre) the biggest of them all. Thirty, forty or even fifty thousand spectators from all sections of Roman society flocked to be entertained by gory spectacles where wild and exotic animals were hunted, prisoners were executed, religious martyrs were thrown to the lions and the stars of the show, symbols of the Roman virtues of honour and courage, the gladiators, employed all their martial skills in a kill or be killed contest. It is a popular misconception that gladiators saluted their emperor at the beginning of each show with the line: Ave imperator, morituri te salutant! (Hail emperor, we who are about to die salute you!), whereas, in reality, this line was said by prisoners about to be killed in the mock naval battles ( naumachia), also held in the arenas on special occasions.

Gladiators most often came from a slave or criminal background but also many prisoners of war were forced to perform in the arenas. There were also cases of bankrupt aristocrats forced to earn a living by the sword, for example, Sempronius, a descendant of the powerful Gracchi clan. It is also of note that until their outlaw by Septimius Severus in 200 CE, women were permitted to fight as gladiators. There were special gladiator schools set up throughout the Empire; Rome itself had three such barracks and Capua was particularly famous for the gladiators produced there. Agents scouted the empire for potential gladiators to meet the ever-increasing demand and fill the training schools which must have had a phenomenal turnover of fighters. Conditions in the schools were similar to any other prison, small cells and shackles for all, however, the food was better (e.g. fortifying barley), and trainees received the best possible medical attention; they were, after all, an expensive investment.

The Thracian gladiator had a curved short sword ( sica) & a very small square or round shield ( parma).

Armour & Weapons

The term gladiator derives from the Latin gladiatores in reference to their principal weapon the gladius or short sword. However, there was a wide range of other weapons employed in gladiator contests. The gladiators also wore armour and their helmets, in particular, were objects of great workmanship, richly embossed with decorative motifs and set with ostrich or peacock plumed crests. Weapons and armour though depended on which class a gladiator belonged to. There were four principal classes:

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The Samnite

The Thracian

The Myrmillo

The Retiarius

The Samnite class was named after the great Samnite warriors that Rome had fought and beaten in the early years of the Republic. Interestingly, the Romans, at least in the early days, used gladiator and Samnite as synonyms, suggesting an alternative origin to Etruscan for these contests. The most heavily armed, the Samnite had a sword or lance, a large square shield ( scutum) and protective armour on his right (sword) arm and left leg. The Thracian gladiator had a curved short sword ( sica) and a very small square or round shield ( parma) held in the fist to deflect blows. The Myrmillo gladiator was sometimes known as the fishman as he had a fish-shaped crest on his helmet. Like the Samnite, he carried a short sword and scutum but had armour only of padding on arm and leg. The Retiarius had no helmet or armour other than a padded shoulder piece and he carried a weighted net. He would try to entangle his opponent by throwing the net and then stab with his trident.

Gladiators fought in particular combinations, usually to provide a contrast between slower, more heavily armoured classes such as the Myrmillo against quicker, less protected gladiators such as the Retiarius. There were many other lesser types of gladiators with various combinations of weapons and armour and names changed over time, for example, 'Samnite' and ' Gaul' became politically incorrect when these nations became allies. Other types of combatants also included archers, boxers, and the bestiarii who fought animals in the wild beast hunts.

Winners & Losers

Those who lacked the enthusiasm to fight were cajoled by their manager ( lanista) and his team of slaves who brandished leather whips or red-hot metal bars. No doubt the indignant roars from 40,000 spectators and the unrelenting attacks of one's opponent also convinced many to fight till the end. There were cases of refusal to fight: Perhaps one of the more famous was in the gladiator games organised by Quintus Aurelius Symmachus c. 401 CE when the Germanic prisoners who were scheduled to fight decided instead to strangle each other in their cells rather than provide a spectacle for the Roman populace.

The losing gladiator, if not killed outright, often appealed for mercy by dropping his weapon and shield and raising a finger. His adversary could then decide to be lenient, although, as there was a significant risk of meeting again in the arena, it was considered good professional practice to kill your opponent. If the emperor were present then he would decide, although the crowd would certainly try to influence his judgement by waving cloths or gesturing with their hands - raised thumbs and shouts of Mitte! meant 'let him go', thumbs down ( pollice verso) and Iugula! meant 'execute him'.

Victors in the contests, particularly those with many fights behind them, became darlings of the crowd and as surviving graffiti on Roman buildings indicates, they were particularly popular with women - cases of affairs with aristocratic ladies and even elopement were not unknown. Graffiti from Pompeii gives a fascinating insight into how the gladiators were seen by the general public: Oceanus 'the barmaid's choice' or another was described as decus puellarum, suspirium puellarum (the delight and sighed-for joy of girls) and also written were how many victories some attained: Petronius Octavius 35 (his last), Severus 55, Nascia 60. However, it should be noted that the average was much lower and there were even some games in which victors fought other winners until only one gladiator was left standing. More material rewards for winning one's contest included the prestigious palm branch of victory, often a crown, a silver dish heaped with prize money and perhaps, after years of victories, even freedom.

Emperor Commodus (180-192 CE) was keen & mad enough to compete himself in the gladiator arena.

Famous Gladiators

Perhaps the most famous gladiator of all was Spartacus, who led an uprising of gladiators and slaves from Capua, the leading producer of gladiators, in 73 BCE. From Thrace, the former Roman soldier had become a bandit until his capture and forced training as a gladiator. He and seventy comrades escaped from their training school and set up a defensive camp on the slopes of Vesuvius. Besieged, they then fled their position and rampaged through the countryside of Campania, collecting followers as they went and moulding them into an efficient fighting force. Battling his way north to the Alps, Spartacus displayed great military leadership in defeating four Roman armies on no less than nine occasions. Far from being a saint though, when a friend died in battle, Spartacus, in the old custom, arranged for three hundred Roman prisoners to fight gladiator contests in honour of his fallen comrade. After two years of revolt, the armies of Marcus Licinius Crassus finally cornered and quashed the rebels in Apulia in the south of Italy. As a warning to others, 6,000 of the prisoners were crucified along the Appian Way between Capua and Rome. Another consequence of this disturbing episode was that from then on, the number of gladiators owned by private citizens was strictly controlled.

Another famous gladiator was, in fact, a non-professional. Emperor Commodus (r. 180-192 CE) was keen and mad enough to compete himself in the arena, indeed, there were even rumours that he was the illegitimate son of a gladiator. One might argue that Commodus was a professional as he made sure to draw a fantastic salary for his appearances in the Colosseum. However, it is unlikely that Commodus, usually dressed as Mercury, was ever in any real danger during the hundreds of contests he fought in the arena, and his most frequent participation was as a slaughterer of wild animals, usually from a protected platform using a bow.

The End of the Show

Gladiator contests, at odds with the new Christian-minded Empire, finally came to an end in 404 CE. Emperor Honorius had closed down the gladiator schools five years before and the final straw for the games came when a monk from Asia Minor, one Telemachus, leapt between two gladiators to stop the bloodshed and the indignant crowd stoned the monk to death. Honorius in consequence formally prohibited gladiatorial contests, although, condemned criminals continued the wild animal hunts for another century or so. Many Romans no doubt lamented the loss of a pastime that was such a part of the fabric of Roman life, but the end of all things Roman was near, for, just six years later, the Visigoths led by Alaric would sack the Eternal City itself.

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A Roman gladiator was an ancient professional fighter who usually specialised with particular weapons and types of armour. They fought before the public in hugely popular organised games held in large purpose-built arenas throughout the Roman Empire from 105 BCE to 404 CE (official contests).

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Located in Austria, the archaeological site is providing rich new details about the lives and deaths of the arena combatants

By Franz Lidz; Photographs by Luca Locatelli

Wolfgang Neubauer stands in the grassy clearing and watches a drone soar low over distant stands of birch and white poplar, the leaves still speckled with overnight rain. Vast fields of wheat roll away north and south under a huge dome of sky. "I'm interested in what lies hidden beneath this landscape," says the Austrian archaeologist. "I hunt for structures now invisible to the human eye."

On the edge of the meadow, two boys stand a long way apart, arms clenched by their sides, punting a soccer ball very slowly and carefully from one to the other. Neubauer studies them keenly. A professor at the Vienna Institute for Archaeological Science, he's an authority on the first games played on this ersatz pitch, a blood sport popular a couple of millennia ago. "You see a field," he tells a visitor from the United States. "I see a gladiator school."

Way back in A.D. 6, during the expansion of the Roman Empire along the Danube and into present-day Germany, the future emperor Tiberius reached this spot and established a winter encampment. Carnuntum, as the camp would be called, flourished under the protection of the legions and became a center of the amber trade. The army and townspeople lived apart, but in symbiotic amity. "In the civilian city, large public buildings like temples, a forum and thermal baths were built," says Neubauer. "The town had paved roads and an extensive sewage system."

During its second-century prime, Carnuntum was a key Roman capital of a province that spanned the landmass of what is now Austria and much of the Balkans. The frontier town boasted a burgeoning population and a gladiator school whose size and scale was said to rival the Ludus Magnus, the great training center immediately to the east of the Colosseum in Rome. Toward the end of the glory days of the Roman realm, the emperor Marcus Aurelius held sway from Carnuntum and made war on Germanic tribes known as the Marcomanni. There, too, his 11-year-old son, Commodus, likely first witnessed the gladiatorial contests that would become his ruling passion.

After a series of barbarian invasions, Carnuntum was completely abandoned early in the fifth century A.D. Eventually, the buildings collapsed, too, and merged into the landscape. Though archaeologists have been digging and theorizing at the 1,600-acre site on and off since the 1850s, only remnants survive-a bath complex, a palace, a temple of Diana, the foundations of two amphitheaters (one capable of holding 13,000 spectators) and a monumental arch known as the Heidentor (Heathens' Gate) that looms in battered splendor at the edge of town.

Stretching for nearly three miles between the modern-day villages of Petronell-Carnuntum and Bad Deutsch-Altenburg, Carnuntum is one of the largest preserved archaeological parks of its kind in Europe. For the last two decades Neubauer has quarterbacked a series of excavations at the site with noninvasive techniques. Using remote-sensing and ground-penetrating radar (GPR) to peer through layers of earth, the researchers have located and identified the forum; the garrison of the governor's guard; an extensive network of shops and meeting halls; and, in 2011, the storied gladiator school-the most complete ludus found outside Rome and Pompeii.

"Never before had archaeologists made such important discoveries without excavation," says Neubauer, who is also director of the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for Archaeological Prospection and Virtual Archaeology (LBI ArchPro). His work is the subject of a new Smithsonian Channel documentary, Lost City of Gladiators. With the aid of three-dimensional computer modeling, his team has reimagined what the ludus looked like.

The subterranean surveys and a limited traditional dig, Neubauer says, have revealed a transfixing, mysterious underworld- the ludus is teeming with unseen buildings, graves, armaments and other relics. "Our understanding of the schools has been totally reshaped," he says. "Until now, we knew very little about them because we never looked inside."

The discoveries-slow, careful, uncinematic-are not the stuff Hollywood movies are made of. Digital archaeology isn't drama, but a gradual accretion of detail. By systematically mapping the terrain, Neubauer's researchers have provided a more detailed and vivid picture of the lives (and deaths) of the gladiators than was ever before available-and deepened our understanding of the terrifying power of Imperial Rome.

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Neubauer is 52-a bit thickening around the middle, a bit graying at the temples. A rumpled figure with hair parted down the middle and eyebrows like small hedges, he's a pioneer in remote sensing and geophysical prospection-noninvasive techniques that make it possible to identify structures and anomalies underground without disturbing a site. "Most of the Middle European archaeological heritage is under a massive threat of destruction," he says. "That threat has been dramatically accelerated by intensive farming and industrial transformation of landscapes."

One of the challenges of traditional excavation is that archaeologists can focus only on isolated sections and that once they start poking around, the site is demolished and the possibility of further study eliminated. "Even when excavation is conducted with care, it's still destruction," says Neubauer. "The geophysical prospection we use at LBI ArchPro covers large expanses and leaves what is buried intact."

Neubauer grew up at a time when an archaeologist's toolkit consisted of a spade, a shovel and a toothbrush. ("No, I never used a divining rod," he says.) He was born in the Swiss market town of Altstätten, near the border of Austria. Hiking in the Rhine Valley piqued young Wolfgang's interest in Bronze Age peoples and their cultures. At the precocious age of 15, he went on his first dig.

Wolfgang drew early inspiration from the village of Hallstatt, a ribbon of land squeezed between a lake and mountains, where, in 1734, the Man in the Salt-a preserved body-was found. "Hallstatt was one of the earliest European settlements," he says. "Its salt mine has been continuously worked since 1000 B.C."

Because space is at a premium in Hallstatt, for centuries the crammed cemetery gained new ground by burying and then exhuming bodies. The graves were reused, says Neubauer, and disinterred skulls cleaned and exposed to the sun until they were bleached white. "Then they were arranged in a Beinhaus, or bone house," he reports. Inside that little ossuary-piled with the neatly stacked remains of generations of Hallstatters-are more than 1,200 skulls, many gaily painted with the names of the former owners and the dates on which they died. Neubauer delights in the motifs that adorn them: roses, oak and laurel leaves, trailing ivy and sometimes snakes.

His unusual mixture of meticulous organization and free-ranging imagination proved invaluable at the University of Vienna and the Vienna University of Technology, where he dabbled in archaeology, archaeometry, mathematics and computer science. By age 21, Neubauer was developing his own prospection methods in Hallstatt. He spent a year and a half excavating the tunnels in the salt mine. Over the last three decades Neubauer has been field director of more than 200 geophysical surveys.

LBI ArchPro was launched in 2010 to conduct large-scale landscape archaeology projects in Europe. At Stonehenge, the most comprehensive underground analysis yet undertaken of the Neolithic site found evidence of 17 previously unknown wooden or stone shrines and dozens of massive prehistoric pits, some of which seem to form astronomic alignments (Smithsonian, September 2014). "Stonehenge is more or less at the bottom of a really big national arena," Neubauer says. "Along the horizon, dozens of burial mounds look down at the stones."

He got involved with Carnuntum in the late 1990s through the University of Vienna's Institute for Archaeological Science. "The park is unique in that, unlike almost every other Roman site, it's mainly countryside that has never been built over," he says. Indeed, by the 19th century the ruins were still so well conserved that Carnuntum was called "Pompeii at the gates of Vienna." Despite subsequent looting by treasure hunters and deep plowing for vineyards, Neubauer says, the land is "ideal for exploration."

Aerial photography identified intriguing forms in a field outside the ancient civilian town, west of the municipal amphitheater that had been built in the first half of the second century and excavated from 1923 to 1930. Anomalies in the field (soil, vegetation) suggested structures below. In 2000, a magnetic survey found traces of the foundations of a large building complex, replete with an aqueduct. Based on the magnetometer's 2-D images, the site was then scanned using a novel multi-antenna GPR developed by Neubauer's university team.

Ground radar has been evolving for decades. Like its predecessors, Neubauer's "geo-radar" sent pulses of electromagnetic waves through the earth that generated details about depth, shape and location. Unlike them, the high-resolution device covered about ten times as much surface area in the same amount of time, enabling researchers to speed up the search process significantly.

The resulting 3-D images laid bare a sprawling forum. "We had discovered the main building of the city quarter of Carnuntum's military camp," says Neubauer. A computer analysis revealed foundations, roads and sewers, even walls, stairs and floors, as well as a cityscape whose landmarks included shops, baths, a basilica, the tribunal, and a curia, the center of local government.

"The amount of detail was incredible," Neubauer recalls. "You could see inscriptions, you could see the bases of statues in the great courtyard and the pillars inside rooms, and you could see whether floors were wood or stone-and if there had been central heating." Three-dimensional virtual modeling allowed the team to reconstruct what the forum-all 99,458 square feet of it-might have looked like.

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In the spring of 2011, another search of the Carnuntum underground was attempted by a team of archaeologists, geophysicists, soil scientists and techies from the latest iteration of Neubauer's organization, LBI ArchPro, with its international partners. Enhancements to sensors had increased their speed, resolution and capabilities. Strides had been made in electromagnetic induction (EMI), a method by which magnetic fields are transmitted into soil to measure its electrical conductivity and magnetic susceptibility. At Carnuntum, the soundings told researchers whether the earth underneath had ever been heated, revealing the location of, say, bricks made by firing clay.

Neubauer had been intrigued by aerial shots of the amphitheater just beyond the walls of the civilian city. On the eastern side of the arena was the outline of buildings he now reckons were a kind of outdoor shopping mall. This plaza featured a bakery, shops, a food court, bars-pretty much everything except a J. Crew and a Chipotle.

To the west of the amphitheater, amid groves of birches, oaks and white poplar, was a "white spot" that looked suspicious to Neubauer. Close inspection revealed traces of a closed quadrangle of edifices. "The contours were typical of a gladiator school," Neubauer says.

The layout spanned 30,000 square feet and conformed to a marble fragment showing the Ludus Magnus, found in 1562 on one of the ancient slabs incised with Rome's city plan. Fortunately for Neubauer's team, the Romans tended to construct new settlements in Rome's image. "Roman society built complex and very recognizable cityscapes with the global goal to realize outstanding symbolic and visual models of civitas and urbanitas," says Maurizio Forte, a Duke University classics professor who has written widely on digital archaeology. "Civitas concerns the Roman view of 'citizenship' and ways to export worldwide the Roman civilization, society and culture. Urbanitas is how a city can fit the pattern of the Roman central power."

From the empire's rise in 27 B.C. until its fall in A.D. 476, the Romans erected 100 or so gladiator schools, all of which were intensely stylized and most of which have been destroyed or built over. Radar scans showed that, like the Ludus Magnus, the Carnuntum complex had two levels of colonnaded galleries that enclosed a courtyard. The central feature inside the courtyard was a free-standing circular structure, which the researchers interpreted as a training arena that would have been surrounded by wooden spectator stands set on stone foundations. Within the arena was a walled ring that may have held wild beasts. Galleries along the southern and western wings not designated as infirmaries, armories or administrative offices would have been set aside for barracks. Neubauer figures that about 75 gladiators could have lodged at the school. "Uncomfortably," he says. The tiny (32-square-foot) sleeping cells were barely big enough to hold a man and his dreams, much less a bunkmate.

Neubauer deduced that other rooms-more spacious and perhaps with tiled floors-were living quarters for high-ranking gladiators, instructors or the school's owner ( lanista). A sunken cell, not far from the main entrance, seems to have been a brig for unruly fighters. The cramped chamber had no access to daylight and a ceiling so low that standing was impossible.

The school's northern wing, the bathhouse, was centrally heated. During cold European winters-temperatures could fall to minus-13 degrees-the building was warmed by funneling heat from a wood-burning furnace through gaps in the floor and walls and then out roof openings. Archaeologists detected a chamber that they believe may have been a training room: they were able to see a hollow space, or hypocaust, under the floor, where heat was conducted to warm the paving stones underfoot. The bathhouse, with its thermal pools, was fitted with plumbing that conveyed hot and cold water. Looking at the bath complex, Neubauer says, "confirmed for the first time that gladiators could recover from harsh, demanding training in a fully equipped Roman bath."
Archaeologists' high-tech tools, including drone overflights and geo-radar imaging, have produced a detailed virtual reconstruction of the 30,000-square-foot gladiator academy. Hover over the red icons below to discover its areas and structures. (By 5W Infographics. Research by Nona Yates)
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Envisioning Carnuntum

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Marcus Aurelius was a philosopher-king who, despite the border battles raging during his administration, was inclined toward peace. The third book of his Meditations -philosophical conversations with himself in Greek-may have been written in Carnuntum's main amphitheater, where circuses featured savage treatment of criminals. One could envision the emperor attending these brutal entertainments and turning aside to jot down his lofty thoughts. Generally, though, he was not a big fan of the mutual butchery of gladiators.

Nowadays, Marcus Aurelius is remembered less for his philosophizing than for being smothered by young Commodus at the start of the swords-and-sandals epic . In reality, he succumbed to a devastating plague-most likely smallpox-that wiped out as many as ten million people across the empire. The film hewed closer to received history in its depiction of Commodus, an antisocial Darwinist whose idea of culture was to slaughter giraffes and elephants and take up crescent-headed arrows to shoot the heads off ostriches. True, he actually wasn't stabbed to death in the ring by a hunky gladiator, but his demise was no less theatrical: Commodus' dissolute reign was cut short in A.D. 192 when, after several botched assassination attempts, he was strangled in the bath by his personal trainer, a wrestler named Narcissus.

Commodus was a gladiator manqué who may have acquired his taste for the sport during a period in his youth (A.D. 171 to 173), some of which was misspent in Carnuntum. During the latest round of excavations, Neubauer concluded that the popularity of gladiating there necessitated two amphitheaters. "Nearly every other Roman outpost had a single arena," he says. "In Carnuntum, one belonged to the military camp and served the legionnaires. The other, next to the school, belonged to the civil city and satisfied the desires of ordinary citizens."

The gladiator era was a time of strict law and order, when a family outing consisted of scrambling for a seat in the bleachers to watch people be sliced apart. "The circuses were a brutal, disgusting activity," says LBI ArchPro senior researcher Christian Gugl ("No relation to the search engine"). "But I suppose spectators enjoyed the blood, cruelty and violence for a lot of the same reasons we now tune in to 'Game of Thrones.'"

Rome's throne games gave the public a chance, regularly taken, to vent its anonymous derision when crops failed or emperors fell out of favor. Inside the ring, civilization confronted intractable nature. In Marcus Aurelius: A Life, biographer Frank McLynn proposed that the beastly spectacles "symbolized the triumph of order over chaos, culture over biology....Ultimately, gladiatorial games played the key consolatory role of all religion, since Rome triumphing over the barbarians could be read as an allegory of the triumph of immortality over death."

Neubauer likens the school in Carnuntum to a penitentiary. Under the Republic (509 B.C. to 27 B.C.), the "students" tended to be convicted criminals, prisoners of war or slaves bought solely for the purpose of gladiatorial combat by the lanista, who trained them to fight and then rented them out for shows-if they had the right qualities. Their ranks also included free men who volunteered as gladiators. Under the Empire (27 B.C. to A.D. 476), gladiators, while still made up of social outcasts, also included not only free men, but noblemen and even women who willingly risked their legal and social standing by taking part in the sport.

It's doubtful that many fighters-in-training were killed at Carnuntum's school. The gladiators represented a substantial investment for the lanista, who trained, housed and fed combatants, and then leased them out. Contrary to Hollywood mythmaking, slaying half the participants in any given match wouldn't have been cost-effective. Ancient fight records suggest that while amateurs almost always died in the ring or were so badly maimed that waiting executioners finished them off with one merciful blow, around 90 percent of trained gladiators survived their fights.

The mock arena at the heart of the Carnuntum school was ringed by tiers of wooden seats and the terrace of the chief lanista. (A replica was recently built on the site of the original, an exercise in reconstruction archaeology deliberately limited to the use of tools and raw materials known to have existed during the Empire years.) In 2011, GPR detected the hole in the middle of the practice ring that secured a palus, the wooden post that recruits hacked at hour after hour. Until now it had been assumed that the palus was a thick log. But LBI ArchPro's most recent survey indicated that the cavity at Carnuntum was only a few inches thick. "A thin post would not have been meant just for strength and stamina," Neubauer argues. "Precision and technical finesse were equally important. To injure or kill an opponent, a gladiator had to land very accurate blows."

Every fighter was a specialist with his own particular equipment. The murmillo was outfitted with a narrow sword, a tall, oblong shield and a crested helmet. He was often pitted against a thraex, who protected himself with sheathing covering the legs to the groin and broad-rimmed headgear, and brandished a small shield and a small, curved sword, or sica. The retiarius tried to snare his opponent in a net and spear his legs with a trident. In 2014, a traditional dig in Carnuntum's ludus turned up a metal plate that probably came from the scale armor of a scissor, a type of gladiator sometimes paired with a retiarius. What distinguished the scissor was the hollow steel tube into which his forearm and fist fitted. The tube was capped: At the business end was a crescent-shaped blade meant to cut through the retiarius' net in the event of entanglement.

One of the most surprising new finds was a chicken bone unearthed from where the grandstand would have been. Surprising, because in 2014 Austrian forensic anthropologists Fabian Kanz and Karl Grossschmidt established that gladiators were almost entirely vegetarians. They conducted tests on bones uncovered at a mass gladiator graveyard in Ephesus, Turkey, showing that the fighters' diets consisted of barley and beans; the standard beverage was a concoction of vinegar and ash-the precursor of sports drinks. Neubauer's educated guess: "The chicken bone corroborates that private displays were staged in the training arena, and rich spectators were provided with food during the fights."

Outside the ludus walls, segregated from Carnuntum's civilian cemetery, Team Neubauer turned up a burial field crammed with gravestones, sarcophagi and elaborate tombs. Neubauer is convinced that a gold-plated brooch unearthed during the chicken-bone dig belonged to a politician or prosperous merchant. "Or a celebrity," he allows. "For instance, a famous gladiator who had died in the arena." The man fascinated by the Hallstatt charnel house may have located a gladiator necropolis.

Top gladiators were folk heroes with nicknames, fan clubs and adoring groupies. The story goes that Annia Galeria Faustina, the wife of Marcus Aurelius, was smitten with a gladiator she saw on parade and took him as a lover. Soothsayers advised the cuckolded emperor that he should have the gladiator killed, and that Faustina should bathe in his blood and immediately lie down with her husband. If the never reliable Scriptores Historiae Augustae is to be believed, Commodus' obsession with gladiators stemmed from the fact that the murdered gladiator was his real dad.

Following in the (rumored) tradition of the emperors Caligula, Hadrian and Lucius Verus-and to the contempt of the patrician elite-Commodus often competed in the arena. He once awarded himself a fee of a million sestertii (brass coins) for a performance, straining the Roman treasury.

According to Frank McLynn, Commodus performed "to enhance his claim to be able to conquer death, already implicit in his self-deification as the god Hercules." Wrapped in lion skins and shouldering a club, the mad ruler would galumph around the ring à la Fred Flintstone. At one point, citizens who had lost a foot through accident or disease were tethered for Commodus to flog to death while he pretended they were giants. He chose for his opponents members of the audience who were given only wooden swords. Not surprisingly, he always won.

Enduring his wrath was only marginally less injurious to health than standing in the path of an oncoming chariot. On pain of death, knights and senators were compelled to watch Commodus do battle and to chant hymns to him. It's a safe bet that if Commodus had enrolled in Carnuntum's gladiator school, he would have graduated summa cum laude.

LBI ArchPro is housed in a nondescript building in a nondescript part of Vienna, 25 miles west of Carnuntum. Next to the parking lot is a shed that opens like Aladdin's cave. Among the treasures are drones, a prop plane and what appears to be the love child of a lawn mower and a lunar rover. Rigged onto the back of the quad bikes (motorized quadricycles) is a battery of instruments-lasers, GPR, magnetometers, electromagnetic induction sensors.

Many of these gadgets are designed to be dragged across a field like futuristic farm equipment. "These devices allow us to identify structures several yards below ground," says Gugl, the researcher. "The way the latest radar arrays can slice through soil is kind of Star Treky, though it lacks that Hollywood clarity."

No terrain seems inaccessible to Neubauer's explorers. Your eyes linger on a rubber raft suspended from the ceiling. You imagine the Indiana Jones-like possibilities. You ask, "Is the raft used for plumbing the depths of the Nile?"

"No, no, no," Gugl protests. "We're just letting some guy store it here."

He leads you on a tour of the offices.

On the first floor, the common room is painted some institutional shade unknown to any spectrum. There's an air of scruffiness in the occupants-jeans, T-shirts, running shoes; young researchers chat near a floor-to-ceiling photo of Carnuntum's topography or gaze at animated video presentations, which track the development of the town in two and three dimensions.

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On a desktop monitor, a specialist in virtual archaeology, Juan Torrejón Valdelomar, and computer scientist Joachim Brandtner boot up a 3-D animation of LBI ArchPro's surprising new discovery at Carnuntum-the real purpose of the Heidentor. Built in the fourth century during the reign of Emperor Constantius II, the solitary relic was originally 66 feet high, comprising four pillars and a cross vault. During the Middle Ages, it was thought to be a pagan giant's tomb. Ancient sources indicate that Constantius II had it erected in tribute to his military triumphs.

But a radar scan of the area provides evidence that the Heidentor was surrounded by bivouacs of legionnaires, soldiers massed by the tens of thousands. Like a time-lapse cartoon of a flower unfolding, the LBI ArchPro graphic shows Roman campsites slowly shooting up around the memorial. "This monumental arch," says Neubauer, "towered above the soldiers, always reminding them of their allegiance to Rome."

Now that LBI ArchPro has digitally leveled the playing field, what's next at Carnuntum? "Primarily, we hope to find building structures that we can clearly interpret and date," says archaeologist Eduard Pollhammer. "We don't expect chariots, wild animal cages or remains inside the school."

Within another walled compound that adjoins the ludus is an extended open campus that may contain all of the above. Years ago a dig inside a Carnuntum amphitheater turned up the carcasses of bears and lions.

The ongoing reconstructions have convinced Neubauer that his team has solved some of the city's enduring mysteries. At the least, they show how the march of technology is increasingly rewriting history. It's been said the farther backward you look, the farther forward you are likely to see. In Book VII of his Meditations, Marcus Aurelius put it another way: "Look back over the past, with its changing empires that rose and fell, and you can foresee the future, too."

More From Smithsonian.com:

A huge factor in a gladiator's physical fitness was a meatless diet. During training, he primarily ate beans for protein and barley for carbohydrates.

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The Discovery of a Roman Gladiator School Brings the Famed Fighters Back to Life

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By Franz Lidz; Photographs by Luca Locatelli Wolfgang Neubauer stands in the grassy clearing and watches a drone soar low over distant stands of birch and white poplar, the leaves still speckled with overnight rain. Vast fields of wheat roll away north and south under a huge dome of sky.

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Gladiator Training | National Geographic

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Edpuzzle video lesson. Make any video your lesson. Take a video and crop it, add your voice or embed questions at any point.

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The spectacle of gladiatorial combat was initiated by wealthy Romans over 250 years before the birth of Christ as a part of the ceremonies held to honor their deceased relatives. Later, these games became separate events sponsored by Rome's leading citizens in order to enhance their prestige. With the decline of the republic and the rise of the empire, gladiator games were appropriated by the emperor. The primary purpose of these life-or-death duels was to entertain the multitude of spectators that jammed the arena.

Although some freemen elected to live the life of a gladiator, the majority were slaves, captured during the numerous wars Rome fought to expand its territory. The prospective gladiator received extensive training and became proficient in a particular mode of combat and the use of specific weapons such as the sword, net or the three-pronged spear known as the trident.
The games began early, lasted all day and were usually divided into three presentations. The morning was devoted to the display and slaughter of animals, many of them exotic beasts gathered from the far reaches of the empire. Lions, elephants, giraffes and other rare animals all played a role in a display of butchery designed to advertise the diversity of the far-flung empire and Rome's mastery of Mother Nature.

The morning session was followed by a lunch break in which patrons could leave the arena to satisfy their hunger. Those who lingered were entertained with the execution of common criminals. An attempt was made to match the method of the condemned person's death with the crime committed. Those who had murdered were thrown unprotected to wild beasts. Those who had committed arson were burned alive. Others were crucified. Criminals also provided the fodder for entertainment in the reenactment of historic naval battles in which the arena was flooded and the condemned forced to play the role of the doomed crews of enemy ships.

The afternoon was devoted to the main event - the combat of the gladiators. Typically, gladiators with different specialties were pitted against one another. Much like a modern boxing match, the duels were governed by strict rules and overseen by a referee to assure these rules were followed. Music provided an accompaniment with the band varying the tempo of its play according to the action in the arena. The crowd would ultimately decide whether the loser would live or die.

The Roman philosopher Seneca took a dim view of gladiatorial contests and the spectacle that accompanied them. Interestingly, his criticism is not based on revulsion at the butchery he witnesses, but because the display is boring and therefore unworthy of the attention of a well-reasoned man. In a letter to a friend, he describes what he saw in the arena during the reign of Emperor Caligula:

"There is nothing so ruinous to good character as to idle away one's time at some spectacle. Vices have a way of creeping in because of the feeling of pleasure that it brings. Why do you think that I say that I personally return from shows greedier, more ambitious and more given to luxury, and I might add, with thoughts of greater cruelty and less humanity, simply because I have been among humans?

The men had nothing with which to protect themselves, for their whole bodies were open to the thrust, and every thrust told. The common people prefer this to matches on level terms or request performances. Of course they do. The blade is not parried by helmet or shield, and what use is skill or defense? All these merely postpone death.
References:
Seneca's account appears in: Davis, William, Sterns, Readings in Ancient History v. 2 (1913); Wiedman, Thomas, Emperors and Gladiators (1995).

How To Cite This Article:
"Gladiators, 50 AD," EyeWitness to History, www.eyewitnesstohistory.com (2005).

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Eye witness account of the gladiatorial games

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Conscripts and volunteers

Today, the idea of gladiators fighting to the death, and of an amphitheatre where this could take place watched by an enthusiastic audience, epitomises the depths to which the Roman Empire was capable of sinking. Yet, to the Romans themselves, the institution of the arena was one of the defining features of their civilisation.

Hardly any contemporary voices questioned the morality of staging gladiatorial combat. And the gladiators' own epitaphs mention their profession without shame, apology, or resentment. So who were these gladiators, and what was their role in Roman society?

The Romans believed that the first gladiators were slaves who were made to fight to the death at the funeral of a distinguished aristocrat, Junius Brutus Pera, in 264 BC. This spectacle was arranged by the heirs of the deceased to honour his memory.

Gradually gladiatorial spectacle became separated from the funerary context, and was staged by the wealthy as a means of displaying their power and influence within the local community. Advertisements for gladiatorial displays have survived at Pompeii, painted by professional sign-writers on house-fronts, or on the walls of tombs clustered outside the city-gates. The number of gladiators to be displayed was a key attraction: the larger the figure, the more generous the sponsor was perceived to be, and the more glamorous the spectacle.

Most gladiators were slaves. They were subjected to a rigorous training, fed on a high-energy diet, and given expert medical attention. Hence they were an expensive investment, not to be despatched lightly.

For a gladiator who died in combat the trainer ( lanista) might charge the sponsor of the fatal spectacle up to a hundred times the cost of a gladiator who survived. Hence it was very much more costly for sponsors to supply the bloodshed that audiences often demanded, although if they did allow a gladiator to be slain it was seen as an indication of their generosity.

Remarkably, some gladiators were not slaves but free-born volunteers. The chief incentive was probably the down-payment that a volunteer received upon taking the gladiatorial oath. This oath meant that the owner of his troupe had ultimate sanction over the gladiator's life, assimilating him to the status of a slave (ie a chattel).

Some maverick emperors with a perverted sense of humour made upper-class Romans (of both sexes) fight in the arena. But, as long as they did not receive a fee for their participation, such persons would be exempt from the stain of infamia, the legal disability that attached to the practitioners of disreputable professions such as those of gladiators, actors and prostitutes.

Rules and regulations

Regardless of their status, gladiators might command an extensive following, as shown by graffiti in Pompeii, where walls are marked with comments such as Celadus, suspirium puellarum ('Celadus makes the girls swoon').

Indeed, apart from the tombstones of the gladiators, the informal cartoons with accompanying headings, scratched on plastered walls and giving a tally of individual gladiators' records, are the most detailed sources that modern historians have for the careers of these ancient fighters.

Sometimes these graffiti even form a sequence. One instance records the spectacular start to the career of a certain Marcus Attilius (evidently, from his name, a free-born volunteer). As a mere rookie ( tiro) he defeated an old hand, Hilarus, from the troupe owned by the emperor Nero, even though Hilarus had won the special distinction of a wreath no fewer than 13 times.

Attilius then capped this stunning initial engagement (for which he himself won a wreath) by going on to defeat a fellow-volunteer, Lucius Raecius Felix, who had 12 wreaths to his name. Both Hilarus and Raecius must have fought admirably against Attilius, since each of them was granted a reprieve ( missio).

It was the prerogative of the sponsor, acting upon the wishes of the spectators, to decide whether to reprieve the defeated gladiator or consign him to the victor to be polished off. Mosaics from around the Roman empire depict the critical moment when the victor is standing over his floored opponent, poised to inflict the fatal blow, his hand stayed (at least temporarily) by the umpire.

The figure of the umpire is frequently depicted in the background of an engagement, sometimes accompanied by an assistant. The minutiae of the rules governing gladiatorial combat are lost to modern historians, but the presence of these arbiters suggests that the regulations were complex, and their enforcement potentially contentious.

Fighting-styles

The rules were probably specific to different styles of combat. Gladiators were individually armed in various combinations, each combination imposing its own fighting-style. Gladiators who were paired against an opponent in the same style were relatively uncommon.

One such type was that of the equites, literally 'horsemen', so called because they entered the arena on horseback, although for the crucial stage of the combat they dismounted to fight on foot.

Some of the most popular pairings pitted contrasting advantages and disadvantages against one another. Combat between the murmillo ('fish-fighter', so called from the logo on his helmet) and the thraex or hoplomachus was a standard favourite.

The murmillo had a large, oblong shield that covered his body from shoulder to calf; it afforded stout protection, but was very unwieldy. The thraex, on the other hand, carried a small square shield that covered only his torso, and the hoplomachus carried an even smaller round one.

Instead of calf-length greaves, both these types wore leg-protectors that came well above the knee. So the murmillo and his opponent were comparably protected, but the size and weight of their shields would have called for different fighting techniques, contributing to the interest and suspense of the engagement.

The most vulnerable of all gladiators was the net-fighter ( retiarius), who had only a shoulder-guard ( galerus) on his left arm to protect him. Being relatively unencumbered, however, he could move nimbly to inflict a blow from his trident at relatively long range, cast his net over his opponent, and then close in with his short dagger for the face-off.

He customarily fought the heavily-armed secutor who, although virtually impregnable, lumbered under the weight of his armour. As the retiarius advanced, leading with his left shoulder and wielding the trident in his right hand, his shoulder-guard prevented his opponent from striking the vulnerable area of his neck and face.

Not that all gladiators were right-handed. A disconcerting advantage accrued to the left-handed; they were trained to fight right-handers, but their opponents, unaccustomed to being approached from this angle, could be thrown off-balance by a left-handed attack. Left-handedness is hence a quality advertised in graffiti and epitaphs alike.

Originally the different fighting-styles must have evolved from types of combat that the Romans met among the peoples whom they fought and conquered - thraex literally means an inhabitant of Thrace, the inhospitable land bordered on the north by the Danube and on the east by the notorious Black Sea.

Subsequently, as the fighting-styles became stereotyped and formalised, a gladiator might be trained in an 'ethnic' style quite different from his actual place of origin.

It also became politically incorrect to persist in naming styles after peoples who had by now been comfortably assimilated into the empire, and granted privileged relationships with Rome. Hence by the Augustan period the term murmillo replaced the old term samnis, designating a people south of Rome who had long since been subjugated by the Romans and absorbed into their culture.

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Gladiators: Heroes of the Roman Amphitheatre

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Today, the idea of gladiators fighting to the death, and of an amphitheatre where this could take place watched by an enthusiastic audience, epitomises the depths to which the Roman Empire was capable of sinking. Yet, to the Romans themselves, the institution of the arena was one of the defining features of their civilisation.

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Illustrious Fame used to sing of the lion laid low in Nemea's spacious vale, Hercules' work. Let ancient testimony be silent, for after your shows, Caesar, we have now seen such things done by women's valor.—Martial,
On the Spectacles

With terrific fanfare, the emperor Titus Flavius Vespanianus opened the great Colosseum of Rome in 80 CE. The inaugural games reportedly ran one hundred days, wowing crowds with exotic animal hunts and gladiatorial contests by the thousands. The poet Martial devoted an entire book to these extravagant festivities, but despite his allusions to the deeds of gods and fabled heroes, those who performed for the emperor's pleasure were all too mortal: flesh-and-blood men—and women—who fought and died in this distinctly Roman form of entertainment.

Little is known about the women who joined in the violent spectacle, but tantalizing clues to their existence can be found throughout ancient Roman literature, history and art. Who were these women who stood against tooth, claw and sword? And why would they risk their lives in brutal sport?

Death or Glory

Gladiators took their name from their primary weapon. Like ancient Roman legionaries, many relied upon the gladius, a short thrusting blade ideal for close-quarters combat. Yet these were no citizen soldiers. Gladiators were often drawn from the dregs of society: slaves, criminals and foreign prisoners of war. Unlike others of their ilk, who faced outright execution or toiled in harsh servitude to an early grave, gladiators knew the faint glimmer of hope: A very skilled—and very lucky—fighter might redeem herself or himself in battle, winning fame, fortune and ultimately freedom.

Death was not always assured in gladiatorial combat. A relief from Halicarnassus records a remarkable event in which two female gladiators fought to a draw, but their skill and fortitude so impressed the crowd that both were spared. The women are identified as Amazon and Achillia. These were probably stage names chosen to evoke images of those legendary women warriors who locked in combat with Achilles, the Greek hero who killed the Amazon queen Penthesilea. While their names may have been mythic, their peril was all too real. Both are depicted with sword and shield in hand, poised to strike. Had they not received their celebrated reprieve, at least one of these women would not have walked out of the ring alive.

Stakes were high, but contests followed a clear structure, supervised by referees and governed by strict rules and rituals. Gladiators were organized into standardized types, each with unique arms, equipment and fighting moves.

Amazon's and Achillia's gear mark them as provocatores, a class of fighter that enjoyed a fair amount of protection from their rectangular shields, arm and lower-leg coverings and helmets (in the relief, these rest by their feet, having been cast aside to signal a stalemate). That these women fought in a recognized style suggests that their training and techniques may have paralleled those of their male counterparts.

Survival of the Fittest

Women are known to have served as specialty performers in the amphitheater as well. An essedaria—a female gladiator who fought from a British-style war chariot—is mentioned in Petronius' Satyricon. Historical documents also record women venatores, expert hunters who were not considered gladiators but still appeared in the arena. Like gladiators, these highly specialized hunters trained in schools, but they honed their skills against animal opponents. The " bullfighters " of their time, they battled all manner of beast, including lions, tigers and bears.

Successful gladiators could attain almost superstar status. Not unlike modern prizefighters or champion racehorses, they spent most of their time in training and made only a handful of heavily promoted appearances a year. They ate a special diet and were kept in top condition by doctors and masseurs. Veteran gladiators who put on a good show and knew how to please their audience were so sought after that emperors were known to offer them vast sums to come out of retirement.

For the Love of the Sword

Both admired and reviled, gladiators represented a powerful social contradiction, but none more so than sword-wielding women. Proper Roman women, especially those in high society, were expected to be demure and virtuous.

Gladiators embodied danger and excitement, so it's little wonder that many Romans citizens were attracted to the arena, some even willing to put aside their freedom to test their mettle. Several emperors allegedly trained in gladiatorial techniques, as did other members of the upper classes, women included.

The Roman satirist Juvenal mocked the adventure-seeking ladies who spent hours practicing their swordwork. Ancient writers' derisive remarks might give the impression that women's combat was the exclusive domain of bored Roman matrons out for a cheap thrill. But it was precisely because they defied the conventions of their rank and gender that they so outraged their male peers.

So many respectable women dabbled in the life of the amphitheater that lawmakers apparently felt compelled to act. In the early first century, the Roman Senate passed two decrees barring freeborn men and women of marriageable age from appearing on stage or in the arena. Yet by the middle of the century, the historian Cornelius Tacitus, who also recorded the history of Boudica, reported that the number of "distinguished women" who degraded themselves in this way exceeded "all precedent." Nor does the tide seem to have been stemmed by the end of the second century, when Emperor Lucius Septimius Severus, who ruled from 193 to 211 CE, banned all women from fighting, regardless of age or station.

Much about these women's lives remains a mystery. We might find it hard to understand why anyone would engage in mortal combat for the amusement of the masses. For some, however, it may have seemed the only way to transcend the restrictions society placed on their sex and status. But a discovery in Britain has shown that even this career choice had its limitations.

In 2000, archaeologists from the Museum of London unearthed a riddle: an unmarked, but richly appointed, grave of a woman set at the unfashionable outer edge of a Roman cemetery. The museum concluded that the objects found with her cremated remains suggested that she had been a successful gladiatrix. But despite all her trappings of wealth and privilege, she remained an outcast even in death. Perhaps future discoveries will reveal more about these remarkable women warriors.

Gladiators Selected Sources

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Illustrious Fame used to sing of the lion laid low in Nemea's spacious vale, Hercules' work. Let ancient testimony be silent, for after your shows, Caesar, we have now seen such things done by women's valor.-Martial, On the Spectacles With terrific fanfare, the emperor Titus Flavius Vespanianus opened the great Colosseum of Rome in 80 CE.

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Discover all about gladiators in Ancient Rome with information on the gladiators themselves, the colosseum, training, origins of the games and much more.

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Roman Entertainment - History Learning Site

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Roman entertainment, like Roman roads, Roman baths, Roman villas etc, is etched in people’s minds today as a result of recent films. Many people will know of the Roman gladiators, chariot racing, the Colosseum in Rome as we have a great deal of writing and other evidence about these things from the…