Gladiator Women of Ancient Rome

Summary

Betwixt The Sheets: The History of Sex, Scandal & Society Episode Summary Release Date: November 19, 2024
Host: Kate Lister
Guest: Emma Southern, Author of A History of Ancient Rome and 21 Women
Episode Focus: The Presence and Perception of Female Gladiators in Ancient Rome

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Introduction to Female Gladiators

In this episode of Betwixt The Sheets: The History of Sex, Scandal & Society, host Kate Lister delves into the intriguing and often overlooked history of female gladiators in ancient Rome. Setting the stage with an archaeological exploration in Turkey, Kate introduces listeners to the fascinating discovery of two female gladiator figures, Amazon and Aquila, featured in a marble relief inscription. This revelation piques the curiosity about the existence and lives of women who took to the gladiatorial arena, challenging the predominantly male narrative of Roman gladiators.

Quote:
Kate Lister [00:00]: “These are women gladiators. Amazon and Aquila are gladiators. But what do we know about the women that fought as gladiators?”

Historical Context of Gladiators

Kate provides a foundational understanding of gladiator history, tracing their origins back to pre-Roman funeral rites where combat was intended as both entertainment and a form of human sacrifice. Emma Southern elaborates on how the Romans inherited and amplified these practices, transforming them into grand spectacles divorced from their initial funerary context.

Quote:
Emma Southern [05:21]: “It comes from the only place you'd expect it to come from, which is obviously what you do at a funeral... just make people fight for your entertainment.”

Evidence of Female Gladiators

The discussion shifts to the evidence supporting the existence of female gladiators. Emma Southern highlights the scarcity of specific names and detailed records but emphasizes the multiple sources from various regions, including inscriptions, reliefs, and literary references that collectively affirm their presence. Notably, an inscription from Ostia marks the first recorded instance of women entering the arena, underscoring the novelty and significance of female gladiators in Roman society.

Quote:
Emma Southern [11:14]: “It isn't, no. That is the first evidence they have from that is a gloss from like the post-classical gloss from the medieval period where somebody invented the word gladiatrix.”

Cultural Attitudes and Misogyny

A significant portion of the episode explores the Roman societal attitudes towards women in the gladiatorial role. Emma Southern explains that female gladiators were viewed as a transgression of rigid gender norms, often treated as novelties rather than legitimate competitors. Their participation was typically met with satire and misogynistic disdain, reinforcing their marginal status within the gladiatorial hierarchy.

Quote:
Emma Southern [09:26]: “They are women wearing men's clothes, doing manly things in the same way that sex workers are having sex publicly and happily, which is not something that women are supposed to do.”

The London Gladiator Discovery

Kate and Emma discuss the controversial discovery of a female gladiator's burial site in London. The partially cremated skeleton adorned with gladiator-themed grave goods has sparked debates about whether the woman was a gladiator herself or an ardent supporter. While definitive conclusions remain elusive, Emma leans towards the interpretation that the woman was a passionate fan, drawing a parallel to modern individuals who memorialize their sports fandom in personal mementos.

Quote:
Emma Southern [26:20]: “I always go with the interpretation that I like the most and which... is a woman who just bloody loves the gladiators.”

Representation in Modern Media

The episode touches on the portrayal of female gladiators in contemporary media, such as Ridley Scott's Gladiator and upcoming films. Emma advocates for more accurate and respectful representations, envisioning female gladiators as serious athletes rather than hyper-sexualized figures.

Quote:
Emma Southern [33:55]: “I wouldn't. I would have women who took themselves very seriously and had to deal with the fact that nobody else did.”

Conclusion and Reflections

Kate and Emma reflect on the grim realities faced by female gladiators, who were likely either enslaved or compelled into the arena under duress. The episode underscores the rarity and exceptional nature of their existence within the broader context of Roman gladiatorial practices. Emma emphasizes the importance of recognizing these women not merely as curiosities but as significant participants in a male-dominated spectacle.

Quote:
Emma Southern [32:20]: “Yeah. At a state level, they don't really do gender transgression that often. So I'd be surprised if people were condemned to be... I suspect it's people who choose to do it and people who are just enslaved women who are particularly strong and are then chosen to be gladiators.”

Final Thoughts

The episode concludes with a discussion on the enduring legacy of gladiatorial combat and its cultural implications, both in ancient times and today. Kate encourages listeners to reflect on the societal norms that marginalized female gladiators and to appreciate the complex history of gender roles in Roman entertainment.

Quote:
Kate Lister [34:31]: “We could do that or just sit down and have some tea. But until we get to that, if people want to know more about you and your work, where can they find you? Not in the Coliseum.”

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Additional Information

Guest Profile:
Emma Southern is an esteemed author specializing in ancient Rome, particularly focusing on the roles and lives of women in Roman society. Her work provides invaluable insights into the intersection of gender and power in historical contexts.

Further Listening:
Listeners are encouraged to explore related episodes and topics, such as the history of pubic hair and the secret lives of notable historical figures, broadening their understanding of sex, scandal, and societal norms throughout history.

Production Credits:
Edited by Tom Delagi, produced by Stuart Beckwith, and senior produced by Charlotte Long. Music by Epidemic Sound.

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Transcript

[Kate Lister]

Thanks for listening to Betwixt the Sheets. To get all History hit podcasts ad free early access and bonus episodes, head over to historyhit.com subscribe or you can sign up on Apple Podcasts with just one click. Hello, my lovely betwixters. It's me, Kate Lister. You are in the right place if you were looking for Betwixt the sheets. But to keep everything above board and everybody happy, I have to tell you, this is an adult podcast, spoken by adults to other adults about adulty things in an adulty way, covering a range of adult subjects. And you should be an adult too. That is what we call the fair dues warning. Because if you hear that and you keep listening and you get offended, well, Fair Dues, we did let you know. Hello, Betwixters. You've joined me on an archaeological dig in Turkey. As the breeze blows the dirt from the marble relief in front of us, what's revealed are two figures who look to be fighting each other. Oh, it's exciting, isn't it? They're both stood in a bracing position, holding swords and shields. What makes this extra fascinating is the inscription. I don't actually speak Latin, but you don't need to know that right now. We can just pretend that I do, because written below the figures are the names Amazon and Aquila, indicating that these figures are women. Above them is another inscription that tells us that they were free and no longer slaves. But what's really important here is that these are women gladiators. Amazon and Aquila are gladiators. But what do we know about the women that fought as gladiators? What other evidence for this is there? Well, let's head back to ancient Rome to find find out. What do you look for in a man?

[Emma Southern]

Oh, money, of course.

[Kate Lister]

You're supposed to rise when an adult speaks to you. I make perfect copies of whatever my boss needs by just turning a knob and pushing a button. Yes, social courtesy does make a difference. Goodness, my beautiful D. Goodness has nothing to do with it, dearie. Hello, and welcome back to Betwixt the Sheets, the history of sex scandal in society with me, K. Lister. We often think of the gladiators as peak masculinity. Ripped athletic men dueling it out to the cries and swoons of the onlooking crowd. It's all very bros, bros, bros. However, it wasn't just men who did this, it was women, too. Not many of them, but they were there. But who were they? And what was life like as a female gladiator in ancient Rome? Following on from last week's episode on the sex lives of gladiators, we are joined once again by the marvelous, the fantastic, the brilliant Emma Southern, author of A History of ancient Rome and 21 women. And she is going to help shed some light on. On the history of women gladiators. Spears at the ready, betwixters. Let's do this. Hello and welcome back to Betwixt the Sheets. It's only Emma Southern. How are you doing?

[Emma Southern]

Delighted. Excited to horrify everybody once again. Hopefully make people go, eugh. Eh?

[Kate Lister]

For the next installment of our unofficial miniseries. Fucking hell, the Romans were shit, weren't they? I'm still waiting for you to tell me something vaguely positive that any of these people did. But they.

[Emma Southern]

There's loads of other people who write about that, like buildings and whatever that is true. I'm here to tell you about all the other stuff.

[Kate Lister]

And in our last episode together, and if you haven't listened to it, do go back and listen, we spoke about gladiators, the boy gladiators, and about them being super sexy and also enslaved and this kind of very strange ambivalent position that they had between being non citizens and celebrities and how you'd be a gladiator. Today we're talking about girl gladiators. That's fascinating.

[Emma Southern]

It is. And the Romans thought they were fascinating.

[Kate Lister]

Too, so I bet they did. And I do remember there being girl gladiators in Ridley Scott's first gladiator film. They were on chariots and they had metal bras and they shot arrows at people.

[Emma Southern]

Yes. Not hugely inaccurate. Actually. We do have evidence of. Not the metal bras. That's bizarre. But no one needs to wear a metal bra. But the women who fight in chariots, we do have evidence of that occurring and somebody gets very excited that they're going to see this and write a poem about it. So one of the occasions where he knows something.

[Kate Lister]

Before we get to that, we should just do a quick recap of some gladiator history just in case people didn't actually go back and listen to the last episode there. Where do they come from, the gladiators? They're so synonymous with Rome and what we think about Rome. But where did the idea of getting two blokes together and just going, right, fight, fight, fight, fight. Where did that even come from?

[Emma Southern]

It comes from the only place you'd expect it to come from, which is obviously what you do at a funeral when someone has died and you're really sad, is just make people fight for your entertainment. There is Nothing that I've ever wanted. Whenever a grandparent has passed away more than somebody having a battle on their grave.

[Kate Lister]

Could you even imagine?

[Emma Southern]

Like, did it really take your mind off it?

[Kate Lister]

It would take your mind off it. Right, okay, so it was part of a funeral rite. Can you make that make sense? Like, why did they think that that was a reasonable thing to be doing?

[Emma Southern]

Basically, it's a kind of sacrifice, like a kind of human sacrifice. It starts in kind of pre history with the Etruscans. And nobody really knows kind of what the logic behind it is, in the same way that they don't really know what the logic behind Vestal virgins is. They just know that it has to exist and it's important. That's where it starts in this prehistoric world of the Etruscans. And Romans inherit it because they inherit so much of Etruscan culture and then turn it up to 11 because they do that with everything. And as they get richer and as they get more luxurious and more decadent and have more money to spend on everything, they expand it out and out and out and then divorce it from the funerary context and just make it into a fun time for all the family.

[Kate Lister]

And they did love a sacrifice as well, didn't they, the Romans? They were quite big on that.

[Emma Southern]

They did love a sacrifice. If they couldn't be cutting the head off of a bird or a bull or a sheep or something at any given moment, then they weren't really that happy.

[Kate Lister]

Were they? Big into human sacrifice?

[Emma Southern]

So, no, they are weird about this. They think that human sacrifice is the worst thing in the world. And the reason that they say that they destroyed the Druids is because they claim they were doing human sacrifice and they talk about it as the most disgusting thing in the world. And then they fairly regularly do something that is objectively a human sacrifice, like bury a Vestal virgin alive or have somebody die on somebody's grave, or bury two ghouls and two Greeks because Omen told them to. But they pretend that it's not human sacrifice because they didn't actually kill them.

[Kate Lister]

There's some mental gymnastics there, isn't there?

[Emma Southern]

Yeah, Just killing a person. Very bad indeed. In the name of the gods. Doing it in a sort of roundabout way with a whole lot of theater built into it. In the name of the gods. Very good indeed.

[Kate Lister]

And just getting two random people to knock seven shades of shit out of each other. Fabulous.

[Emma Southern]

Getting two enslaved people to do it in the hope that they might be allowed to go home one day. Double thumbs. Up.

[Kate Lister]

One thing that I have noticed about Roman culture is that it is intensely macho to the point where really, this is about man love. Their ideas of beauty are very much linked to masculinity and boys being beautiful. There are cocks on everything. There are not vulvas on everything. Really?

[Emma Southern]

No.

[Kate Lister]

Like, it's men in the public sphere. It's. I mean, obviously there were women around, but, like, it's almost as if they're going, oh, God, yeah, I'd forgotten about you. Like, it's all boys, boys, boys, boys. And the gladiators play into that because they are the epitome of this macho, heteronormative. Look at my willy culture. How the hell do women gladiators fit into that?

[Emma Southern]

So basically, they are a novelty is how it begins. It is fun and sometimes funny, but always titillating to see women doing man things. And this is exactly the same, like we said in the previous episode, women sex workers are the only women who are allowed to wear togas and.

[Kate Lister]

Thank you.

[Emma Southern]

Female gladiators doing the same thing. They're women wearing men's clothes, doing manly things in the same way that sex workers are having sex publicly and happily, which is not something that women are supposed to do. Gladiators are fighting like men in a masculine style. And it's titillating, it's exciting, it's transgressive, it's thrilling in a way that kind of turns everybody on.

[Kate Lister]

Interesting. How common was it? Because if it was that kind of titillating and sexy and all the rest of it, you'd think there'd be more of them. But it doesn't seem like there was as many girl gladiators as boy gladiators.

[Emma Southern]

We don't have loads of evidence for specific girl gladiators, nowhere near as much as we do for specific boy gladiators. And it is always presented as, like, an unusual thing that has happened when girl gladiators fight. So there's an inscription from Ostia where a guy records himself as the first person to ever put women in the ring or put women in the arena, because it's like a big deal. That's the one thing he did in his life that he would like people to remember him for. So we don't have, like, loads of evidence of specific ones, and there's all kinds of debates about how common they actually were. In the literature, we do have quite a lot of references to women fighting, and they tend to only get upset when it's elite women fighting. So noble women going into the arena really upsets people and like Augustus makes it illegal because apparently people are doing it so often that they keep going in. But they don't get upset when just normal women, when non elite women are fighting, they think that's quite fun. So there's loads of debate about whether it's something that was happening all the time and people only got upset and thought it was exciting when it's elite women or if it is just a novelty act that gets put on every so often. But most of the like adverts and things that we have for games and most of the evidence we have for specific games, it's just men. So it's not like every time you go to the games it's gonna be a special occasion thing when a woman is fighting.

[Kate Lister]

And they're often called gladiatrixes today, but that isn't what they would have been called at the time.

[Emma Southern]

It isn't, no. That is the first evidence they have from that is a gloss from like the post classical gloss from the mediev period where somebody invented the word gladiatrix because medieval monks liked to invent Latin words. Sometimes when they didn't have. They didn't actually have a word for female gladiator. They always just had to say a gladiator who is a woman or use some kind of poetic, roundabout way of saying it. So they'd say something like, we are used to seeing people die for Mars, but now we have seen Venus fight and things like that. They didn't actually have a specific word for it.

[Kate Lister]

Quite creative then. So I wonder, because I'm thinking about like the state of women's sports and athletics today and it's still steeped in misogyny. I mean we're getting better by challenging it. But if you look at something like women's football or soccer, if you're American, men's football is funded to the tune of billions in squillions and they get, you know, taken off and trained from the age of two. And the women's football get like a bus pass and, you know, half a day off work. And there's still this attitude of like, that women's sports isn't as good as men's sports, which is a really shitty attitude to have. But I'm wondering if the gladiators would have been like that if it would have been regarded as not as good as when men are fighting.

[Emma Southern]

Yeah, it definitely was. Like there is, unfortunately, I had a.

[Kate Lister]

Tiny hope there that you'd go, no, it wasn't.

[Emma Southern]

Women who do Sport of any kind, but particularly gladiator sport, are treated definitely as a comedy act sometimes. So one of the most famous examples is, and this happens more than once, but Domitian sends women out to fight with little people. So people with dwarfism and people who have growth related disorders. And that is considered to be like, this is a great spectacle for the people. People love it. And Marshall writes this poem about how great it and how hilarious it is. But like, it's a comedy display of women and little people, not a sporting display of two men at the peak of their powers or two people. The only evidence that we have that it's a sport that's kind of taken seriously is one relief which is in the British Museum. Now, it's from Turkey and it's not on display. I checked to see yesterday to see if you could still see it and they've got it hidden somewhere. So petition them to put it on display. But it's two women who are called Amazonia and a killer who are either given their freedom because they fight so well or were sent off in a draw. Which is also very unusual because basically it says missio. So that could mean either of those things. And it's two women fighting in what looks like a very standard gladiator fight. And then their fight is being something extraordinary happened and they were sent off with some kind of freedom. And that is a moment that has been recorded just as a sporting achievement rather than a LOL women achievement. And that is the only piece of evidence that really suggests that female gladiators could be treated with anything like respect.

[Kate Lister]

Do you think that they were also enslaved people?

[Emma Southern]

Probably, yes. A lot of the written evidence is about women that choose to go into the arena because they're noble women. And that is considered to be disgusting. There's evidence of women like learning to fight just because they want to.

[Kate Lister]

Just shits and giggles.

[Emma Southern]

Yeah. And Juvenal writes about it in his profoundly, astonishingly, eye openingly misogynistic satire about why you should never marry a woman. And one of them is that women might go and start training as a gladiator. And we've all seen them like in their armor hitting the training stick and drinking down ale. Like they think it's cool and he thinks it's completely disgusting. But it's clearly women are doing this because they either want to, they want a kind of a bit of that masculine, not like other girls, Glory, like all you other girls are at home putting jewelry on. But I'm out here fighting or, you know, they Just think it's cool. It's cool to do women box. Women do all kinds of sport. Women play football. You know, why go and play football when you know you're going to have people calling you a cunt all the time? Yes.

[Kate Lister]

Yeah.

[Emma Southern]

But you do it because you love it and it's worth it on some other level that is above the fact that everybody's going to say terrible, misogynistic things about you.

[Kate Lister]

I'll be back with Emma after this short break.

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[Kate Lister]

One of the things I've learned from you is that the Romans, it wasn't just about getting two people to wallop each other. If they could make them do a story at the same time, that's even better if they could have, like somehow act out some kind of mad narrative as well. So I suppose women gladiators, it wouldn't be completely alien to the Romans, as misogynistic and mad as they were. When you think of somebody like Boudicca who was a woman warrior or someone like, I nearly said Joan of Arc, but that, you know. No, not Joan of Arc. The Amazons.

[Emma Southern]

Sorry. Yes.

[Kate Lister]

Yeah, the Amazons. So it's not like they would have been completely unaware of the fact that women can be warriors. But what was their sort of attitude in general to women fighting women leading battles and warriors?

[Emma Southern]

Basically disgusting.

[Kate Lister]

Right?

[Emma Southern]

And deeply, deeply unfeminine. And they have really rigid gender ideals about what men and women both can and should do. And their morality, particularly at the elite levels, is very gendered. And battle and leading and anything involving war or martial arts is the masculine sphere 100%. There is no room for women in that. And when women do it, they are considered to be stepping wildly outside of the bounds of appropriate female behavior. Women are subject. Are objects of sentences, like they are objects of orders. Men are the subjects who give orders. So a woman in any kind of martial situation is bizarre and kind of hilarious and slightly disgusting.

[Kate Lister]

So there were no Boudicca fans then. I know that they were fighting her, but there was nobody being like, actually, it's kind of cool.

[Emma Southern]

There probably were somewhere around. Sometimes they would dress people up as, like, they liked to reenact battles, and sometimes they would have people dress up as Britons and have them fight.

[Kate Lister]

Aren't they lovely? Aren't they nice?

[Emma Southern]

Yeah, it's so good.

[Kate Lister]

What about something like Sparta? Because the Romans were definitely big fans of the Greeks and pretty much nicked all of their stuff and their ideas. And Sparta were famous for training their women as warriors. Did none of that rub off on the Romans?

[Emma Southern]

None of that rubbed off, because in Athens, which is the place that the Romans liked the most, they kept their women locked away in a separate side of the house. And the best thing you could say about them was that you didn't know what they looked like. And they really leaned into that rather than anything else.

[Kate Lister]

Okay.

[Emma Southern]

Although Roman women are a lot freer. The reason that women are so into gladiators is that they're happily allowed into the arena. Like, they go to the theater, they go to everything. The only thing that Augustus can do when he's trying to force everybody to be more moral, according to his idea of morals, is say that women aren't allowed in the front rows at the arena. They have to sit further back.

[Kate Lister]

Brilliant. So is there any evidence as to what kind of fights women gladiators would be having? Would it presumably have been just the same as the men that, you know, like, one of them's got a stabby sword, the other one's got a net, the other one's got a trident. It'd have been the same sort of.

[Emma Southern]

Format, as far as we can tell. Yes. So there's in Petronius, he talks about the women in chariots, so which is kind of it. There's a fairly high level, kind of like you have to be able to control the chariot and be an archer and go around in a circle real fast as well. So we have that. We have. The pictures that we have of them are of them just in standard gladiator gear. And when Juvenal describes them, he also describes them in very standard gladiator with the arm wraps and the leg wraps. He describes them as a Thracian, which is a specific kind. That's the kind who are just wearing, like, knickers and a big helmet, and then they've got what looks like a pillow, like, wrapped around their arm. And that is basically all they have. So as far as we can tell, there's no special real kind of dressing up they are just women doing traditional gladiatorial fighting.

[Kate Lister]

Do we know about the lives of any of these women? I know we've got, like, a couple of names, but do we know any. Were there any famous women gladiators that we know anything about?

[Emma Southern]

No, sadly. Oh, we don't know that many names of male gladiators outside of graffiti. And thank God for graffiti. And there's no women gladiators really in graffiti, just in the occasional frieze and when it's mentioned in literary sources. So we don't have any real superstar female gladiators, which is unfortunate.

[Kate Lister]

Do we have any kind of famous women fighters of any athletes of any description? No, I can't think of any either.

[Emma Southern]

They're so resistant to women being in the public sphere that they didn't even have actresses. They would just have men dress up as women.

[Kate Lister]

Back again to the. It's all about the boys.

[Emma Southern]

Yeah. And having women in any kind of public sphere is always a novelty, it's always a transgression. So they get laughed at. They do not get songs about them, they do not get paintings. There's one mosaic of female athletes in, like, little bikinis, like, throwing a ball. Yeah, but that is basically it. And they've got no names on them, unfortunately.

[Kate Lister]

The evidence for them is so scant, as in it's in passing references here, there, where there were, I think, like, somebody, like, might refer to, like, like, women of the sword or something, or one of those weird metaphors that you use. It's so sparse. I have heard one or two people say that they didn't exist, that they don't actually believe in them. What do you think about that particular argument?

[Emma Southern]

The evidence is sparse, but for ancient history, it's actually quite good in that it is not just one source. It comes from multiple sources across multiple centuries, across multiple cities. We have evidence from Turkey, from Pompeii, from Rome, from Ostia, from Britain. Like, there is evidence and it's in different forms. You know, we've got the relief, we've got literature, poems, histories, inscriptions, so they definitely existed. I think that to say that they didn't exist is to just deny quite a varied amount of evidence. And we've said, you know, we've got less evidence for Boudicca than we have for female gladiators. And you'd be hard pushed to say that Boudicca doesn't exist. They are just one of these things that exists and for the most part, they are not worthy of comment.

[Kate Lister]

See, that's what the Romans do Isn't it? It's like if you just looked at Roman literature and Roman art and Roman pottery, you'd almost think that women just didn't exist in this world.

[Emma Southern]

Yeah. Unless women paint themselves or if they did that they only existed in, like, sex contexts because you get a lot of women being shagged. They're just not very worthy of being put on a frieze. They're just not very. They're not the elite of sport or the most exciting thing that anybody saw that day. And they're just something that happens in the same way that, you know, a lot of stuff that happens in life is never recorded, but they happen in enough contexts that do end up being worthy of comment. Like being forced to fight little people, which is so funny that it gets commemorated or when elite women keep doing it. And so they have to be stopped because from that you can see that they are there. They're just not that interesting to people that often.

[Kate Lister]

And we should talk about the body that was discovered in London, that was excavated because that did not offset the cat among the pigeons.

[Emma Southern]

It did, and it remains very controversial. So, like 1990s, it was dug up in London. And basically it is a mostly cremated skeleton of a woman. And a lot of the grave goods that were found in the grave have gladiator stuff on them. So there's lamps, there's like cups that have gladiatorial scenes on them. And this is something that people like. Gladiator merch is very common, which I find delightful. And at the time, and for a long time it has been. There's been this argument, is she buried with all of this gladiator merchant because she is a gladiator, or is she buried with it because she is a massive fan of gladiators and there's no real way of knowing. And because her body was partially cremated, you can't really see whether she had any injuries that would be concurrent with being a gladiator. That would be the best way is if you could see that she had head injuries or arm injuries, then you'd be able to see that she had. Had, like, been training. But it is. One of the agonies of archaeology is that so much of it is interpretation. And both of those interpretations can be made is that she's a gladiator and she's buried with gladiator stuff because she's proud of it, or she is just a woman who goddamn loved the gladiators. It's like when you bury somebody with their football shirt or something.

[Kate Lister]

I've heard People make the argument that she might be a priestess because wasn't some kind of little ring or something with a God discovered and that this God was supposed to look after gladiators. That people have said, oh, maybe she was a priestess.

[Emma Southern]

Yes, but again, it is. She could just have that because she likes the gladiators so much.

[Kate Lister]

What do you think, Emma? I know that historians never, ever, ever want to actually come down firmly on one side because we just don't know.

[Emma Southern]

I always go with the interpretation that I like the most and which. Where I like the story and personally I like the story of someone, a woman who just bloody loves the gladiators. And it's just like, you know, you sometimes get like documentaries about people who've decorated their whole house in their football team. And like one of those women who. She's got her team of gladiators and.

[Kate Lister]

She loves them gladiator. Super fun.

[Emma Southern]

Exactly. And so when she dies, her husband or her sister or whoever buried her is like, well, we've got to bury her with our gladiator stuff.

[Kate Lister]

And that also sort of reminds us that there were gladiators in Britain as well. Cause we tend to just think of the Colosseum and Rome. But there would have been gladiator fights all over the place. Including Britain.

[Emma Southern]

Absolutely. All over the Empire. In every place where there was a theater or an amphitheater. And there's a couple of amphitheaters in Britain. And they found a gladiator barracks in Kent last year or the year before. And it had a cat. Found a cat skeleton in the gladiator barracks. So it was their, like, little pet cat. I think they called him, like, catiator or something like that. They came up with a pun. I can't remember what it is now, but yeah. So they were definitely gladiators in Britain. Blood gladiators everywhere. It was like a quintessentially Roman thing to be doing, was to have gladiator fights. Most of the time that you go and see a gladiator fight, it's going to be in a small place. It's going to be, you know, a small amount of people fighting. The Colosseum isn't built until the reign of Titus, which is the second century. So for most of Roman history, the Colosseum doesn't exist. And it's a big deal when the Colosseum is open. Most of the time it's quite small and much more intimate than the Colosseum.

[Kate Lister]

Would they have had women in the Coliseum in any other capacity other than a Gladiator. I'm just trying to think of, like what the Romans, their shows that they like to put on for each other. Were women prisoners condemned to do horrible things? Oh, they were. So it's not like they wouldn't have seen women in these. I don't even know what you call them, like death spectacles of just awfulness that they've come up with.

[Emma Southern]

Yeah, no. So you would definitely see women prisoners being condemned is not uncommon. The only rule against it was you couldn't condemn a virgin or a pregnant woman. And they had ways around both of those things.

[Kate Lister]

Of course they did, but.

[Emma Southern]

Yeah, so they would often do that. And in their spectacular executions, they would very often have women there because they thought it was funny. And like the Chris, the reason that all of the Christian martyrs are being executed in ludicrous and horrible ways is that so many of them are women. And it's kind of titillating to watch women get eaten by a leopard. I saw a freeze yesterday actually of a woman tied to a bull being eaten by a leopard, which felt excessive.

[Kate Lister]

That is excessive. But if they were anything, they were extra, weren't they, the Romans? So they were happy executing women and men and watching women fight. They didn't have actors, women actors, did they? So there's no other way that a woman would have been involved in this spectacle at all?

[Emma Southern]

Not really, no. Except as a spectator or they could fund it through a man. But it is a public activity and most of the time it is political as well, or religious, and therefore it is very firmly in the sphere of male activity.

[Kate Lister]

Were women's fights clamped down on long before gladiator fights in general were clamped down on?

[Emma Southern]

Yeah. Oh, so it is Septimius Severus who bans women fighting. Whether anybody adhered to the ban is a different question. But the ban is not repeated, which is unusual as far as we can tell. Women gladiators, because they are a kind of decadent novelty, they're probably more expensive than male gladiators. And so you would have to be putting on a big show to have women. And Septimius Severus makes it illegal. He says, basically, he says he's seen some games that are too extravagant and he's banning a bunch of stuff that's too extravagant. And one of them is female gladiators.

[Kate Lister]

When you think about it. Actually, I'm just trying to think like the day to day life of these female gladiators is they certainly existed. They don't seem to have existed in really large numbers or they Might have done. And they just didn't bother to tell us that they did. But I can't imagine the Romans would have been as conscientious as to do something as have, like, separate gladiator training schools for men and women or like, separate housing quarters. So presumably these few women who either they've been condemned to do this or for reasons known only to themselves, went, yeah, I'll give that a go. They have to share space with the male gladiators and train with them and live with them in their little gladiator schools.

[Emma Southern]

Yeah. Or they're training at martial schools. So there's, like, various schools around the empire which just train people in martial skills that are, like specialist schools for learning war skills. And they had women in them as well who would just go for fun. They would probably be in those as well.

[Kate Lister]

Wow. It seems like a very, very grim existence. But then actually, when I say that, when I talk to you, most of Rome seems like that. So if you were condemned to this, if it was like, right. Emma Southern, you have been found guilty of not paying an Uber driver, and I'm now going to condemn you to fight in the Coliseum. I'm going to assume you couldn't say no.

[Emma Southern]

No.

[Kate Lister]

What was the option?

[Emma Southern]

Suicide, which people did do often in quite horrible ways, or just be so bad at it, they wouldn't be worth them sending you out and hope that you got another assignment.

[Kate Lister]

Okay.

[Emma Southern]

And the other assignment would probably be. I mean, if you're condemned, the other assignment is going to be like, the mines or something, or execution. And that's going to be rubbish. But I feel like probably women were not condemned to this. I feel like they were probably just enslaved women that were chosen to do it or who volunteered to do it. Because it would be kind of a double condemnation to condemn a woman to the arena. It wouldn't just be condemning her to fight. It would be taking away her femininity as well. And they'd much rather have her be condemned to be, like, eaten by something horrible.

[Kate Lister]

Of course they would. Of course they would.

[Emma Southern]

Yeah. At a state level, they don't really do gender transgression that often. So I'd be surprised if people were condemned to be. I suspect it's people who choose to do it and people who are just enslaved women who are particularly strong and are then chosen to be gladiators. But I would be rubbish. I don't think you'd choose me. I've got tiny little wrists. Like, you'd look at my arms and just be like, that's just pathetic.

[Kate Lister]

I can do, like, a Zumba class and, like, a couple of body pump classes, but I don't think that's going to hold you in much stead against a bear.

[Emma Southern]

No. Or like another woman with a massive shield.

[Kate Lister]

God, no. Oh, I couldn't even hold on. Terribly scary. No. I just cry. Just run in the other direction. The new gladiator film is on our horizons at the time of recording. Neither of us have seen it yet, but hopefully by the time this goes out, we will have seen it. I have seen a couple of trailers for it, but I can't recall if there are women gladiators in it, but I would bet 10 to a penny that there are.

[Emma Southern]

I feel like it's likely that there will be.

[Kate Lister]

I think they're gonna be sexy gladiators, too. I reckon the gold bikini's gonna be back.

[Emma Southern]

I mean, fingers crossed for a gold bikini at any given time. All I can really remember from the trailer is Paul Mescal kind of flying through the air at an elephant, which gives me very high hopes for what I'm gonna see.

[Kate Lister]

So if you were in charge of the gladiator film as your final question, and you were put in charge of an accurate depiction of the women gladiators, what do you think you'd go for? Would you go for a gold bikini? How would you like them represented?

[Emma Southern]

I wouldn't. I would have them dressed properly. I would have women who took themselves very seriously and had to deal with the fact that nobody else did. It would be much like it if I was going to be making a film about, like, a female soccer player, female football player, who trains hard, takes their career very, very seriously, and has to deal with the fact that when it comes to budget cut time, they're always going to be the ones that get their budget cut.

[Kate Lister]

Emma, you have been marvelous to talk to once again. You always are. Perhaps we should try. No, we won't fight each other in the Coliseum. That would be shit. We'll have a game of Tig. Would that amuse people, do you think?

[Emma Southern]

Yes, that sounds fun.

[Kate Lister]

We could do that or just sit down and have some tea. But until we get to that, if people want to know more about you and your work, where can they find you? Not in the Coliseum.

[Emma Southern]

Not in the Coliseum, no. My podcast is called History of Sexy, or they can find me@emma southern.com, which has links to everything on there.

[Kate Lister]

Thank you so much for joining me. I hope you enjoy the film when.

[Emma Southern]

You do see it, I cannot wait.

[Kate Lister]

Thank you for listening. And thank you so much to Emma for joining me. And if you like what you heard, please don't forget to like review and follow along whatever it is that you get. Your Podcasts if you'd like us to explore a subject or maybe you you just fancied saying hi, then you can email us@betwixt historyhit.com We've got episodes on everything from the history of pubic hair to the second installment of our miniseries, the Secret Lives of Six Wives, and we are looking at Anne Boleyn. This podcast was edited by Tom Delagi and produced by Stuart Beckwith. The senior producer was Charlotte Long. Join me again betwixt the Sheets the History of Sex Scandal in Society, a podcast by History Hit. This podcast cast contains music from Epidemic Sound.

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