Antiquity History

Deep Dive · Ancient Rome

Roman Gladiators: Life and Death in the Arena

For seven centuries, the games of the arena were the most popular entertainment in the Roman world. Every city in the empire had a stadium or amphitheater, every Roman city of any size staged regular public games, and the most famous of them all, the games in the Colosseum at Rome, were attended by tens of thousands of spectators at a time. The gladiators who fought in the arena — often slaves, sometimes condemned criminals, occasionally free volunteers — became some of the most famous people in the Roman world, the subject of poetry and graffiti, the heroes of the urban poor, and the very image of Roman spectacle and excess.

This cluster page is an introduction to the world of the Roman gladiator: who fought, where, how, and why; what the games meant to the Romans; and what happened to the games in the end. It links out to the Colosseum deep dive, the Roman Empire cluster, and the Daily Life in Ancient Rome cluster.

What Was a Gladiator?

A gladiator was a professional combatant who fought in public games, usually one-on-one, often to the death. The word gladiator comes from the Latin gladius, the short sword used by most gladiators. Gladiators were not, as a rule, professional soldiers; they were entertainers.

Most gladiators were slaves, the losers of wars, condemned criminals, or the victims of judicial decisions. Some were free men who voluntarily chose the life — usually poor men, former soldiers, or those in debt — and were bound by oath to their owner for a fixed term. A small minority of gladiators were women (the gladiatrices), and a handful of emperors, including Commodus and Caligula, fought in the arena themselves.

The Schools

Most gladiators were trained in special schools called ludi. The most famous was the Ludus Magnus in Rome, just east of the Colosseum, which held about 2,000 gladiators. The training was rigorous. The gladiators were taught to use a variety of weapons and armor, and to fight in different styles. They were fed a high-carbohydrate diet (often called a “barley diet” by the Romans) to build up a layer of fat that protected against glancing blows. Medical care was good by ancient standards, and the schools were profitable enough that their owners kept detailed records of their investments.

The Types of Gladiators

Gladiators were classified by their equipment and fighting style. The most common were:

The Games

The games were staged by private citizens as part of the munera, the public obligations of the Roman elite. The most prestigious games were the public games (ludi publici) staged by the state, including the Ludi Romani, the Ludi Plebeii, and the games dedicated to the various imperial cults. Under the empire, the games became larger, more frequent, and more elaborate. By the time of Trajan in the early second century CE, the games in Rome involved 5,000 pairs of gladiators, 11,000 animals, and 1,000,000 spectators over a period of 117 days.

A typical day of games might include animal hunts in the morning, public executions at noon, and gladiatorial combat in the afternoon. The executions included damnatio ad bestias — the binding of condemned criminals to be killed by animals — and a wide range of mythological reenactments in which criminals played the roles of characters from myth and were killed in elaborate theatrical sets.

The gladiatorial combats were arranged in matched pairs chosen to be as evenly matched as possible, much like modern boxing. Referees (summa rudis) enforced the rules, and a heavily padded official (lanista) accompanied the fighters. When a gladiator was wounded or disarmed, he could appeal to the crowd for mercy by raising his finger (ad digitum); the crowd shouted for or against, and the sponsor of the games made the final call. The defeated gladiator who had fought well was often given a reprieve (stans missus — “sent away standing”); the one who had fought poorly was killed.

The pollice verso — the famous “thumbs down” gesture by which the crowd called for the death of a defeated gladiator — is a Hollywood invention. The ancient sources suggest that the gesture was a raised thumb pressed against the chest, or a raised handkerchief, or a wave of the cloth. The Romans also signaled approval or disapproval with shouts, hisses, and the clattering of weapons.

The Colosseum and Other Amphitheaters

The greatest arena of Rome was the Colosseum, officially the Amphitheatrum Flavium, built by the Flavian emperors Vespasian and Titus between 72 and 80 CE. It could seat about 50,000 spectators and had a complex system of trapdoors, elevators, and passageways to bring animals and scenery into the arena. Other notable amphitheaters survive at Capua, Verona, Nîmes, Arles, El Djem in Tunisia, and many other sites.

The End of the Games

The gladiatorial games declined in the late Roman Empire. The Christian emperors, beginning with Constantine in the early fourth century CE, restricted the games repeatedly. The last known gladiatorial combat in Rome was held in 404 CE, when the monk Telemachus rushed into the arena to separate two fighters and was stoned to death by the spectators. Honorius, the western emperor, was so impressed by Telemachus’ sacrifice that he abolished gladiatorial combat throughout the empire. The last gladiatorial school in Rome was closed by Totila, the Ostrogothic king, in the sixth century CE.

The Legacy of the Gladiators

The image of the gladiator has fascinated the modern world since the rediscovery of Pompeii in the eighteenth century. The French painter Jean-Léon Gérôme, the Italian composer Pietro Mascagni, the novelist Daniel P. Mannix, and the filmmaker Ridley Scott have all worked variations on the theme. The gladiator stands, in the modern imagination, both for the brutality of the Roman world and for the dignity of those who, in extremity, kept their honor.