November 20, 2024 • 18 mins
Although most people are familiar with gladiators, movies have skewed popular understanding of these fighters. So how can we separate the fact from the fiction? Tune in to learn how gladiator graveyards have changed the way we regard gladiators today.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from HowStuffWorks
dot com.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Sarah Dowdy.
Speaker 3 (00:14):
And I'm Deblina Trucker Boardy.
Speaker 4 (00:16):
And if you have kept up with the news at
all this year, you've probably heard something about crumbling landmarks
in Pompeii. For example, a two thousand year old house
where gladiators used to train for combat collapse this November.
And that was only months after a piece of Rome's
colosseum fell to the ground and the roof of the
home of Emperor Nero crumbled.
Speaker 2 (00:36):
Yeah, and it's sad to see things like that go,
especially when there's a lot that we haven't learned about
them yet. You know, they're preserving the slice of culture,
in this case, gladiator life that we really don't know
that much about.
Speaker 4 (00:51):
Yeah, it's I realized when I started researching this. I
think gladiators is a subject that we think we know
a lot about because we've seen it in the movies
and pop culture. But it turns out that when you
go looking for information on the subject and researching it,
you find out that a lot of the details are
kind of in dispute, and a little bit murky.
Speaker 2 (01:10):
Yeah, And I mean part of that is because it
was a low brow sort of entertainment, so a lot
of historians at the time didn't really consider it worthy
of writing about.
Speaker 4 (01:21):
Yeah, the way I saw it described once is that
it was almost considered sort of des class to focus
on something like that. So the sketchy details that we
have pieced together about how gladiators lived and thought are
based on things that were just hinted at by Roman
historians or that we found from looking at you know, sculptures, reliefs,
different etchings that have been found, but the rest has
(01:44):
been fleshed out by Hollywood.
Speaker 2 (01:46):
Yeah, I mean it's true. Even about the most famous gladiators,
you would think at least somebody like Spartacus we would
have really detailed information.
Speaker 4 (01:54):
On, right, Yeah, But most of what we know about
him is related to his involvement and uprising against Rome,
which is sometimes called the Gladiatorial War or the Spartacus War.
But the details about his actual life, how he became
a gladiator, and the rest or are just still a
little bit up for debate.
Speaker 2 (02:13):
But even though we're losing some of these things that
tell us a little bit about gladiators. Fortunately, we're finding
some new ones too, and one of the most recent
discoveries was a gladiator graveyard and it was the first
to be scientifically authenticated as such, and it was unearthed
in the early nineties, but what we know about it
(02:34):
now came a lot later.
Speaker 4 (02:35):
So that's going to be our focus today, and we're
going to look a little bit into what scientists have
found out from studying these bones in these graveyard this graveyard,
and look at what that tells us about how these.
Speaker 2 (02:48):
Warriors lived their day to day live.
Speaker 4 (02:51):
Yeah, and does that change our point of view at
all from what we've known before.
Speaker 3 (02:55):
So first we should.
Speaker 2 (02:56):
Probably give you a little background on gladiators. A lot
of people believed that the origins of gladiator combat lie
in Etruscan slave fights, which were fought to death to
please the gods and those That kind of fight was
adopted by the Romans in two sixty four BC, and
they incorporated these fights into their funeral ceremonies, starting with
(03:19):
the funeral of Junius Brutus Para. They thought that it
was a good way to honor the dead. You put
on the spectacular fight, and it echoes the concept of
blood sacrifice. It makes a spectacle out of the funeral.
Speaker 3 (03:32):
Yeah, sounds kind of gory, but worked for them. From there, the.
Speaker 4 (03:36):
Tradition just grew, though fights became even more gruesome and
more frequent. Rulers started using them to keep goodwill with
the people that they governed and to distract them from
whatever bad stuff was going on in their lives. You know,
they're all unemployed, Yeah, exactly, to sort of keep them
focused on positive things and also on the morals and
(03:59):
virtues us that they wanted them to kind of absorb,
which were things like masculinity, bravery, and so soon there
were amphitheaters all over the Roman Empire.
Speaker 2 (04:10):
Yeah. So who were the people actually fighting in these
death matches that your average Roman would be so looking
forward to. I mean, most of them were slaves, some
of them were criminals, some were prisoners of war. Spartacus,
for example, probably the most famous gladiator, is said to
have been a slave, even though there's a lot of
(04:31):
dispute over how he came to be a slave, like
whether he was born a slave or whether he was
a Roman soldier who maybe defected and ended up being
arrested and enslaved. Were not really sure There were.
Speaker 4 (04:45):
Actually later on some freeborn citizens who chose to be
gladiators as well, just because of sort of the rock
star aura that it bestowed on them. And later some
noblemen and emperors also got in on the game too.
Emperor Commodus, for example, was said to have been a
really enthusiastic competitor. He was kind of crazy and thought
(05:05):
that he was or imagined that he was Hercules, and
would go in the ring and fight lions with bows
and arrows and kill them.
Speaker 2 (05:13):
It's crazy, definitely, And even.
Speaker 4 (05:16):
Some women fought eventually in the ring, although in the arena,
I should say, although a lot of people didn't really
approve of this.
Speaker 2 (05:23):
Yeah, But generally gladiators were mostly men, and they were
mostly pretty low on the social totem pole, and they
lived in these gladiator schools which were called lootie and
they were I mean, you imagine it like prison barracks
or something, but that's not how it is at all.
They were owned by private citizens, and even though the
(05:45):
gladiators had no personal rights, they were pretty well taken
care of because they were a major investment. Their training
and their keep were big investments. So these private owners
wanted to make sure that their gladiators stayed healthy and
could fight, stay alive.
Speaker 4 (06:01):
Yeah, so if a gladiator won a certain number of fights,
or in the case of a criminal, if he served
out his term. You know, say you had done something,
you were put in prison, and then you were given
to one of these gladiator schools. You had a term
that was say maybe three years or something like that,
you would fight and you could live it out exactly.
(06:22):
If you lived it out, then you could be released.
So a gladiator did have the possibility of being discharged
or he could stay and if he wanted to. Some
people actually got the opportunity to be discharged and then
decided to come back, Which that's fascinating to me.
Speaker 2 (06:37):
I mean, especially if you were a slave or something
and you decided to stay. I don't know if maybe
you just wouldn't have anything else to do.
Speaker 4 (06:45):
Maybe I think maybe that's part of it, maybe you're
just so used to doing that. But I think it's
also again that rockstar image. I mean, they didn't have
great lives because again they were slaves. They were at
the bottom of the social totem pole social order in
Rome at the time. But the stars, they were stars,
you know, revered by women. They got all the women
(07:06):
they wanted to.
Speaker 2 (07:07):
We'll learn more about some of the perks they get
a little later.
Speaker 4 (07:10):
Yeah, so there were some reasons that they would want
to stay in. But these gladiatorial shows that continued until
about the fourth century AD when they fell out of
favor because of the rise of Christianity, and they may
have continued a little while after that, but that's generally
the time is accepted is the time that they ended.
So essentially they ended about two thousand years ago. And
(07:30):
we have an idea that these gladiators they were buried
that given proper burials after death, most of them. But
the discovery and Aphesis that we mentioned earlier, the gladiator graveyard,
this is the first one to have been found.
Speaker 2 (07:42):
So the Austrian Archaeological Institute THEAI started excavating this particular
cemetery in Aphesis, which is now part of Turkey, in
nineteen ninety three and they found something pretty unusual there,
marble gravestones that were carved with these intricate combat scene
and dedications to fallen gladiators. And they had found similar
(08:05):
types of scenes carved into relief and mosaics in the
area before but something was different this time, and that's
because they actually found human remains near the gravestone, so
it was not just the monuments, it was the cemetery.
Speaker 4 (08:21):
Yep. They found bones, lots and lots of bones, enough
that they filled up eighty blue crates with these bones,
and then they countalogued everything, they documented where they found everything.
But then they basically let them sit on a shelf
for about a decade until finally, in about two thousand
and one, THEAI invited two pathologists from the Medical University
(08:43):
of Vienna, and that was Carl Groschmandt and Fabian cons
and they were invited to analyze the bones and they
spent years piecing these bones together and using forensic analysis
techniques to find out everything they could about the people
that were buried in that spot. What they determined was
that there were about sixty seven people in those crates,
(09:03):
though there weren't really any complete skeletons, and all of
them except for one was a gladiator.
Speaker 2 (09:09):
Yeah, and there was one woman and she was probably
the slave wife of one of the gladiators. So one
thing that the researchers noticed right off the bat was
that the gladiators, even though they had died at a
pretty young age, usually between twenty five and thirty, which
was half the average lifespan of the time. Despite that
(09:29):
young death age, they were pretty healthy and it looked
like bones that had been broken during their lifetime had
healed perfectly. They had been perfectly set, which meant that
these guys probably got better medical care than most average
people would have.
Speaker 4 (09:44):
And this kind of reiterates what we mentioned earlier that
the owners of these schools, they had sunk so much
cash into these gladiators that they wanted them to stay
well enough to earn some of that money back for them.
So again, just really a lot invested in keeping them healthy.
Speaker 2 (09:59):
Yeah, you don't want to wind up with a poorly
set broken arm. Another interesting thing that the researchers noticed
was that there was a lack of multiple wounds on
the bone, so that suggested that the gladiators were mostly
involved in organized duels with strict rules referees, no just
senseless beatings, no holds barred death matches, which is I
(10:21):
think what we sort of think of with gladiator matches.
Speaker 4 (10:24):
Oh yeah, I mean what we have stereotypically learned about
gladiators from movies and pop culture. I think, at least
I imagined gladiators as being sort of like a whole
thunderdorm dome type thing. You know, two guys go in
and one guy comes out, just fight to the death,
and you.
Speaker 2 (10:42):
Would imagine the resulting skeleton of the deceased gladiator would
be terribly broken and you know, would have suffered a
major beating before death.
Speaker 4 (10:53):
Sure, but what they found is actually pretty much in
line with a lot of historical counts of gladiatorial matches.
They weren't all duels to the death, and so they
kind of knew that, but this was a confirmation of it.
And actually only about one in ten bouts reliefal and
in most cases the gladiator's.
Speaker 3 (11:10):
Goal was to draw blood or.
Speaker 4 (11:12):
Knock down his opponent, and at that point you knew
who the winner was, so very different from what a
lot of people think, I think.
Speaker 2 (11:18):
Another thing that gross, Schmidt and con also did was
iciotopic analysis of some of the bones to test the
levels of various chemical components and try to figure out
what these guys ate when they were alive, and they
confirmed that the gladiators had mostly vegetarian diets consisting of
barley and oatmeal and beans, things like that. And the
(11:39):
purpose of this was to give them this extra layer
of fat that helped them out in the arena in
a few ways. So one, it could help protect them,
so it was a little bit like armor. It could
help protect them from at least the more serious injuries
from swords and knives. And it also added some drama.
And that's because if you had this layer of fat
(12:02):
on you, when you got nicked a little bit, it
produced a lot of bloody surface wounds. And spectators thought
that was pretty cool, especially when the gladiators could just
keep fighting, getting more and more bloody, all because they
had this protected.
Speaker 3 (12:17):
Lair, right, it put on a great show.
Speaker 4 (12:20):
But this diet, it kind of explains why some romans
called the fighters hordiari, which means barley men.
Speaker 3 (12:28):
Like that.
Speaker 4 (12:29):
I like it too, although I thought this was one
of the most surprising things about it to me. I mean,
definitely manly men promoting masculinity. You expect them to be
eating meat, but no, and I mean it's probably bad
news for Russell Crowe. He could have taken it easier
preparing for the movie.
Speaker 3 (12:44):
No kidding, you didn't have to be ripped.
Speaker 4 (12:46):
Actually, it was a disadvantage from you know, if this
is true, so too bad Russell. A writer named Andrew
Curry actually had a really great article in Archaeology magazine
which focused a lot on the diet aspects of these findings,
and he pointed out something else that researchers stumbled on
in these tests, and that was super high levels of
calcium in their system. And the gladiators they couldn't have
(13:08):
gotten this from their vegetarian diets, according to the researchers,
So this suggests that they were actually given some sort
of old school calcium supplement, which was probably some sort
of brew made out of charred wood or bone ash,
which sounds pretty gross to me.
Speaker 2 (13:22):
It was sad, maybe one of the downsides of being
a gladiator, except also that would help with your bone healing,
true flame some of that. And finally, these guys found
a retired fighter, and they knew that because they found
a skeleton that was mature. He was above twenty five
or thirty like the other ones. And this was confirmation
(13:43):
that fighters could just sort of retire from the ring
after they had served their terms, after they had won
enough fights or finished their sentence or whatever.
Speaker 4 (13:54):
Yeah, and there were some clues that told them that
he was retired. Khan said that he was of mature age.
Judging by the bones that they found, he had appeared
to have lived a normal lifespan for what would be
considered normal at the time, and he showed signs of
healed wounds, but nothing that would have been fatal to him,
So he probably.
Speaker 3 (14:12):
Died of natural causes.
Speaker 2 (14:14):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (14:14):
So, while there's no.
Speaker 4 (14:15):
Doubt that gladiators lived a very violent existence, any job
where a bad day is ending up dead probably qualifies
as a pretty tough occupation. I agree the actual gladiator
combat part of it probably wasn't necessarily always a blood
bath like we've seen in some movies. And we can
now say for sure that they were cared for to
(14:35):
some degree in day to day life and have some
proof for the way that the gladiator business, so to
speak worked.
Speaker 2 (14:41):
And that's another change. And I think how most people
perceive gladiators. You imagine it's just the slave being dragged
out into the arena from the some pit or something
he probably hasn't eaten very well. You certainly don't imagine
these highly trained gladiators who were getting good t treatment
in good diets.
Speaker 4 (15:01):
No, I mean it's more of a show. And I
think we talked a little bit about this earlier, about
how more of a profession, more of a profession, Yeah,
like bullfighting something like that. Definitely sort of a blood sport,
but there's more to it, I guess than just spontaneous
things that happen in the arena.
Speaker 2 (15:20):
And fortunately we have some opportunities to learn more about
gladiators than gladiatorial lives.
Speaker 3 (15:27):
Hopefully.
Speaker 2 (15:27):
Yeah. In the summer of twenty ten, news broke that
an area where eighty decapitated skeletons were found in York,
England around two thousand and three might be yet another
gladiator graveyard.
Speaker 4 (15:41):
Yeah. They think that because of the decapitated heads, which
suggests a final blow that many gladiators received in the ring. Actually,
when a guy received a mortal wound, I guess another
guy who was dressed like the mythical ferryman from the
River Styx would come up and sort of bash his
skull in with a mallet, just kind of give them
(16:02):
a final thing. So, because of these decapitated heads, enhance
muscles in one arm, which suggests that they'd been wielding
weapons from a young age and bite marks from a
large carnivore such as a lion. All of these clues
kind of add to the idea that they were gladiators
that were buried there. They're not one hundred percent convinced
(16:23):
about this yet, but it looks promising.
Speaker 2 (16:25):
But I think you mentioned to me earlier one of
the researchers said, your average man in York wouldn't come
across a large cat very frequently.
Speaker 3 (16:33):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (16:34):
I think the quote I saw was the reason that
they thought this was likely is that the guy said
it's much less likely, or he pointed out that it's
much less likely that a guy would just run into
a tiger while walking home from the pub in York
one night.
Speaker 3 (16:46):
I think I think that's very well put.
Speaker 2 (16:49):
Yeah, So hopefully we'll get to learn a little bit
more about this, and maybe we'll even confirm some facts
about gladiator's pass and maybe even learn some stuff about
the cific gladiators that would be a real boon to
this study.
Speaker 4 (17:04):
I'd say, so until we do get a chance to
learn more, If you have any favorite gladiator or gladiator
stories that you want to share with us, we are
on Facebook and at Twitter at myston History, or you
can send us an email at history podcast at HowStuffWorks
dot com.
Speaker 1 (17:18):
And we also have a.
Speaker 2 (17:19):
Lot of articles on archaeology, including How Archaeology Works, which
I wrote, not boosting book It's Fun. It include the
sure vantage no gladiators in it, It's still kind of fun.
If you want to check out that, you can search
for it on our homepage at www dot HowStuffWorks dot com.
Speaker 5 (17:46):
For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit
HowStuffWorks dot com. To learn more about the podcast, click
on the podcast icon in the upperright corner of our homepage.
The house Stuffworks iPhone app has a rise.
Speaker 1 (17:58):
Download it today on ipone.
Speaker 5 (18:02):
Didn't Eaten Inde
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from HowStuffWorks
dot com.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Sarah Dowdy.
Speaker 3 (00:14):
And I'm Deblina Trucker Boardy.
Speaker 4 (00:16):
And if you have kept up with the news at
all this year, you've probably heard something about crumbling landmarks
in Pompeii. For example, a two thousand year old house
where gladiators used to train for combat collapse this November.
And that was only months after a piece of Rome's
colosseum fell to the ground and the roof of the
home of Emperor Nero crumbled.
Speaker 2 (00:36):
Yeah, and it's sad to see things like that go,
especially when there's a lot that we haven't learned about
them yet. You know, they're preserving the slice of culture,
in this case, gladiator life that we really don't know
that much about.
Speaker 4 (00:51):
Yeah, it's I realized when I started researching this. I
think gladiators is a subject that we think we know
a lot about because we've seen it in the movies
and pop culture. But it turns out that when you
go looking for information on the subject and researching it,
you find out that a lot of the details are
kind of in dispute, and a little bit murky.
Speaker 2 (01:10):
Yeah, And I mean part of that is because it
was a low brow sort of entertainment, so a lot
of historians at the time didn't really consider it worthy
of writing about.
Speaker 4 (01:21):
Yeah, the way I saw it described once is that
it was almost considered sort of des class to focus
on something like that. So the sketchy details that we
have pieced together about how gladiators lived and thought are
based on things that were just hinted at by Roman
historians or that we found from looking at you know, sculptures, reliefs,
different etchings that have been found, but the rest has
(01:44):
been fleshed out by Hollywood.
Speaker 2 (01:46):
Yeah, I mean it's true. Even about the most famous gladiators,
you would think at least somebody like Spartacus we would
have really detailed information.
Speaker 4 (01:54):
On, right, Yeah, But most of what we know about
him is related to his involvement and uprising against Rome,
which is sometimes called the Gladiatorial War or the Spartacus War.
But the details about his actual life, how he became
a gladiator, and the rest or are just still a
little bit up for debate.
Speaker 2 (02:13):
But even though we're losing some of these things that
tell us a little bit about gladiators. Fortunately, we're finding
some new ones too, and one of the most recent
discoveries was a gladiator graveyard and it was the first
to be scientifically authenticated as such, and it was unearthed
in the early nineties, but what we know about it
(02:34):
now came a lot later.
Speaker 4 (02:35):
So that's going to be our focus today, and we're
going to look a little bit into what scientists have
found out from studying these bones in these graveyard this graveyard,
and look at what that tells us about how these.
Speaker 2 (02:48):
Warriors lived their day to day live.
Speaker 4 (02:51):
Yeah, and does that change our point of view at
all from what we've known before.
Speaker 3 (02:55):
So first we should.
Speaker 2 (02:56):
Probably give you a little background on gladiators. A lot
of people believed that the origins of gladiator combat lie
in Etruscan slave fights, which were fought to death to
please the gods and those That kind of fight was
adopted by the Romans in two sixty four BC, and
they incorporated these fights into their funeral ceremonies, starting with
(03:19):
the funeral of Junius Brutus Para. They thought that it
was a good way to honor the dead. You put
on the spectacular fight, and it echoes the concept of
blood sacrifice. It makes a spectacle out of the funeral.
Speaker 3 (03:32):
Yeah, sounds kind of gory, but worked for them. From there, the.
Speaker 4 (03:36):
Tradition just grew, though fights became even more gruesome and
more frequent. Rulers started using them to keep goodwill with
the people that they governed and to distract them from
whatever bad stuff was going on in their lives. You know,
they're all unemployed, Yeah, exactly, to sort of keep them
focused on positive things and also on the morals and
(03:59):
virtues us that they wanted them to kind of absorb,
which were things like masculinity, bravery, and so soon there
were amphitheaters all over the Roman Empire.
Speaker 2 (04:10):
Yeah. So who were the people actually fighting in these
death matches that your average Roman would be so looking
forward to. I mean, most of them were slaves, some
of them were criminals, some were prisoners of war. Spartacus,
for example, probably the most famous gladiator, is said to
have been a slave, even though there's a lot of
(04:31):
dispute over how he came to be a slave, like
whether he was born a slave or whether he was
a Roman soldier who maybe defected and ended up being
arrested and enslaved. Were not really sure There were.
Speaker 4 (04:45):
Actually later on some freeborn citizens who chose to be
gladiators as well, just because of sort of the rock
star aura that it bestowed on them. And later some
noblemen and emperors also got in on the game too.
Emperor Commodus, for example, was said to have been a
really enthusiastic competitor. He was kind of crazy and thought
(05:05):
that he was or imagined that he was Hercules, and
would go in the ring and fight lions with bows
and arrows and kill them.
Speaker 2 (05:13):
It's crazy, definitely, And even.
Speaker 4 (05:16):
Some women fought eventually in the ring, although in the arena,
I should say, although a lot of people didn't really
approve of this.
Speaker 2 (05:23):
Yeah, But generally gladiators were mostly men, and they were
mostly pretty low on the social totem pole, and they
lived in these gladiator schools which were called lootie and
they were I mean, you imagine it like prison barracks
or something, but that's not how it is at all.
They were owned by private citizens, and even though the
(05:45):
gladiators had no personal rights, they were pretty well taken
care of because they were a major investment. Their training
and their keep were big investments. So these private owners
wanted to make sure that their gladiators stayed healthy and
could fight, stay alive.
Speaker 4 (06:01):
Yeah, so if a gladiator won a certain number of fights,
or in the case of a criminal, if he served
out his term. You know, say you had done something,
you were put in prison, and then you were given
to one of these gladiator schools. You had a term
that was say maybe three years or something like that,
you would fight and you could live it out exactly.
(06:22):
If you lived it out, then you could be released.
So a gladiator did have the possibility of being discharged
or he could stay and if he wanted to. Some
people actually got the opportunity to be discharged and then
decided to come back, Which that's fascinating to me.
Speaker 2 (06:37):
I mean, especially if you were a slave or something
and you decided to stay. I don't know if maybe
you just wouldn't have anything else to do.
Speaker 4 (06:45):
Maybe I think maybe that's part of it, maybe you're
just so used to doing that. But I think it's
also again that rockstar image. I mean, they didn't have
great lives because again they were slaves. They were at
the bottom of the social totem pole social order in
Rome at the time. But the stars, they were stars,
you know, revered by women. They got all the women
(07:06):
they wanted to.
Speaker 2 (07:07):
We'll learn more about some of the perks they get
a little later.
Speaker 4 (07:10):
Yeah, so there were some reasons that they would want
to stay in. But these gladiatorial shows that continued until
about the fourth century AD when they fell out of
favor because of the rise of Christianity, and they may
have continued a little while after that, but that's generally
the time is accepted is the time that they ended.
So essentially they ended about two thousand years ago. And
(07:30):
we have an idea that these gladiators they were buried
that given proper burials after death, most of them. But
the discovery and Aphesis that we mentioned earlier, the gladiator graveyard,
this is the first one to have been found.
Speaker 2 (07:42):
So the Austrian Archaeological Institute THEAI started excavating this particular
cemetery in Aphesis, which is now part of Turkey, in
nineteen ninety three and they found something pretty unusual there,
marble gravestones that were carved with these intricate combat scene
and dedications to fallen gladiators. And they had found similar
(08:05):
types of scenes carved into relief and mosaics in the
area before but something was different this time, and that's
because they actually found human remains near the gravestone, so
it was not just the monuments, it was the cemetery.
Speaker 4 (08:21):
Yep. They found bones, lots and lots of bones, enough
that they filled up eighty blue crates with these bones,
and then they countalogued everything, they documented where they found everything.
But then they basically let them sit on a shelf
for about a decade until finally, in about two thousand
and one, THEAI invited two pathologists from the Medical University
(08:43):
of Vienna, and that was Carl Groschmandt and Fabian cons
and they were invited to analyze the bones and they
spent years piecing these bones together and using forensic analysis
techniques to find out everything they could about the people
that were buried in that spot. What they determined was
that there were about sixty seven people in those crates,
(09:03):
though there weren't really any complete skeletons, and all of
them except for one was a gladiator.
Speaker 2 (09:09):
Yeah, and there was one woman and she was probably
the slave wife of one of the gladiators. So one
thing that the researchers noticed right off the bat was
that the gladiators, even though they had died at a
pretty young age, usually between twenty five and thirty, which
was half the average lifespan of the time. Despite that
(09:29):
young death age, they were pretty healthy and it looked
like bones that had been broken during their lifetime had
healed perfectly. They had been perfectly set, which meant that
these guys probably got better medical care than most average
people would have.
Speaker 4 (09:44):
And this kind of reiterates what we mentioned earlier that
the owners of these schools, they had sunk so much
cash into these gladiators that they wanted them to stay
well enough to earn some of that money back for them.
So again, just really a lot invested in keeping them healthy.
Speaker 2 (09:59):
Yeah, you don't want to wind up with a poorly
set broken arm. Another interesting thing that the researchers noticed
was that there was a lack of multiple wounds on
the bone, so that suggested that the gladiators were mostly
involved in organized duels with strict rules referees, no just
senseless beatings, no holds barred death matches, which is I
(10:21):
think what we sort of think of with gladiator matches.
Speaker 4 (10:24):
Oh yeah, I mean what we have stereotypically learned about
gladiators from movies and pop culture. I think, at least
I imagined gladiators as being sort of like a whole
thunderdorm dome type thing. You know, two guys go in
and one guy comes out, just fight to the death,
and you.
Speaker 2 (10:42):
Would imagine the resulting skeleton of the deceased gladiator would
be terribly broken and you know, would have suffered a
major beating before death.
Speaker 4 (10:53):
Sure, but what they found is actually pretty much in
line with a lot of historical counts of gladiatorial matches.
They weren't all duels to the death, and so they
kind of knew that, but this was a confirmation of it.
And actually only about one in ten bouts reliefal and
in most cases the gladiator's.
Speaker 3 (11:10):
Goal was to draw blood or.
Speaker 4 (11:12):
Knock down his opponent, and at that point you knew
who the winner was, so very different from what a
lot of people think, I think.
Speaker 2 (11:18):
Another thing that gross, Schmidt and con also did was
iciotopic analysis of some of the bones to test the
levels of various chemical components and try to figure out
what these guys ate when they were alive, and they
confirmed that the gladiators had mostly vegetarian diets consisting of
barley and oatmeal and beans, things like that. And the
(11:39):
purpose of this was to give them this extra layer
of fat that helped them out in the arena in
a few ways. So one, it could help protect them,
so it was a little bit like armor. It could
help protect them from at least the more serious injuries
from swords and knives. And it also added some drama.
And that's because if you had this layer of fat
(12:02):
on you, when you got nicked a little bit, it
produced a lot of bloody surface wounds. And spectators thought
that was pretty cool, especially when the gladiators could just
keep fighting, getting more and more bloody, all because they
had this protected.
Speaker 3 (12:17):
Lair, right, it put on a great show.
Speaker 4 (12:20):
But this diet, it kind of explains why some romans
called the fighters hordiari, which means barley men.
Speaker 3 (12:28):
Like that.
Speaker 4 (12:29):
I like it too, although I thought this was one
of the most surprising things about it to me. I mean,
definitely manly men promoting masculinity. You expect them to be
eating meat, but no, and I mean it's probably bad
news for Russell Crowe. He could have taken it easier
preparing for the movie.
Speaker 3 (12:44):
No kidding, you didn't have to be ripped.
Speaker 4 (12:46):
Actually, it was a disadvantage from you know, if this
is true, so too bad Russell. A writer named Andrew
Curry actually had a really great article in Archaeology magazine
which focused a lot on the diet aspects of these findings,
and he pointed out something else that researchers stumbled on
in these tests, and that was super high levels of
calcium in their system. And the gladiators they couldn't have
(13:08):
gotten this from their vegetarian diets, according to the researchers,
So this suggests that they were actually given some sort
of old school calcium supplement, which was probably some sort
of brew made out of charred wood or bone ash,
which sounds pretty gross to me.
Speaker 2 (13:22):
It was sad, maybe one of the downsides of being
a gladiator, except also that would help with your bone healing,
true flame some of that. And finally, these guys found
a retired fighter, and they knew that because they found
a skeleton that was mature. He was above twenty five
or thirty like the other ones. And this was confirmation
(13:43):
that fighters could just sort of retire from the ring
after they had served their terms, after they had won
enough fights or finished their sentence or whatever.
Speaker 4 (13:54):
Yeah, and there were some clues that told them that
he was retired. Khan said that he was of mature age.
Judging by the bones that they found, he had appeared
to have lived a normal lifespan for what would be
considered normal at the time, and he showed signs of
healed wounds, but nothing that would have been fatal to him,
So he probably.
Speaker 3 (14:12):
Died of natural causes.
Speaker 2 (14:14):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (14:14):
So, while there's no.
Speaker 4 (14:15):
Doubt that gladiators lived a very violent existence, any job
where a bad day is ending up dead probably qualifies
as a pretty tough occupation. I agree the actual gladiator
combat part of it probably wasn't necessarily always a blood
bath like we've seen in some movies. And we can
now say for sure that they were cared for to
(14:35):
some degree in day to day life and have some
proof for the way that the gladiator business, so to
speak worked.
Speaker 2 (14:41):
And that's another change. And I think how most people
perceive gladiators. You imagine it's just the slave being dragged
out into the arena from the some pit or something
he probably hasn't eaten very well. You certainly don't imagine
these highly trained gladiators who were getting good t treatment
in good diets.
Speaker 4 (15:01):
No, I mean it's more of a show. And I
think we talked a little bit about this earlier, about
how more of a profession, more of a profession, Yeah,
like bullfighting something like that. Definitely sort of a blood sport,
but there's more to it, I guess than just spontaneous
things that happen in the arena.
Speaker 2 (15:20):
And fortunately we have some opportunities to learn more about
gladiators than gladiatorial lives.
Speaker 3 (15:27):
Hopefully.
Speaker 2 (15:27):
Yeah. In the summer of twenty ten, news broke that
an area where eighty decapitated skeletons were found in York,
England around two thousand and three might be yet another
gladiator graveyard.
Speaker 4 (15:41):
Yeah. They think that because of the decapitated heads, which
suggests a final blow that many gladiators received in the ring. Actually,
when a guy received a mortal wound, I guess another
guy who was dressed like the mythical ferryman from the
River Styx would come up and sort of bash his
skull in with a mallet, just kind of give them
(16:02):
a final thing. So, because of these decapitated heads, enhance
muscles in one arm, which suggests that they'd been wielding
weapons from a young age and bite marks from a
large carnivore such as a lion. All of these clues
kind of add to the idea that they were gladiators
that were buried there. They're not one hundred percent convinced
(16:23):
about this yet, but it looks promising.
Speaker 2 (16:25):
But I think you mentioned to me earlier one of
the researchers said, your average man in York wouldn't come
across a large cat very frequently.
Speaker 3 (16:33):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (16:34):
I think the quote I saw was the reason that
they thought this was likely is that the guy said
it's much less likely, or he pointed out that it's
much less likely that a guy would just run into
a tiger while walking home from the pub in York
one night.
Speaker 3 (16:46):
I think I think that's very well put.
Speaker 2 (16:49):
Yeah, So hopefully we'll get to learn a little bit
more about this, and maybe we'll even confirm some facts
about gladiator's pass and maybe even learn some stuff about
the cific gladiators that would be a real boon to
this study.
Speaker 4 (17:04):
I'd say, so until we do get a chance to
learn more, If you have any favorite gladiator or gladiator
stories that you want to share with us, we are
on Facebook and at Twitter at myston History, or you
can send us an email at history podcast at HowStuffWorks
dot com.
Speaker 1 (17:18):
And we also have a.
Speaker 2 (17:19):
Lot of articles on archaeology, including How Archaeology Works, which
I wrote, not boosting book It's Fun. It include the
sure vantage no gladiators in it, It's still kind of fun.
If you want to check out that, you can search
for it on our homepage at www dot HowStuffWorks dot com.
Speaker 5 (17:46):
For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit
HowStuffWorks dot com. To learn more about the podcast, click
on the podcast icon in the upperright corner of our homepage.
The house Stuffworks iPhone app has a rise.
Speaker 1 (17:58):
Download it today on ipone.
Speaker 5 (18:02):
Didn't Eaten Inde
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