A day in the life of a gladiator

Summary

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Episode Overview

Title: A Day in the Life of a Gladiator
Podcast: History Extra podcast
Date: November 3, 2025
Host: Rachel Dinning
Guest: Historian & Author Harry Sidebottom

This episode immerses listeners in the brutal, fascinating world of Roman gladiators by exploring their daily lives, the origins and cultural meaning of the games, and what these spectacles reveal about Roman society. With historian Harry Sidebottom—whose book Those Who Are About to Die meticulously reconstructs 24 hours in a gladiator's life—Rachel Dinning leads an engrossing conversation that balances myth-busting, vivid narrative, and fresh historical analysis.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

The Roman View of Gladiators and Violence

• Roman attitudes differed from modern horror at violence:
  • Harry recalls the story of Alypius from St. Augustine:

    "He suffered a more mortal wound than the gladiator on the sand because he just became enraptured with the whole hysteria of being at the games."
    (Harry Sidebottom, 03:44)

  • For elite Roman men, the concern was being swept up in the crowd's excitement and losing self-control—not sympathy for the fighters.
• Modern people might overestimate their own moral distance:

  "We like to think we would [react differently], but maybe we would empathize more with the performers… Still, maybe we would get caught up in it."
  (Harry Sidebottom, 05:24)

Origins and History of Gladiatorial Games

• Uncertain beginnings: Origins variously attributed to southern Campania or northern Etruria, but always seen as an import improved by Rome.
• Funeral rites: Gladiatorial combat was linked to funerals for great men; later, the connection thinned, and public games became about popularity and politics.

  "By the late republic… it's a way of pleasing the crowd. It wins you popularity."
  (Harry Sidebottom, 06:11)

• Emperors as ultimate patrons: Gladiatorial spectacles were a tool of politics, with emperors using them to gain favor.

Social Status and Perception of Gladiators

• Contradictory status: Legal and social outcasts (infamia), grouped with prostitutes, actors, etc., but could gain fame, wealth, and even sexual allure.

  "I think it's a dark glamour of violence and martial virtue that leads to this unbelievably ambiguous attitude."
  (Harry Sidebottom, 08:02)

• Elite engagement and stigma: Emperors, especially Commodus, sometimes participated, scandalizing the upper classes but captivating the public.

Who Became a Gladiator?

• Four main sources:

  1. Criminals (condemned, sometimes for fixed terms)
  2. Slaves (usually with a supposed 'just cause')
  3. Prisoners of war (sometimes considered merciful vs. execution or mines)
  4. Volunteers/freemen (often for economic reasons or the appeal of fame, despite massive stigma)

     "If you sign up as a gladiator you are guaranteed to be well fed, housed. … There's that sort of young testosterone driven man predilection for violence."
     (Harry Sidebottom, 13:04)

• Scathing insight into Roman slavery: Some slaves preferred gladiator life to their former bonds—implying the household could be even worse.

Survival Rates and the Reality of Gladiatorial Combat

• Lower risk than expected:

  • Match duels, careful pairings—most died not in open battle, but upon the decision of the game's sponsor.
  • Estimated fatality rates: as low as 1 in 8 per fight; most gladiators fought infrequently and experienced ones fared better.

    "The chances of survival are actually… quite high. … Your chance of dying is only one in eight. You're actually statistically likely to live."
    (Harry Sidebottom, 16:06)

• Value and reputation mattered:

  • Famous or experienced gladiators were less likely to be killed, as their loss represented a financial and reputational cost.

Gladiator Appearance and Training

• Diverges from Hollywood:
  • Fat, not lean: fed on sagina ("stuffing"—barley and bean stew) to build subcutaneous fat, which protected organs and created bloody but non-lethal wounds.

    "They were quite fat… built up much more muscle… almost look lopsided. Oh, they also had very bad teeth."
    (Harry Sidebottom, 19:28)

  • Drank ash in wine for bone strength; forensic evidence supports this diet.
  • In memorial art, tried to appear as soldiers (West) or athletes (East), not as they truly looked.

    "They were totally CGI'd to make themselves look better."
    (Harry Sidebottom, 21:53)

A Gladiator's Day: 24-Hour Breakdown

([22:22] onwards)

• Night before: Cena libera ("free dinner")—public allowed to watch gladiators eat, generating betting odds based on visible nerves vs. confidence.
• Nighttime: Confined to quarters; possibilities of anxiety, dreams, or even suicide discussed.
• Morning: Parade with religious rituals; weapon sharpness tested.
• Morning Events: Beast hunts (venationes), professional animal combats.
• Midday: Executions and non-lethal amusements—mimes, acrobats, ritualized punishments.

  "[Midday executions]… develop a sort of play… condemned criminals are expected to act out myths… It's moments like that that the gulf between us and the Romans becomes really almost unbridgeable."
  (Harry Sidebottom, 26:21)

• Afternoon: Main gladiatorial combats; best saved till last.
• Post-combat: Gifts thrown to crowd; some valuable, sparking a token black market.
• Evening: Return to school; wound treatment, massages, and the return of the bland diet.

Types of Gladiators & Entertainments

• Multiple classes ("big shield men", "small shield men"), specialist kit and fighting styles, designed to maximize spectacle.
• Female gladiators ("gladiatrixes"): Not authentic as a term, but existence confirmed. Likely more novelty act than serious warriors.

  "Quite possibly they were a novelty act because it was confounding gender expectations… a violent and potentially fatal novelty comedy act."
  (Harry Sidebottom, 25:32)

Animal Shows and Spectacle

• Animal hunts ("venationes"): Professional hunters, exotic beasts—lions, tigers, elephants, even polar bears or hippos.

  "That whole exoticism is meant to demonstrate the universal range of their own empire… It's a way of showing their control over the whole world."
  (Harry Sidebottom, 29:14)

• Sometimes animals performed tricks (notably elephants), a display of mastery over nature.

Rules and Regulation

• Strict oversight: Emperors’ permission needed; on-site referees, but unclear detailed rules.

  "The really upsetting thing is we don't know what the laws were… No source tells us."
  (Harry Sidebottom, 30:09)

• Poignant moment: The tombstone of Diodorus the Wretched laments a deadly referee's decision, illustrating the risks of unfairness.

What Gladiators Reveal about Roman Society

• Reflects fundamental Roman ideas:
  • Civilization vs barbarity, crime and punishment, the place of the empire, reversed social hierarchies in amphitheaters.
  • Glorification of martial courage as the ultimate virtue.

    "If those scum out in the sand… show courage close to the steel. This is a lesson for the Roman citizens in the audience."
    (Harry Sidebottom, 31:45)

  • Even as warfare became professionalized, these spectacles affirmed Romans’ self-image as a warrior people.

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Notable Quotes & Moments

• "The problem with gladiatorial combat for elite adult male writers is it's just too damned exciting."
  (Harry Sidebottom, 03:44)

• "I think it's a dark glamour of violence and martial virtue…"
  (Harry Sidebottom, 08:02)

• "It's a really quite worrying insight into Roman slavery." (on slaves preferring gladiator schools)
  (Harry Sidebottom, 11:10)

• "Chance of dying is only one in eight. You're actually statistically likely to live."
  (Harry Sidebottom, 16:06)

• "They were totally CGI'd to make themselves look better."
  (Harry Sidebottom, 21:53)

• "The gulf between us and the Romans becomes really almost unbridgeable."
  (Harry Sidebottom, 26:21)

• "If those scum out in the sand… show courage close to the steel. This is a lesson for the Roman citizens in the audience."
  (Harry Sidebottom, 31:45)

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Segment Timestamps

• [03:00-04:45] – Roman perspectives on gladiatorial combat; Alypius story; cultural differences
• [06:01-07:48] – Origins of gladiatorial games; transformation from funeral rite to political spectacle
• [08:02-09:49] – Social status, stigma, and glamour; Emperors participating as gladiators
• [09:49-13:04] – Who became gladiators: sources, laws, and personal motivations
• [16:06-18:34] – Survival rates, fight frequency, crowd influence
• [19:28-21:53] – Diet, physique, ‘photoshopped’ tombstones
• [22:22-24:56] – Walkthrough of a gladiator’s day—rituals, preparations, aftercare
• [25:02-26:12] – Types of gladiators, women in the arena
• [26:21-29:14] – Executions, animal displays, exoticism, trick performances
• [30:00-31:27] – Laws of the games, referees, and evidence gaps
• [31:45-33:02] – Gladiator games as a mirror of Roman identity and values

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Episode Takeaways

• The arena was a microcosm of Roman values—blurring the line between horror, glamour, punishment, and entertainment.
• Most gladiators survived fights, defying common perceptions of them as death sentences.
• Gladiators occupied a paradoxical social position: reviled, yet idolized; subhuman, yet celebrities.
• The games staged myths, power, and the social order—reinforcing a martial Roman identity even as the city itself became increasingly removed from direct warfare.

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Recommended for:
History enthusiasts, educators, writers, and anyone interested in Roman history, social psychology, or the realities behind popular myths.

[End of Summary]

Transcript

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[Historian Harry Sidebottom]

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[Podcast Host Rachel Dinning]

Liberties is there to be absorbed. This journal of politics and Culture publishes essays that linger in your mind long after you finish reading. It's for readers who want more than clickbait or breaking news. For people who value thought over noise, from democratic erosion to the meaning of art, Liberty's gives you writing that matters. Experience it for [e-mail] welcome to the History Extra Podcast. Fascinating historical conversations from the makers of BBC History Magazine. What was the Life of a Gladiator really like? Well, in this episode we're stepping into the blood soaked sand of the Roman arena to uncover the truth behind one of history's most iconic spectacles. Rachel Dinning is joined by the historian and author Harry Sidebottom, whose new book, those about To Die follows 24 hours in the life of a gladiator. From the tense night before battle to the brutal reality of combat. He introduces us to these ancient fighters and reveals what their world tells us about Roman soc, power and entertainment.

[Interviewer Rachel Dinning]

So, Harry, thank you for joining me today on the History Extra podcast. Now, your book, those who Are about to Die takes readers inside the Roman gladiatorial arena for a single day. Firstly, I wanted to ask you a bit about how the Romans themselves viewed gladiators. So today, the thought of sitting in an arena to watch men fight with swords, animals be slaughtered and crowds roar their approval seems quite alien to us. It seems quite horrifying. But was this how the Romans saw it? Why were they able to enjoy such extreme violence and spectacle?

[Historian Harry Sidebottom]

Well, actually, for some Romans it was horrifying, but interestingly horrifying in an entirely different way from we think we'd be horrified. There's quite well known story told by St. Augustine about a friend of his, Alypius, who doesn't want anything to do with watching gladiatorial combat. He's dragged along by some friends and Lius takes the rather odd attitude of thinking he'll just keep his eyes shut all day. And he's keeping his eyes shut until there's a really big roar from the crowd as the gladiator is wounded. And then Alypius opens his eyes and as St. Augustine rather heartlessly says, he suffered a more mortal wound than the gladiator on the sand because he just became enraptured with the whole hysteria of being at the games. And this kind of thinking is paralleled in quite a few pagan texts. The problem with gladiatorial combat for elite adult male writers is it's just too damned exciting. You go there and you will be caught up in the mass hysteria of the spectators and you'll lose your self control. And that makes you as bad as the people, the plebs in the stands, even as bad as the people out on the sand. So the horror they have for it, or some had for it, is there, but it's entirely different from us. It has no sympathy for the people who are fighting, suffering and dying on the sand. So yeah, it's, it's a lovely insight into how similar but different the Romans can be from us.

[Interviewer Rachel Dinning]

Do you think if we took a modern person and dropped them into the Roman amphitheater for a day, do you think they'd have a different reaction than to a native Roman?

[Historian Harry Sidebottom]

I'm not sure they would. I think we'd like to think we would because watching films, reading novels, TV shows about gladiators kind of allows us to have the vicarious excitement of the thing. But at the same time Keep a sort of slight moral superiority. You know, we. We aren't like that. We aren't like the Romans. But maybe we would empathize more with the performers because we live in a. In the west, in a Christian thought world, and the Romans didn't. And thou shalt not kill was just a meaningless commandment to them, so perhaps we would get caught up in it.

[Interviewer Rachel Dinning]

Now, before we get on to details of the gladiators themselves, could you tell us a bit about how this form of entertainment actually began? A bit about the history and context?

[Historian Harry Sidebottom]

Actually, that's a really hard question to answer, because even the Romans who wrote the texts we have didn't know how it started. Some Roman writers go, well, it was an import from the south, from Campania. Some go, no, no, it's an import from the north, from Etruria. The one thing they all agree on is gladiatorial combat was an import to Rome. But I don't think this is trying to sort of get some moral distance between them, to disassociate themselves from it. Instead, it's part of a Roman ideal that we Romans take the best from everything else in the world. Many people we've conquered and we then we perfect it, we transform it, we adopt and adapt it and make it ours. So the one thing all Romans agreed on, the gladiatorial combat started out at funerals. The gladiators fought at the funerals of great men. And pretty quickly that link becomes quite tenuous. For example, Julius Caesar puts on games for his dead father and his dead daughter, but they've been dead for years and years. It's become, instead, by the late republic, a way of pleasing the crowd. It's a vote winner. It wins you popularity. And when, of course, Augustus founds the principate and the emperors are in charge, this carries on. They take over from the great dynast of the republic, Caesar, Pompey, whoever, and they become the ultimate patron of the plebs. So they're the people who give the big important games to get their subjects on side with them.

[Interviewer Rachel Dinning]

Now, the gladiators and their trainers were viewed in Roman society on a fairly low rung, but they were also sort of glamorized and celebrated. And this seems a bit contradictory. How did the Romans really view them?

[Historian Harry Sidebottom]

In an ambiguous way, because everything you've just said is entirely true. I mean, they are the lowest of the low. They suffer from infamia, which is a legal and social stigma. They can't represent themselves in court, they can't go to the theater. They can't do this and that. They're on a level with prostitutes, pimps, barkeepers, actors and other Romans, regarded scum. But at the same time they, they can become very famous. They can even become wealthy. They have that. I think it's a dark glamour of violence and martial virtue that leads to this unbelievably ambiguous attitude. On the one hand, they're the lowest of the low, but on the other hand, they're very, very glamorous figures, even sex symbols.

[Interviewer Rachel Dinning]

It's interesting that, as you say, the gladiators were considered on a level with prostitutes, with pimps. They were real low rung of society. But actually, some Roman emperors did engage themselves with gladiatorial pursuits themselves.

[Historian Harry Sidebottom]

Oh, they did. I mean, above all, Commodus, I mean, he actually fought in the Coliseum. Elite subjects certainly weren't reconciled to this. I mean, to even train as a gladiator, let alone to fight the sliding scale of awfulness, really hanging out in gladiatorial schools. Bad training in gladiatorial schools, worse fighting in private, worse still fighting in public. You know, it's the lowest of the low. And so the senators and the other members of the elite, it's a mark of condemning a man as a bad emperor if he does do this. But of course, it didn't stop them. The glamour of gladiators really appealed to some emperors and they're prepared to risk ruining their reputation with the elite. But maybe they were hoping to win popularity with the non elite, with the plebs of rhyme.

[Interviewer Rachel Dinning]

So a broader question for you now. How did people become gladiators?

[Historian Harry Sidebottom]

There are four main sources of gladiators. There's criminals who are condemned to gladiatorial schools. And we actually have one really interesting bit of evidence about them. It's a law of the Emperor Hadrian, and specifically it applies to Spanish cattle rustlers. And if they're condemned to the gladiatorial school, they can only be condemned for a maximum of five years, of which only three will they fight in the arena, which is a fascinating snippet, and we tend to generalize out from that and assume to be condemned to a gladiatorial school isn't a life sentence. You don't fight till you die. There is a potential light at the end of the tunnel. The next big source is slaves who are sold into gladiatorial schools. And this did cause a certain amount of debate because it was recognized that some slave owners were very unpleasant people. And the Emperor Hadrian passed a law that no slave could be sold to a Glad Torres school unless he committed a wrong. But there again, how on earth was a slave going to prove this? I mean, in a court of law, who's going to believe the slave, not the owner?

[Interviewer Rachel Dinning]

That's interesting that there has to be a sort of moral judgment on the slave for them to enter the gladiator sphere.

[Historian Harry Sidebottom]

Oh, absolutely. And how many slaves are going to actually appeal to law about this? Because the evidence of a slave can only be taken under torture. It might just be better to go quietly to the school. And there's another fascinating bit, shows a horrible light on Roman slavery. The Emperor Antoninus Pius passed a law that any slave who's run away from his master to a gladiatorial school should be returned. This implies that some slaves thought fighting as a gladiator and living in a gladiatorial school was less horrible than remaining in their household as a slave, which is a really quite worrying insight into Roman slavery. We've done slaves, we've done criminals, prisoners of war. Obviously, the supply is going to vary hugely at times when the Romans are fighting big wars of conquest, there'll be lots. Other times next to none. And interestingly, of course, in Roman eyes, condemning a prisoner of war to a gladiatorial school is actually a merciful act, because they could just be killed or they could be sent to the mines. Whether it be worked to death, sending them to a gladiator school does offer them that slight hope of redemption and ultimately coming out again alive.

[Interviewer Rachel Dinning]

Absolutely. And preferable even to other forms of execution, which could be quite brutal. Well, not saying that gladiator fighting wasn't brutal. Absolutely not. But as you say, there's that chance of survival.

[Historian Harry Sidebottom]

Well, we'll maybe come back to that. There's quite a strong chance of survival and, well, it's infinitely better than being thrown to the wild animals or burnt alive. And then the fourth one, which is, to us the most weird, is free men volunteered to be gladiators.

[Interviewer Rachel Dinning]

So strange. And why would a free man choose this life, knowing that it carries this disgraceful connotation? If you're a gladiator, you're the lowest of the low. Why would you willingly sign up to that?

[Historian Harry Sidebottom]

Well, the tricky bit here is we don't have the evidence of any person who did. All we have are elite writers who probably never went near a gladiatorial school telling us why people did. And for them, it's a moral thing. It's poverty that you've got into through your own bad faults through wasting your money on food, women, gambling, all you know, list all the usual vices and then you're reduced to going into a gladiatorial school. If we take the moral dimension out, then there's probably a quite a big element of truth grinding poverty. If you sign up as a gladiator you are guaranteed to be well fed, housed and the trade off is you have to fight. Glad to. Combat is perhaps the ultimate full contact combat sport. And you know, why do young guys from deprived inner city areas sign up for boxing gyms? Why do lots of young guys work out their aggression on a rugby field? There's that sort of young testosterone driven man predilection for violence. And of course there's ultimately with gladiators. Gladiators get prizes. If you win, you might not just get a meal and somewhere with a roof over your head, you might actually end up with wealth.

[Interviewer Rachel Dinning]

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[Interviewer Rachel Dinning]

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[Historian Harry Sidebottom]

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[Interviewer Rachel Dinning]

Absolutely. They were paid. We tend to think today that it was a death sentence to become a gladiator. Gladiator combat was a bloodbath. But how dangerous was it? And what was your risk of death as a gladiator?

[Historian Harry Sidebottom]

Much, much lower than it is in a Hollywood film about them. I mean in Hollywood all the battles are mass battles and almost everyone seems to end up being chopped to bits. There were mass battles, they're incredibly rare. Usually a gladiatorial combat is a match duel carefully matched between two opponents of similar expertise and skill. The chances of survival are actually modern estimates working from tombstones and other inscriptions is actually quite high. I mean the most fatal estimate is I think one in four. But most estimates are much higher and I've seen one scholar argue it's as low as 1 in 20. In my book those who are about to Die, I use descriptions to come out with a figure about one in eight. But of course to make that meaningful you've got to know how often do the guys fight and how many years did they fight for? So if we go back to the Emperor Hadrian thing, they're only fighting for three years and it seems from tombstones that most gladiators only fought once or twice a year. So I mean these are broad generalizations but if they're vaguely right, if you only fight say once a year for three years, three fights, your chance of dying is only one in eight. You're actually statistically likely to live. I think also your chance survival increase drastically as you get more experience. It seems that if you're a tyro, a first time fighter, you are much more likely to die than a veteran, if only because as a veteran the crowd know you, you have a reputation and most of the killing isn't actually in the fight. It's after one of the gladiators is submitted and then he submits appeals to the giver of the games. The giver of the games is meant to as a huge social obligation that he has to appeal to the crowd. So a young guy who they don't know is unlikely to win as much sympathy as a 10 times veteran who some of them have gambled on before they've got affection for him. The comparison I use in the book is with fighter pilots in World War I and various memoirs and the young guys who went out, 19 year old public schoolboys who about 20 hours flying time were very likely to die in the first combat. Whereas the Criswell told Veterans who use a cliche are very unlikely to die.

[Interviewer Rachel Dinning]

Sure, they know what they're dealing with. And as you mentioned, there's an element, a little bit of celebrity, where the crowd knows you. The emperor is gonna be less likely to call the shot on you being executed at the end of the match.

[Historian Harry Sidebottom]

And also because as you go up the ranks of gladiatorial fame, you are worth more. So if the giver of the games puts the thumb down, which, by the way, unlike most scholars, I think thumbs down did mean death. It's a huge financial loss, whereas ordering the execution of a beginner is still a financial loss, but a much smaller one.

[Interviewer Rachel Dinning]

Another Hollywood image we might have of the gladiators is that they were lean, muscular, athletic. And your book suggests otherwise. So what do we know about what gladiators actually looked like?

[Historian Harry Sidebottom]

Okay, it's very much not the ripped Hollywood star. We know they were fed a diet of something called sagina, which literally translates as stuffing. We know they were fed up on this. It's a barley and bean stew, carbohydrate rich. The idea is to build up fat, basically. In modern terms, it's a thick layer of subcutaneous fat. The idea being they can actually take a wound and bleed in a almost cinematic visual way. But the blade won't hit any vital organs, so they were quite fat. They also had a special drink. They drank ash diluted in in wine to build up calcium. And there's a glad cemetery in Ephesus in Turkey. And forensic pathologists have looked at the skeletons and yes, they have an abnormally high level of ash. They also might have also at times looked almost deformed because the heavy and relentless training, rather like the longbowmen of medieval England, you know, the right arm and shoulder, which you're using, assuming you're right handed, builds up much more muscle and begins to almost look lopsided. Oh, they also had very bad teeth.

[Interviewer Rachel Dinning]

Certainly not a pretty holly Hollywood six pack.

[Historian Harry Sidebottom]

No, I think the only way to imagine them as sex symbols is there's a French expression, forgive my pronunciation, jolie laid the pretty ugly in that way that some French actors who are so damn battered and lived in an ugly Thierry Goddard or one any of the greats, they actually become attractive almost because they're so not conventionally pretty. It's interesting that in their tombstones, they aren't usually. The tombstones aren't photorealism. Gladiators and the tombstones try and associate themselves with higher class sorts of people. So in the western half of the empire Their tombstones make them look really like soldiers. Whereas in the eastern half of the empire, the Greek half, they try and look like athletes and they even call themselves athletes. And so, yeah, their sculptured representation isn't of a fat, deformed, scarred guy with bad teeth. It's in the Greek half of a beautiful young male ripped athlete.

[Interviewer Rachel Dinning]

Interesting. They were photoshopped.

[Historian Harry Sidebottom]

They were totally CGI'd to make themselves look better.

[Interviewer Rachel Dinning]

Love that. Now, your book, those who Are about to Die looks at a Gladiator's Day over 24 hours, basically. So like the night before a fight or a games all the way through to the aftermath. Now without. Obviously we can't go through the whole book, but if you were going to have a stab at walking our listeners through a day in the life of a gladiator, how would a 24 hour window for them unfold?

[Historian Harry Sidebottom]

Okay, it starts the night before the fight with a weird social ritual called the kennelibra, the free dinner. The public are allowed in to the gladiator school to watch the gladiators eating. And their various incredibly pretentious explanations for this have been given by scholars. I think it's very simple one that there was gambling on gladiatorial fights. It's like the parade ring at Newmarket racecourse. You go in, the guys who are calm and can eat and are looking in control, their odds are going to get shorter. Whereas a guy who can't choke down a mouthful of food, you know, it's obviously going to go out in the odds after that. We don't know where gladiators necessarily slept normally because the security for the veterans in the schools seems very lax. We know they drank in bars, we know they could sleep away from the gladiator school the night before a fight. They're probably almost certainly confined to the school, which of course gives me a chance in the book to talk about sleep, sex, dreams, despair, suicide. The next morning there's a big parade with religious connotations. And then there's the ritual testing of the sharpness of the weapons. In the morning are beast fights, we might come back to those at lunchtime are executions and also other entertainments of a non lethal nature. The big event is the afternoon when the gladiators actually fight. And we assume like any good sporting event, you know, the best fighters are kept back till the end of the afternoon. You build the excitement. When that's all over, it's the giver of the games is expected to give gifts to the crowd to throw them. They can be little nuts or Fruit. Or they could be tokens you can exchange for possibly potentially really valuable things. And we know there's a black market in these tokens that dealers in them bought them, you know, took a pun, gambled, I'll buy that thing off you for a few sesterces. It may get me a cabbage, but on the other hand it might get me a pound of gold. And then they're back to the gladiatorial school that night, where in the better schools, certainly the ones run by the Emperor, there's excellent medical care, because these guys are expensive investments. They get a massage, the doctors tend to them, and then they presumably get a meal where they don't get the nice food of the kennelibre the night before. They're back to sagina stuffing of this.

[Interviewer Rachel Dinning]

Being stuffed with grain.

[Historian Harry Sidebottom]

Being stuffed with grain to get fatter.

[Interviewer Rachel Dinning]

So there's quite an array of entertainments throughout the day. Does that mean there were different types of gladiator?

[Historian Harry Sidebottom]

Oh, very much so. The main division was between the big shield men and the small shield men, but within those two categories there were lots and lots of different types with different types of armour. It adds to the novelty and the fun of the games in that you get people matched either against the same kit or very, very different kit, and they fight in different styles.

[Interviewer Rachel Dinning]

What are female gladiators? I think we. Some people call them gladiatrixes today, but that wasn't a term at the time. Am I right?

[Historian Harry Sidebottom]

You're totally right, it's a modern term. Actually, quite a few Latin words we think of as being this is the right vocab, are actually made up in Victorian times. But there were female gladiators, there's no doubt about that. We only have one visual representation of them. The debate is, were they serious gladiators or were they almost a novelty act? And quite possibly they were a novelty act because it was confounding gender expectations. This is women doing things that men do and it's a. A violent and potentially fatal novelty comedy act, I'm afraid.

[Interviewer Rachel Dinning]

Right, so they were very much a spectacle. What other spectacles would a Roman citizen expect to see when attending the games?

[Historian Harry Sidebottom]

Well, at lunchtime, you'd expect to see executions. And we tend to think of this all about Christians. In fact, the evidence for the numbers of Christians executed at games is very low. And it was always, of course, in the interests of Christian writers to inflate the numbers. It's not just Christians, it's criminals. It's people guilty of murder, treason, arson, temple robbing, things like sacrilege. And these are really quite horrible because the Romans develop a sort of play of execution. Condemned criminals are expected to act out myths, Greek myths. So Hercules Heracles put on a poison shirt and died. That isn't very visual. So the Romans came up with the tunica molester, the evil tunic. It's a tunic soaked in inflammable material and then someone sets fire to it and the man runs around burning to death. I mean, it's moments like that that the gulf between us and the Romans becomes really almost unbridgeable in our imagination. Not all lunchtime entertainments were lethal. I mean, there's also acrobats, there's jugglers, there's mime, there's the Pyrrhic Dance, which is a sort of a group dance in costume that was originally a military thing. But then the Romans sometimes give that a twist because that turns out to confound the audience's expectation because their costumes are soaked with inflammable material and they're burnt to death too. So novelty is always big tricking. The giver of the games gets celebrity and popularity by thinking of new twists on the whole day's entertainment.

[Interviewer Rachel Dinning]

And what about animals? Because they played a big part in many of the games. How were they used?

[Historian Harry Sidebottom]

Right, yeah. Animals are in the morning, mainly. It's called a Venatio hunt and you have professional huntsmen hunting animals in the arena. It's a way of giving the urban plebs a vicarious taste of an elite lifestyle because hunting is an elite sport and they become spectators, at least in a hunt. Then there's animals fighting animals. And what the Romans love to do is set animals, breeds of animals to fight each other. That in nature wouldn't. It plays out Rome's control over nature and more appealing to us. Sometimes the animals just exhibited, or especially in the case of elephants, they do tricks. The Romans had a soft spot for elephants. They. It sounds rather alarming. Well, it sounds alarming to me anyway. Tightrope walking elephants walking down from the top, top of the arena to the sand.

[Interviewer Rachel Dinning]

You've mentioned elephants, but what other types of animals appeared at these shows?

[Historian Harry Sidebottom]

Do we know about virtually every exotic animal you can imagine that they could get their hands on? Lions are very, very popular, as are tigers. A hippopotamus appears, rhinoceros appear even, well, what's described as an Arctic bear, which is possibly a polar bear. That whole exoticism is meant to demonstrate the universal range of their own empire. They can produce animals not just from within the massive empire but even from outside it. So animals from India, animals from the far north, they hadn't conquered. It's a way of. Yes, showing their control over the whole world. And then you have animals doing unnatural things which shows their control over nature.

[Interviewer Rachel Dinning]

So we've covered animals. I'm also curious about the rules that governed the games. Were there regulations for how they were staged?

[Historian Harry Sidebottom]

Right. Well, under the emperors, if you want to put on games at all, you have to have the emperor's permission. He has to make sure that he is the main giver of the biggest games. Yes, there were laws. We have enigmatic references to the laws of the fight. And we know that on the sands, when a pair of gladiators were fighting, there were two referees in there with sticks, probably acting partly as referees, partly as coaches. The really upsetting thing is we don't know what the laws were. I mean, is it like boxing? No biting, no gouging? We're not sure. We have a wonderful, really sad tombstone of a man who is described as Diodorus the Wretched. And it's clear that he has won his fight. His opponent has submitted, but the referee hasn't accepted the submission. Order the fight to go on and die. Diodorus has been killed. This is a really poignant moment. The treachery of the referee had killed him. So yes, there were very much laws. It's just what they actually consisted of. No source tells us they know them. There's no need to state them, so we don't know.

[Interviewer Rachel Dinning]

My final question, your book looks not just at the gladiators themselves, but at what their world reveals about Roman society as a whole. After spending so much time with this subject, what do you think the games ultimately tell us about what it means or meant to be Roman?

[Historian Harry Sidebottom]

I think the whole 24 hour of ritual of the gladiatorial combat games, it acted out lots of things that were really important about Roman self identity, so civilization and barbarity, crime and punishment, of the place of the empire in the world and of society. Because you were sitting in ordered rows with, interesting enough, the social pyramid turned upside down. The more important you are, the lower in the sands you're sitting. But above all, I think it's probably acts out. The Romans view of themselves as a martial warrior race because their justification for gladiatorial combat stays exactly the same throughout its entire existence. And the line of thinking is, if those scum out in the sand, you know, these prisoners of war, slaves, criminals and degraded free men, show courage close to the steel. This is a lesson for the Roman citizens in the audience. How much more will they show when they're called upon to fight in a war? And this carries on even when the arm is professional and the people sitting in the stands in Rome are never going to fight in a war. And I think it's really that that fuels the whole games forever.

[Podcast Host Rachel Dinning]

That was historian Harry Sidebottom speaking to Rachel Dinning. Harry's new book, those who Are about to Die, Gladiators and the Roman Mind is out.