A Day in the Life of a Gladiator

Summary

Dan Snow’s History Hit
Episode: A Day in the Life of a Gladiator
Original Air Date: July 9, 2026
Guest: Dr. Harry Sidebottom, historian and author of “We Who Are About to Die”

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Episode Overview

This episode of Dan Snow’s History Hit takes listeners on an immersive journey into the daily life and realities of Roman gladiators. Dan is joined by Dr. Harry Sidebottom, an expert in ancient history, to deconstruct the myths, examine contemporary sources and archaeology, and reveal what a day in the life of a gladiator truly entailed—from training, diet, fame, and danger to the economics and decline of the games.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

Origins and Early Purpose of Gladiatorial Combat

• Historical Beginnings: The Romans peg the start of gladiatorial combat at 264 BC at a senator’s funeral, but the truth is elusive, with few reliable sources ([04:14]).
• Cultural Adoption: Debate as to whether the spectacle was borrowed from Campania or Etruria; Rome was proud of adapting and improving upon traditions from conquered peoples ([04:39]).
• Religious to Political Shift: Early games retained a nominal link to funerals and religious rites, but evolved into political tools used by senators to curry favor with the public ([05:45]).

The Nature of Gladiator Fights

• Weaponry as Key Difference: Unlike other sports, gladiators fought with weapons, representing a step beyond wrestling or boxing in violence and spectacle ([07:38]).
• Purpose—Show Over Slaughter: Gladiators were highly trained and valuable, meant to put on a “great show” rather than fight to the death at every bout ([08:15]).
• Survival Odds: “The chances of survival are actually pretty good. You only have a one in eight chance of dying,” (Harry, [08:49]).

Economics of the Games

• Ownership and Renting: Gladiators were expensive assets often rented (with insurance-like penalties for death or injury) or owned by those putting on games ([09:35], [11:05]).
• Financial Logic: “If the Gladiator is killed or severely wounded, you ... have to pay ... 50 times the rental, which suddenly becomes a serious sum of money,” (Harry, [10:21]).

Structure of the Day at the Arena

• Event Sequencing:
  • Morning: Animal hunts and slaughter ([13:44])
  • Midday: Executions, often highly theatrical and myth-inspired ([14:10])
  • Afternoon: Gladiators take center stage—the main draw of the spectacles ([16:04])
• Violence vs. Fame: While much blood was spilled in the arena, gladiators themselves were not typically the ones dying en masse; “the lunchtime executions … that's when you get a weird mixed sort of bill” ([14:10]).

Roles, Types, and Equipment of Gladiators

• Types and Specializations: Gladiators were divided by fighting style (e.g., “big shield men” like the murmillo, “small shield men” like the Thracian, and the retiarius with a trident and net) ([16:47]).
• Fashions and Novelty: Organizers valued novelty and variety, often tweaking the matchups or weapons for spectacle ([18:49]).

Training, Diet, and Physical Reality

• Elite Training Methods: Gladiators trained rigorously, with techniques sometimes borrowed by Roman generals to improve legionary swordsmanship ([28:40]).
• Diet for Survival and Show: A barley-and-bean stew (“sagina”) bulked them up for both protection and spectacle: “It is a diet designed to build up a thick level of subcutaneous fat. So the guys can take a wound in the arena, but the blade doesn't pierce a vital organ” (Harry, [29:56]).
• Fame and Attractiveness: Despite “bad teeth and bad breath...these guys are sex symbols. Really unlikely sex symbols” ([30:51]).

The Oath and Social Makeup

• Who Became a Gladiator?: Not just slaves—free men volunteered, prisoners of war, and criminals could find themselves in the arena ([17:17], [21:56]).
• The Gladiator’s Oath: “To be bound, beaten, burnt and killed with steel. So it’s a terrifying oath,” (Harry, [19:39]).
• Paths to Glory & Freedom: Some gladiators, especially successful ones, could win prize money, freedom, “a sex symbol,” and even buy land ([22:07]).

Life in Gladiator Schools

• Conditions and Security: Most schools were run without extreme confinement, except for notorious exceptions like that of Spartacus’ revolt ([23:41]).
• Career Length: Some sentences included a set number of years in the arena, followed by time as a trainer or guard ([25:26]).

Rules, Realities, and Common Myths

• Fighting with Sharp vs. Blunt Weapons: Both occurred; some games were advertised for “sharp weapons,” but many injuries were not deadly ([18:49]).
• Duration of Bouts: Likely quite short; “modern military studies, it's very hard to carry on fighting for more than 10 minutes,” (Harry, [33:42]).
• Referees and Regulations: Fights had referees and unstated rules (depicted in art but not recorded in sources) ([09:02], [33:03]).
• Submission and the Thumbs: Thumbs-down meaning death, thumbs-up meaning life stems more from modern interpretation than concrete ancient evidence ([35:59]).
• Spectator Life: The crowd experienced a long, noisy, and pungent day, sometimes enjoying aromatic mists of saffron as luxury and spectacle ([36:18]).

The End of the Games

• Economic and Cultural Decline: Gladiatorial games petered out due to economic crisis, the shifting role of Christianity, and imperial priorities shifting away from Rome ([37:18]).
• Christianity’s Role: Although Constantine did not outright ban the games, as Christianity rose among the elite, supporting such spectacles became socially unacceptable ([37:18]).

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Hollywood Myths:

  “Almost everything we think we know turns out to be wrong. Cause it comes from Hollywood. And so it's just carnage. It's a slaughterhouse. ... The chances of survival are actually pretty good. You only have a one in eight chance of dying.”
  —Harry Sidebottom ([08:15]-[08:49])

• On the Social Reality of Gladiators:

  “If you're a gladiator, you are guaranteed that you'll be fed... and you have a chance of acquiring glory ... You become, if you're successful, a sex symbol, which might be a lot more appealing than working as a stevedore.”
  —Harry Sidebottom ([22:35])

• On Subverting the Thumbs Myth:

  “All modern scholars go, we've got it all wrong ...But I'm going to stick with the Hollywood and popular understanding. Thumbs down meant death, thumbs up did mean life.”
  —Harry Sidebottom ([33:44])

• On Crowd Management:

  “They did have special ways of distributing saffron... smells nice. And also it's a symbol of luxury. ... When the emperor gives games, he then showers them with a yellow dye. Now if that's not a way of symbolizing your control over the elite, I don't know what is.”
  —Harry Sidebottom ([36:18])

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Timeline of Key Segments

• [02:22] – Dan sets the scene for Roman gladiators: popular myths vs. real history
• [04:02]-[05:45] – Origins of gladiatorial combat and its religious/political functions
• [07:38] – Distinction of gladiatorial combat from other ancient sports
• [08:15]-[09:02] – Training, rules, and the myth of constant carnage
• [09:35]-[11:05] – Economic logic: buying, renting, and insuring gladiators
• [13:13]-[16:04] – Comparing gladiator deaths to other arena bloodshed; running order of events
• [16:47]-[19:00] – Types of gladiators and the importance of novelty and spectacle
• [28:40]-[30:51] – Training, diet, and the physical reality of being a gladiator
• [31:22] – Examples from sources: what do we know about real bouts?
• [33:03]-[35:59] – Submission rituals; the truth about thumbs up/down
• [36:18] – Life in the crowd; use of aromas and showmanship
• [37:18]-[39:19] – How and why the games ended; the role of Christianity and economics
• [39:33]-[40:03] – Gladiators’ lasting appeal in modern imagination

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Final Reflection

This episode dispels the Hollywood image of the doomed, constantly dying gladiator. Instead, gladiators were skilled, valuable, and sometimes even celebrated figures—symbols not just of violence and spectacle, but of social mobility, resilience, and the peculiar ethics of Rome. As Dan sums up:

“Gladiators were not simply disposable victims. Their matches were structured spectacles… designed to thrill the crowd whilst preserving valuable fighters wherever possible… But none of this erases the harsh truth behind the arena. Gladiators still lived and fought within a brutal system built on slavery and violence...” ([40:06])

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For more on this topic, check out Harry Sidebottom’s book: “Those Who Are About to Gladiators and the Roman Mind.”

Transcript

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[Dan Snow]

a gladiator, a lone warrior standing in the blazing sun of the arena. The roar of 50,000 spectators echoing around the stone seats of the coliseum. One fighter raises his sword, the other waits for the crowd's verdict. A thumbs up or a thumbs down. It's a powerful image, but it's also, in many ways, a myth. In reality, many Gladiators were highly trained professionals. They lived in specialist schools, they followed strict diets, they trained under coaches and they fought in quite carefully organized matches, designed as much for spectacle as for bloodshed and survival. Some were enslaved prisoners of war. Yes. But others were volunteers. They were chasing fame and prize money, excitement, sex and the possibility of glory in front of tens of thousands of spectators. So what was a typical day actually like for a gladiator? What do they eat? How do they train? And how often did they really face death in the arena? And how much of what we think we know, from the dramatic thumbs down executions to constant Mortal Kombat is actually true? Today we're joined by Harry Sidebottom, author of we who are about to Die. We're going to step beyond the Hollywood version of the arena. We're going to enter the daily reality of the Roman gladiat. This is the real life of Rome's most famous fighters. Harry, good to have you on.

[Harry Sidebottom]

Thank you very much for asking me.

[Dan Snow]

I mean crowds have often paid to watch men beat each other up and I imagine that it's been going on a long time. When do we first identify something? We can say, no, those are gladiators. And what makes that special?

[Harry Sidebottom]

Okay, well the Romans identified it very precisely. It's 264 BC when six gladiators fought at the funeral of a senator.

[Dan Snow]

Really?

[Harry Sidebottom]

But this is recorded almost two centuries later, so it may not be true.

[Dan Snow]

Okay.

[Harry Sidebottom]

The problem is that the Romans themselves had no idea when gladiatorial combat really started. And equally they had no idea where it was from.

[Dan Snow]

Okay.

[Harry Sidebottom]

So I mean Roman saucers have two stories. We, we adapt, adopted it and adapted it either from the south, from Campania or from the north, Etruria. But they're two different stories.

[Dan Snow]

Yeah, well that's problem with Rome can't be east or west because it's a very narrow peninsula. So it's got to come from one direction or another.

[Harry Sidebottom]

Absolutely. And we might think that, you know, they're trying to distance themselves morally from this to us shocking, ghastly spectacle, you know, create a little bit of moral distance. It's an import, we didn't invent it, but I think it's actually the very reverse. It sort of way into a very odd distinctive Roman mindset which is we've conquered the world or the known world and from every people we've conquered, we've taken something, the good things and then we've made them even better. It's almost a proud boast of, look, we've conquered the world. It doesn't really matter if it's the Etruscans or the Campanians, because it's now ours.

[Dan Snow]

And what was the. Was it. Is it pure entertainment or is there a religious or political. In its beginnings, do you think?

[Harry Sidebottom]

There's certainly a religious element to kick off with. It's a funeral. And all gladiatorial contests under the Republic, which conventionally ends in 31 BC because we have to periodize everything just to make it, I guess, to make that incredible span of history comprehensible. But in the Republic, all gladiatorial shows retain at least a nominal link to a funeral. Okay, but it gets more and more nominal. I mean, Julius Caesar's celebrating his father's funeral with gladiatorial shows. I think it's some 20 or 30 years after his father died. So then it moves into what you suggested, which is the political. So Roman senators are putting on gladiatorial games essentially to buy popularity with the populace.

[Dan Snow]

So it's being linked initially to funeral activities. Is there a sense of someone kind of blood sacrifice? Do gladiators always shed blood or is it sort of stylized violence? What's going on there?

[Harry Sidebottom]

It's not straightforwardly blood sacrifice. I mean, various people in antiquity, Christians, said it was. It's human sacrifice. But Christians, of course, you couldn't get a more biased source.

[Dan Snow]

Yeah, they hate it.

[Harry Sidebottom]

Cause they hate it. No pagan writer ever says that. Never says a blood sacrifice. Yes, in the back of their minds when they're watching it, they may be thinking of, well, Patroclus's funeral games in Homer's Iliad, because all the romans from the 2nd century BC onwards are educated in Greek as well as Latin.

[Dan Snow]

So obsessed with the Iliad and the Odyssey.

[Harry Sidebottom]

Absolutely obsessed with it. So, yeah, they may be thinking about that in the back of their minds, but there's no direct sort of. Cause this is a religious ceremony at all beyond the funeral link.

[Dan Snow]

So there you end up with men fighting each other with weapons. I mean, how is this different from wrestling and boxing and other forms of mixed martial arts sports that we're still familiar with today?

[Harry Sidebottom]

Yeah, I mean, the difference you hit the nail on the head is weapons.

[Dan Snow]

Okay?

[Harry Sidebottom]

These guys have weapons. It's. I mean, they also had boxing, very brutal form of boxing, and they had wrestling. But this is a step beyond into a sort of uber violence in that these people are armed and they're trained to fight. I mean, they are trained professionals. They're not usually. Very seldom will they be just thrown into the arena, given a weapon, thrown into the arena. These guys are trained over months, if not years in their specialities.

[Dan Snow]

Now, are they trained to kill or are they trained to put on a great show?

[Harry Sidebottom]

The latter. They're trained to put on a great show. This is a very common modern misapprehension about gladiators. I'm probably. Gladiators we have, getting back to what they meant to the Romans, is that we all think we know what gladiators are and they're all about. And the problem there is almost everything we think we know turns out to be wrong. Cause it comes from Hollywood. And so it's just carnage. It's a slaughterhouse. There are always mass battles and only Russell Crowe's left standing at the end. So the chances of survival are actually pretty good. You only have a one in eight chance of dying.

[Dan Snow]

Really.

[Harry Sidebottom]

Yeah. So you could have quite a career. Gladiators retire at the end of it. It's about show. We know there were laws to gladiatorial fights. The only problem is none of our sources tell us what they were.

[Dan Snow]

Oh, no. So that's agony.

[Harry Sidebottom]

It's agony. There are laws, there must be rules, like boxing. Even UFC has rules of sorts. And they must have existed. Everyone knows them, so they don't bother to tell us. As so often in history, if you're an insider writing for insiders, you don't need to spell it out. Unfortunately, we're not insiders and. And it would have been so helpful if they had.

[Dan Snow]

So let's talk about some of those myths. One is that. So these were highly trained people. They were athletes that cost a lot of money. You probably don't. You don't want to send them out to go and get butchered, do you?

[Harry Sidebottom]

No. The economics of it is sort of arguing against having them killed. We've got two bits of evidence from the whole of the empire for all those centuries. We have precisely two bits of evidence of the economics of it. And one is a price edict of Mox Aurelius, the emperor. Apparently, prices were going through the roof. And so he. He, as unrealistically as any government ever fixes prices. He put a price fix on what you could spend per gladiator, depending on how good they were. And it implies you buy them. Now, our problem is that we have one other source which is roughly contemporary with that, which says, no, you don't. You rent them and you rent them at a fixed fee. But then, most interestingly, this is a legal text by a jurist called Gaius. If the Gladiator is killed or severely wounded, you, the guy putting on the show, have to pay the person who provided you with the Gladiator 50 times the rental, which suddenly becomes a serious sum of money, huge amount of money. And you don't want to risk that sum of money, usually.

[Dan Snow]

No, that sounds like. That's like when you rent a car and say, if you blow it up, this is what you owe us. I mean, you don't usually blow up a rental car, do you? So that's sort of.

[Harry Sidebottom]

I tend not to.

[Dan Snow]

Yeah, we try not to.

[Harry Sidebottom]

Try not to.

[Dan Snow]

And so. But renting's interesting. So what's a senator or later an emperor? They'll just ship a load of gladiators in to put on a big show, will they? Is that how this is beginning to work?

[Harry Sidebottom]

It works very much that way for senators, or really, actually, in the Republic, the senators more often own their own trooper gladiators. But that's because they're at the top of the political pyramid. No one can tell them what to do. They're senators. Then when Augustus establishes the rule of emperors, then it all changes, because senators really, they're not legally debarred from owning gladiators in Rome, but they're not allowed to have gladiatorial shows, so they stopped doing it. Out in the provinces, the rich local elite still put on gladiatorial shows. They're the ones who rent them from professionals. The lanista, you know, the loathed, reviled figure of the gladiator trainer, of course, played by Oliver Reed brilliantly in the first gladiator movie, the one that was good. But the emperor himself owns them, like almost everything in the Roman world, who is the biggest owner of land, ships, anything else, including gladiators. Very soon, it's the emperor. He has his own imperial schools of gladiators scattered across the empire. And you can occasionally rent from the emperor if you're, say you're a big man in Athens or somewhere. Let's pick a city that was doing better at the time. Ephesus.

[Dan Snow]

Colchester.

[Harry Sidebottom]

No. Yeah, they had gladiators there. But I don't think you're going to be renting from the emperor in Colchester. I mean, the shipping from Ravenna is going to cost you a fortune, but you then rent from the procurator who runs the local, the nearest imperial school, and you all rent the gladiators, presumably with this crippling. You get them killed or wounded. 50 times the rental place.

[Dan Snow]

Wow. So you actually, you want to look, look up, make sure, look out for them.

[Harry Sidebottom]

Yes, you do. Except you also. You're putting on the show to show how open handed and generous you are to your local population. And if they demand the death of a gladiator, then if you don't order them to be killed, then you're looking mean. So it's a push pull thing economically. No. So sometimes they died, sometimes they die also.

[Dan Snow]

It's worth saying there, isn't it? I think lots of us get confused. Lots of people did die in arenas, criminals, Christians, at some stages. But that's sort of separate to the gladiator show. Right. We're not here saying the Romans were lovely and no one died. There would be lots of. You'd see lots of blood spilled. But it wouldn't necessarily be the highly paid, highly trained gladiators.

[Harry Sidebottom]

Exactly. You'd seen a lot of blood spilt, especially at lunchtime, at midday when the executions happen.

[Dan Snow]

Right, so they're criminals being killed, animals are being slaughtered.

[Harry Sidebottom]

You slaughter animals mainly in the morning.

[Dan Snow]

Okay, morning for animals.

[Harry Sidebottom]

Well, also to be rather, you know, be fair to the road. Yes. Is it? I mean, they're much more violent world than ours. They're much more accustomed to bloodshed in the morning. They did sometimes just exhibit exotic animals, but yes, it's mainly animals being hunted by professional hunters and slaughtered. Of course, they're more used to it. Butcher shops, they're in the street, they're everywhere.

[Dan Snow]

And then lunchtime, that's when you get

[Harry Sidebottom]

a weird mixed sort of bill. You get some mimes, jugglers, acrobats, and then you get the executions. Executions, they're really strange and interesting because usually if you're condemned to be killed, capital crime, then you're either crucified, which everyone knows about because of Christianity, or you're decapitated. If you're a Roman citizen. Crucifixion is for slaves. Now if you think about it, neither of these are much good for the arena. Decapitation is too quick. Nothing particularly spectacular about it, and maybe in a sense almost thought too painless. On the other hand, crucifixion takes too long. Guys can live for hours, if not days on the cross. And what if they're still alive at the end of the show? Just wouldn't work. So then the Romans mainly condemned people to be killed in the shows, either being thrown to wild beasts or burnt to death. And then they elaborate on it in a, to us, absolutely hideous way, where the condemned criminal is made to act out a Greek myth. For example, Hercules, Heracles, he in myth was Given a poison shirt by his wife, tricked into wearing it, it's so painful he burns himself to death. Now the Romans take this and convert it into a spectacle for the arena, the tunica molester, which I suppose roughly translates as the evil or insidious tunic. So the condemned criminal is put in a tunic filled with inflammable stuff, suffused with it, and then someone sets fire to it and they literally run about burning to death.

[Dan Snow]

So there's plenty of brutality and violence in the arena, huge amounts. But perhaps we've always, we've just used the name gladiators almost to describe that whole thing. Whereas in fact that gladiators, what they come on late in the day, sun's going down and that's the real highlight of the day out, is it?

[Harry Sidebottom]

Absolutely. And the gladiators are the top draw beasts in the morning executions at lunchtime. But the real sort of the top billing are the gladiators and we presume or there's very little evidence that the gladiators get more famous as the afternoon goes on. You don't put the famous guys on first. It's like any boxing competition now you have the. The non entities fight first.

[Dan Snow]

The undercard.

[Harry Sidebottom]

Yep. And then you get the big names appear at the end. Yeah, that's, that's what the public have really come for.

[Dan Snow]

I'm always fascinated by the different types. The gladiators, they made them dress up and use particular weapons. There was strong fashions that run through gladiatorial combat.

[Harry Sidebottom]

Well, the sort of big division is between big shield men and small shield men. We know that from Marx Aurelius in his Meditations, because Marx Aurelius was, although often cited as a modern self help book, he. Which is really weird, he was a very miserable guy who disliked, well, pretty much all forms of pleasure. Very anti sex, very, very anti drink. And he thanks one of his tutors for making sure that he never became a fan of the big shields or the small shields. But within those two big categories there are bewildering sub varieties. So with big shields you would have the mermelo, a huge shield like a scutum, rather like a Roman legionary. And then you'd have a provocateur, again with a big shield but slightly different helmet, both with short swords and against them you'd have the small shield men. Usually my personal favorite is the Thracian, the Thrax with a curved sword and a little shield. Or the really famous one, the retiarius, no shield at all, just armor on the left Arm and shoulder, trident net. They have to rely on speed and skill. Usually matched against a mermalo. You could be matched against anyone. You can be matched against your own type of performer or any other. It all depended on the giver of the show. Because you not only if you're giving a show, you've got to do bigger and better than the last guy who put on a show, even if it's in Colchester. But what you've also is really at a premium. It's novelty. You mix up the card, you put something new in. We shouldn't get too dogmatic about the types of gladiator because they changed over time. And I argue in my book that probably they could change within each show as the guy putting on the show thought I need something new. Okay, well we'll slightly alter the equipment of the mermelo to make it more interesting and then I'll pitch him against provocateur whoever. You need novelty, otherwise you'd be seeing the same all the time.

[Dan Snow]

And do you think they're fighting much of the time with blunt weapons or with super sharp razor sharp weapons?

[Harry Sidebottom]

It varies. Some inscriptions do boast all these fights will be with sharp weapons.

[Dan Snow]

So this is for real, this one.

[Harry Sidebottom]

This is for real. This is a big draw in which I'm risking a lot of money. Others they did fight with blunt weapons. Interesting though enough we can see this in. There's a wonderful gladiatorial cemetery been excavated in Ephesus in Turkey. And the a lot of the skeletons have healed injuries, bone injuries from clearly blows from either a shield or a blunt weapon. And one indeed rather splendidly had survived his leg being amputated. I guess he wasn't fighting anymore unless it was a novelty act.

[Dan Snow]

So that's. So they would have had the scars from previous bouts. No question.

[Harry Sidebottom]

The satirist juvenile even talks about their scars and how they're almost physically deformed by a sort of a humped shoulder wart on the nose from where the helmet might fit. And the scars, the scars of course of weapons and the scars of being whipped. Cause a gladiator, the famous oath that they swore, free men would sometimes swear when they became a gladiator, they'd have to swear to be bound, beaten, burnt and killed with steel. So it's a terrifying oath.

[Dan Snow]

So they're swearing that oath because that's the price of being a gladiator.

[Harry Sidebottom]

Yeah.

[Dan Snow]

Why would. I mean are they all so free men would do it but many enslaved prisoners of war who's becoming gladiators who's swearing that oath?

[Harry Sidebottom]

Well, anyone who becomes a gladiator has to swear the oath. But you're absolutely right that they're the different sources. Source number one would be prisoners of war. Source number two, criminals condemned to fight as gladiators. Interesting enough, the Romans regarded both of these as really quite nice, gentle penalties because after all, the guys would otherwise just be killed. And this way they have a chance of survival. And then you have slaves whose owners sell them to gladiatorial schools. It's not until the reign of hadrian in the 2nd century AD that we hear he passes a law that before an owner can sell a slave to a gladiator school, he has to show the slave has done something wrong. Okay, if you step back and think about that, who's the court gonna believe, the owner or the slave? And then you factor in the fact that in a court the slave's evidence could only be taken under torture. I think I'd have just gone quietly, yeah, off to my gladiatorial school in Colchester. The theme of this. But turning it round, there's also a ruling by Antoninus Pius, the next emperor, that any slave who has run away to a gladiatorial school and is discovered will be sent back to their owner. Which is a horrible light on Roman slavery. Some guys thought the brutality of slavery was so horrible that they'd be better off risking their lives as gladiators.

[Dan Snow]

Well, and sometimes would they be? I mean, we hear about gladiators becoming celebrities and making lots of money, even though they're still technically enslaved. If they make it, what's making it look like in the Roman gladiator world

[Harry Sidebottom]

at the base level, making it enough to have leave enough money or have connections, family, wife in inverted commas, or friends who will put up a tombstone for you. Okay, that then you. I think you've made it. But we do hear of ones who go much further and retire from the arena. And according to poet Horace, buy landed estates somewhere in Italy, you got prize money when you won.

[Dan Snow]

Does that not go to the owner? Does that not go to the owner?

[Harry Sidebottom]

I think 25% of it is kept by the gladiators. You have to incentivize these guys to fight. But yeah, free men volunteer to us, it seems weird. Why would they? Again, going back to Horace the poet, he has an answer. It's because they're really morally bad people. They're just baddies and they're young men from well off families who've wasted their inheritance. I think if we strip out the Ancient elite morality. Yeah. Poverty. If you're a gladiator, you are guaranteed that you'll be fed. Indeed, fed up with the amount of food you're given and you've got a roof over your head and you have a chance of acquiring glory, you have a chance of making money. You become, if you're successful, a sex symbol, which might be a lot more appealing than working as a stevedore. Yeah. On a day laborers down at the docks.

[Dan Snow]

Speaking of the tough lifestyle, though, I mean, we hear about Spartacus the gladiator, who. They rise up and they. They escape from their school and start a rebellion. Some of these schools sound like they're pretty grim.

[Harry Sidebottom]

Yes, it's certainly Spartacus as is. But we are also told by Plutarch, the Greek writer, that the owner of Spartacus School was particularly cruel. He kept them chained up in cells, which kind of implies that usually they weren't. And archaeologists have found five gladiatorial schools and none of them really seem to have much security arrangements.

[Dan Snow]

Okay.

[Harry Sidebottom]

Which does open up. Well, how was security maintained in the schools owned by the emperor? That's fairly easy. Soldiers. But private schools. And presumably, I think it was probably a system like American prison's trustees system, where the older, the veterans maybe took over security duties and possibly when they retired from the ring, as it were. Because we. We have a ruling of the Emperor Hadrian, which we always. Historians, we're much prone to doing this, aren't we? We have one bit of evidence and we then look at that very closely and we generalize out and go. That's how it was throughout the whole Roman world. So with that in mind, I will now do that. And one ruling of the Emperor Hadrian is actually really specific. He's asked a question, what should we do with Spanish cattle rustlers who are condemned to gladiatorial schools? And he replies, they must be condemned for five years in school, but they're only in the arena for three. Now that we tend to generalize out. And that's, you know, they serve fought for three years if condemned, but it does show that the other two years. What are they doing then? Presumably they're trainers, they're guards. They're doing something else within the school, passing their expertise on and maybe also guarding the new influx of people who are more likely maybe to try and escape.

[Dan Snow]

And it also implies that there's an expectation that they might live. They've served their three years and then off they go.

[Harry Sidebottom]

Yeah, do another two years as a trainer or a guard and then off you go.

[Dan Snow]

Just pause you for a second there. Don't go away. More gladiators coming up after this.

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[Dan Snow]

Harry. They're training. There are hints, aren't there? The training was quite elite. I mean we, we hear about their eating and, and some Roman generals actually sort of use their training to try and improve the quality of their, their soldiers as well.

[Harry Sidebottom]

Yeah. Some Roman generals, a couple we know of, hire gladiators to come and train their legionaries because legionaries are trained pretty well. But gladiators were thought to be better at individual swordsmanship.

[Dan Snow]

Makes sense.

[Harry Sidebottom]

Which is kind of paradoxical because on the few occasions when gladiators recruited to fight in real wars, they perform appallingly. Not a paradox for Romans because the Romans are happy with the idea that some barbarians are better individual fighters, but what they lack is discipline, or discipline the group unity. They're digging your heels in and showing real true Roman virtues, which has, you know, physical courage with a moral dimension. These guys might be ferocious and skilled, but they're not Romans.

[Dan Snow]

So, so interesting. Okay, so sometimes they might be brought into sort of master classes in one on one fighting. Yeah, interesting. What are they eating? Because they've got a bit of a reputation for that, haven't they?

[Harry Sidebottom]

They have, yeah. They were, they were fed something called sagina, which translates literally as stuffing. It's a barley and bean based stew and it's designed to bulk them up

[Dan Snow]

because we've got it work. Is there any science there?

[Harry Sidebottom]

Yeah, I think there is some science there. Putting it in modern medical terms, it is a diet designed to build up a thick level of subcutaneous fat. So the guys can take a wound in the arena, but the blade doesn't pierce a vital organ. So they can bleed in a spectacular way.

[Dan Snow]

Wow. So almost fattening them up a bit.

[Harry Sidebottom]

They are literally fattening them up. Obviously not all of them. The big shield guys. Yes, probably the small shield guys. In the main retiarius, he relies on

[Dan Snow]

speed, nimble, agile agility.

[Harry Sidebottom]

I guess he's going to be a more nimble type and maybe his rations are a bit curtailed, but yeah. And actually as a byproduct of their diet, which is came out from various pathologists who've worked on archeological pathologists who worked on the gladiator skeletons at Ephesus, they had a remarkably bad teeth compared to the general population.

[Dan Snow]

Bad teeth.

[Harry Sidebottom]

Bad teeth and hence bad breath. These guys, as everyone knows from having seen the movies, these guys are sex symbols. Really unlikely sex symbols. They're really quite portly, they're covered in scars the repetitive, heavy training has quite often led to one shoulder and arm being more developed than the other. A bit like tennis players, only more so. They have bad teeth and bad breath.

[Dan Snow]

And yet there's hope for all of us.

[Harry Sidebottom]

There's hope for all of us. You can become a sex symbol as

[Dan Snow]

a gladiator one day. Is there other examples of actual gladiators? There's one when the Coliseum opens and they're under the Emperor Titus. I mean, take me through what we know about an actual bout that we think might have taken place.

[Harry Sidebottom]

Right, That's. That's a really tricky one because no ancient source walks us through step by step one fight, let alone walks us through the 24 hours of entertainment. The closest we get is a Greek, ancient Greek novel by Lucian, the Greek satirist. It's in. It's one of, I think, 10 short novellas put together in a work called Toxaris. And it talks about two people from north of the Black Sea. It's a wonderful story, actually. They're on their way to Athens and they reach what's now Turkey, mainland Turkey, Asiatic Turkey, north shore of the Black Sea. And they get robbed. And they realize there's no point in going to the authorities because they're strangers, which I always found a really interesting insight into the supposed wonders of Roman law. No one knows us here. We won't get a fair hearing. So one of them decides to become a gladiator. And we do get a blow by blow account of his fight, which lasts precisely for two blows. And basically he kills his opponent, but takes a terrible wound, and that's it. And that's the nearest we get to reportage of a fight in a Greek novel. But it's still immensely useful and interesting,

[Dan Snow]

and we wonder if that's representative or whether that is dramatic for the novel. Yeah, it's tough to say.

[Harry Sidebottom]

And, well, we pretty sure that most gladiatorial bouts. Well, as I said, they had laws, they had referees in the arena with them. They're always on mosaics. They're guys in white tunics with two purple stripes and a big stick, usually employed in art, anyway, to restrain the victorious gladiator. So the man who's wounded and submitting will have time to appeal to the giver of the games. But, yeah, it's. There were rules. We think they were short most bouts. But that's purely based on the fact that it is very hard, based on modern military studies, it's very hard to carry on fighting for more than 10 minutes.

[Dan Snow]

Exhausting.

[Harry Sidebottom]

Absolutely exhausting.

[Dan Snow]

What about that? Submit. One thing everyone thinks they know is the Emperor. Thumbs up, thumbs down. The crowd shouting, was there an element of that?

[Harry Sidebottom]

Well, all modern scholars go, we've got it all wrong. And actually, the guy appeals to the giver of the games. The giver of the games is then expected to listen to the crowd and be influenced by their decision. But Monskolds go, actually, thumbs up meant death, Thumbs down meant life. And it's repeated in every book, modern book I read, published in the last 40 years. Researching my book, and I thought, why do we think this? I traced it back to one article written in the 1970s, which turned out to be a very strange article indeed. And the only argument they really had, apart from some weird things about phallic symbolism, which I couldn't quite see the point of, was the killing blow, according to the scholar, was up into the throat. Except it wasn't in the gladiatorial skeletons at Ephesus. All the killing blows are down. They're administered from above and behind, and it's a downward stroke either into the throat or into the back of the neck. So ancient sources tell us about the thumb, and they even say the thumb turned. They don't tell which way. But I'm going to stick with the Hollywood and popular understanding. Thumbs down meant death, thumbs up did mean life. But you have to appeal in the right way. Cicero says, you never see gladiators sort of crying and begging for their lives because it'll be counterproductive. You have to submit. Various rituals of submission, obviously, throw down your weapon, cast away your shield, maybe take your helmet off, maybe kneel. Well, maybe you're on the ground with an injury. Maybe embrace the knees and thighs of your opponent in a ritual gesture of submission. Oh, and put one finger in the air. Roll like a cricket umpire, and it doesn't matter which hand. Despite lots of modern Internet sources going, it was always the left finger. No, sometimes it was the right. I think it's more important just to make a clear gesture. I've submitted, then your fate is in the hands of the crowd and ultimately, of the man giving the games.

[Dan Snow]

So at the end of the day, you've watched some exotic animals being slaughtered, you've watched some prisoners being slaughtered, you've watched the gladiators. They might have survived, but you've seen some kind of almost balletic, quite choreographed fighting. I suppose it's a long day at the games. I mean, that stadium's gonna be wreaking. People have been drunk. What are people doing in the Stands.

[Harry Sidebottom]

Well, at lunchtime they're mainly popping out for a picnic outside because not everyone wants the executions and jugglers and stuff. Yeah, it's gonna be smelly. But they did have special ways of distributing saffron mixed with water or wine dribbling down onto the audience really, which smells nice. And also it's a symbol of luxury. The guys in the stands can't afford saffron. I mean it's expensive then. It's ludicrous expensive. Now I always think there may be an added element in this. The guys who get most of the saffron dribbled on them because they're in the front row, bottom seats are the senatorial elite in Rome. They have to be wearing spotless white togas. And when the emperor gives games, he then showers them with a yellow dye. Now if that's not a way of symbolizing your control over the elite, I don't know what is.

[Dan Snow]

That's great. I've never heard of that. That's brilliant. What happens to the games? How do they die out?

[Harry Sidebottom]

It's very hard to say. The last evidence we have is in about the 420s AD. I mean later Christian writers come up with a really nice, persuasive, really sort of good answer to this. Constantine comes to the throne, converts to Christianity, bans gladiators. The only problem is it isn't true. And they carried on for at least another century. There are two main explanations for why it dies. One is just economics. In the second half of the 2002-00 A.D. from 250 roughly onwards, the empire is in crisis. The political military crisis. Too many emperors in too few years. Lots of barbarian invasions, rampant inflation. The emperors leave Rome because they're always campaigning and essentially the money runs out, which is one explanation and it isn't mutually exclusive with the other, which is actually Christianity. But at one remove. Constantine comes to the throne in the early three hundreds. No one thought his dynasty would last another century, but it did. And with the exception of Julian the Apostate, they're all Christians. They promote Christianity amongst the elite. You get political and social advancement. If you go, I'm a Christian, you get tax breaks, I'm a Christian. And let's face it, most not wildly religious people, you know, would sign up to this. Once you're professed, a professed Christian, you're not going to be putting on gladiatorial games. You're going to be showing your open handed munificence, your generosity to the public in different ways. Arms to the poor and widows and Orphans building churches. So it's kind of Christianity at one remove that kills it. And of course, the emperors aren't in Rome, so they're not putting on the big shows. So why would local elites, they always copy the emperor if the emperor's not doing it? Why would you. It doesn't make you almost emperor for a day in your little local town.

[Dan Snow]

Well, that. Okay, so that. And that's the end of the gladiators. But I mean, they have lived on. We are obsessed with gladiators. It can't just be the movie in the early noughties. I mean, so we all, throughout the modern world, we've been obsessed with Gladys for a long time. What do you think is that draw?

[Harry Sidebottom]

I honestly think it's a mixture of the dark glamour of violence and at the same time, we can watch films about it. People could listen to us talking about it. You can get the vicarious thrill of this dark glamour of violence, but keep a moral superiority. We can carry on thinking there's terrible Romans, weren't they bloodthirsty compared to us?

[Dan Snow]

Interesting. Well, Harry, thank you very much for coming on. What's your book called?

[Harry Sidebottom]

It's called those who Are about to Gladiators and the Roman Mind.

[Dan Snow]

Thank you for telling me all about it.

[Harry Sidebottom]

Thank you for having me on the podcast.

[Dan Snow]

Thank you so much to Harry for coming onto the pod. When we picture the gladiators of ancient Rome, it's easy to imagine a world defined by blood and brutality and death and biceps. But as we've seen today, the reality is far more complex. Gladiators were not simply disposable victims. Their matches were structured spectacles. They're carefully designed to thrill the crowd whilst preserving valuable fighters wherever possible. Some gained fame and wealth and even their freedom. Their names are written in graffiti, celebrated by fans and remembered long after the games ended. At the same time, we shouldn't go over the top. None of this erases the harsh truth behind the arena. Gladiators still lived and fought within a brutal system built on slavery and violence and spectacle. They had skill and they had fame, but that existed alongside very real danger. And particularly before modern medicine, there was the ever present possibility that one fight, even sustaining a minor injury, it could cost you your life. Well, thanks for listening, folks. If you enjoyed today's episode, make sure to follow the podcast. And if you're watching on YouTube, don't forget to like and subscribe so you won't miss any future episodes. See you in one of those. Bye bye.

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[Dan Snow]

You're on the banks of the Thames, it's 1666 and the city is a towering inferno. In front of you, the Great Fire rages through the Stuart Capital. If you're visiting London this summer, let me Dan Snow, historian and born and raised Londoner, be your personal guide in a brand new series of audio walking tours from history hit. I tell you the stories of where some of England's most explosive history happened. We'll follow the destructive path of the Great Fire of London and explore where and how King Charles I met his grisly end. All you need is your smartphone and the Voice Map app. Using your location, it triggers the story automatically so you can keep your phone in your pocket and your eyes on the history as you walk. Step into London's past. Download VoiceMap from your app store or go to VoiceMap Me Historyhit. That's VoiceMap Me Historyhit. Have you been enjoying my podcast and now want even more history? Sign up to History and watch the world's best history documentaries on subjects like how William conquered England, what it was like to live in the Georgian era, and you can even hear the voice of Richard iii. We've got hundreds of hours of original documentaries plus new releases every week, and there's always something more to discover. Sign up to join us in historic locations around the world and explore the past. Just visit historyit.com subscribe.

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