The Art of Manliness - Are You Not Entertained？ The Myths and Truths About Roman Gladiators

00:00:00.000 brett mckay here and welcome to another edition of the art of manliness podcast

00:00:10.880 when you think about ancient gladiators you likely have a certain vision that comes to mind

00:00:15.580 slaves forced to fight to the death for the entertainment of bloodthirsty romans

00:00:19.640 but much of what we think we know about gladiators is actually wrong taylor show alexander marioti

00:00:25.160 will separate the just as fascinating fact from popular culture derived fiction when it comes to

00:00:29.400 gladiatorial combat in ancient rome alexander is a historian and expert on gladiators who served as

00:00:34.640 a consultant for shows and films like spartacus and gladiator 2 in our conversation alexander

00:00:39.720 explains how gladiatorial games evolved from funeral rites and professional sporting events

00:00:43.820 featuring the greatest superstar athletes and sex symbols of the day we discuss the different types

00:00:48.060 of gladiators the rigorous training regimens why gladiators fought in their underwear and whether

00:00:52.660 they actually fought to the death alexander describes what a day at the coliseum was really

00:00:56.460 like complete with elaborate special effects halftime shows souvenirs and even concessions

00:01:01.300 and we talked about the connection between the gladiatorial games and the sports and spectacle

00:01:05.360 culture of today and why despite the passage of two millennia these ancient athletes continue

00:01:10.380 to captivate our imagination after the show's over check out our show notes at awim.is slash gladiators

00:01:15.920 all right alexander mariotti welcome to the show brent thank you so much for having me what an immense

00:01:34.600 pleasure so you are an expert on the history of gladiators and you've taken that expertise you've

00:01:40.980 done a lot of research writing about gladiatorial combat in ancient rome and you've served as a

00:01:46.340 history consultant for shows like rome spartacus you're there to make sure that the the scenes

00:01:52.280 they depict in those historical shows are as accurate as possible how did you make a career

00:01:57.700 out of researching and consulting about the history of roman gladiators because i'm sure for a lot of

00:02:02.100 guys this sounds like a dream job it certainly is a dream job i think it starts with the most important

00:02:08.300 part was just a lonely childhood and a lot of time spent alone thinking about weapons and armor and

00:02:15.520 gladiators and caesars and all that kind of stuff and i was very lucky because you know my parents are

00:02:20.760 immensely into history and i grew up playing in the coliseum so you know the coliseum for me was just a

00:02:26.240 little place that my brother and i would go hang out and kick a football there really wasn't i think

00:02:30.820 such a vested interest in the gladiatorial world as there is today so as i went on and i studied i think

00:02:37.300 it's just a world that kept calling me back and the more i got into it the more i was fascinated by it

00:02:42.380 and it's just the complexity of the sport of its origins of what it meant which is so immense that

00:02:49.140 it's just one of these topics that when you go in you just go down the sinkhole well i hope in this

00:02:53.900 conversation we we do today we can let our listeners know more about ancient gladiatorial combat

00:02:59.180 and dispel a lot of myths because i think we'll talk about this thanks to popular culture

00:03:03.580 movies in particular there are a lot of myths about how gladiators fought and what it was like

00:03:08.880 to be a gladiator let's start with this basic question what are the origins of gladiatorial

00:03:14.000 combat how do they end up with this thing where there's they built a giant arena so they could

00:03:19.100 watch people fight what's the origins of it well the interesting thing is that there's sort of

00:03:23.500 various stages and what's happened is that it's an amalgamation of different pieces of historical

00:03:29.340 context put together so you know as far as kings and feuding warfare has existed there's always been

00:03:35.920 the sense of when there's a funeral to put on a sort of or the death of some very important person

00:03:40.560 to put on a very grandiose funeral this usually would involve combat or bloodletting or sacrifice

00:03:45.780 you can go back to the first kings of egypt but in the history of gladiatorial combat it comes from

00:03:51.000 ancient greece so the greeks were quite prone to when you know great heroes or important people passed

00:03:56.560 they would have games at the funeral and i mean these games involve boxing and javelin throwing

00:04:03.060 and wrestling but also fighting with weapons and then you also had sacrifice so if you take for

00:04:09.200 example the iliad which you know is a piece of historical fiction but it's got a lot of you know

00:04:13.660 historical notes in it achilles actually does that for patroclus he puts on a funeral in book 23

00:04:18.940 and he's got you know the soldiers or the greeks are fighting in a in combat but they're doing it in a

00:04:25.420 sort of a sporting way to honor the dead and he also sacrifices these these trojans so that kind

00:04:32.300 of culture mixed in with the greeks you know starting the olympics so having professional

00:04:37.640 combat sports you start to see the sort of very very beginnings the seeds of gladiatorial combat

00:04:43.320 and what happens is the greeks conquered in the 8th century they start moving towards the south of

00:04:48.280 italy and colonizing it so they bring their culture with them so by the time that the romans start to

00:04:53.840 become a force of nature they're really infused in greek culture they're infused with the culture

00:04:58.760 that when there's a funeral they have bloodletting there's combat sports that they've inherited

00:05:03.180 and so slowly but surely that's where the the sport of gladiatorial combat starts to come from

00:05:09.220 okay so the seeds of gladiatorial combat came from the greek tradition of holding combat games at

00:05:14.760 funerals to honor the dead and then wealthy romans adopt this practice how did these uh funeral combatants

00:05:23.120 differ and how do they how did things then evolve into the gladiatorial games that we think of when

00:05:29.040 we think of gladiators so you would have these people fight over the funeral but these aren't

00:05:33.920 really i wouldn't define them gladiators because gladiators are what comes afterwards they're they're

00:05:38.440 athletes they're sports figures these guys are called bustiari which means they come from the

00:05:43.780 bustum the fire so they're the sort of um you know because obviously you cremated people back then

00:05:49.400 and these men would fight amongst the fire alongside the fire think of them almost as professional

00:05:55.900 grievers they're there to put on a show to to spill blood to honor the dead and it's tied into to two

00:06:02.840 parts of roman religion the first is that the romans believed as long as someone spoke your name as long

00:06:07.700 as you're remembered you continue to exist so in putting on a very lavish funeral you will be remembered

00:06:13.520 because people say well i had this great feast at this funeral but i also saw these incredible

00:06:17.880 you know examples of combat and the other thing was that they believed that when you died you became

00:06:22.880 a shadow so to allow you to gain enough strength to pass the underworld you needed blood of someone

00:06:29.140 living so the spilling of blood not necessarily death but just the spilling of blood was enough to

00:06:33.760 go forward so that's where it is in rome but it takes someone very astute by the name of p rutilius

00:06:39.660 rufus publius rufus and 105 bc this guy just obviously has observed how much people react to

00:06:46.960 the fights because what we see is that initially the funerals were a feast there was mourning there

00:06:53.720 was the fighting the fighting starts to become the most prominent part because they realize that anyone

00:06:58.280 who comes to these events that's what they're really talking about and rufus understands this and

00:07:02.840 what he does is he puts on the first gladiator fights which are purely for sport and from that

00:07:08.780 moment on the gladiatorial phenomenon really starts to build because it's a sport of its own it's born

00:07:15.320 out of its own and it's nothing to do with funeral rites and it's nothing to do with with death

00:07:20.240 necessarily it's to do a show with spectacle and what when did that happen that's one of 105 bc

00:07:27.500 okay so you're talking again 180 years before the calcium is even built just to show you how much

00:07:32.740 it progressed and how quickly but another thing about rufus which is interesting is he tells us

00:07:36.900 just how well trained these guys are because about 30 years previous rome had just got its professional

00:07:43.360 army so before that the roman army was a sort of series of people that were conscripted brought

00:07:48.780 together they would fight the war and they would disband so rome didn't really have a standing army

00:07:53.240 this is changed by julius's uncle man called gaius marius so at the time of rufus the army is only 30

00:07:59.820 years old and he actually realizes that these guys are so well trained these athletes these gladiators

00:08:05.120 that he goes to gladiator school in capua and he hires the gladiator trainers to train the army

00:08:10.920 and from that moment forth he produces basically super soldiers because any part of the military

00:08:17.620 training from that point on is actually influenced by gladiatorial training that's how well trained these

00:08:22.180 guys were in 105 bc okay so brief recap there gladiator game started off as a funeral rite

00:08:29.020 and then it shifted to just the fight itself that became just public spectacle it was basically like

00:08:33.760 an mma fight today it's exactly well an mma fight today is gladiatorial combat it just it doesn't have

00:08:40.460 the weapons we're not there yet i'm sure in a couple of years someone will say why don't we put weapons

00:08:44.360 with these guys and what a great idea and then we'll have come full circle to the romans but i mean

00:08:48.700 the fact that mma exists speaks to sort of just how much we are like the romans we shouldn't be

00:08:54.900 surprised at this you know human nature hasn't changed profoundly in the last 2 000 years the

00:09:00.220 desires that man holds you know whether to be successful to be remembered to be loved to be

00:09:06.220 powerful you know these are sort of universal themes that repeat themselves because ultimately

00:09:10.440 people repeat themselves and so it shouldn't be surprising that in our culture despite how civilized we

00:09:16.360 think we are we still find that one of the biggest sports in the world involves two men in front of

00:09:21.640 you know 80 000 people in an arena you know beating each other out to see who's who's the most

00:09:27.820 primally powerful what role did gladiatorial games play in roman social and political life

00:09:34.620 oh they played an immense part uh actually that's one of the things that fascinates me so much about

00:09:39.260 the gladiatorial phenomena is that it was responsible for the roman empire i don't think you would have had

00:09:45.060 the principate the emperorship without gladiators because when you look at the emperor and you look

00:09:50.920 at the poorest in rome you know most people did not live like the one percent so what does the one

00:09:56.120 percent have in common with the 99 well they have nothing in common because the emperor lives in a

00:10:01.740 palace he has immense wealth he eats what he wants he drinks what he wants nothing is close to him

00:10:07.320 that's not the reality of most people in ancient rome but what did they have in common well what they had

00:10:12.440 in common is that periodically they would meet in an arena and they would watch this sport and that's

00:10:18.380 how the emperor won the people because he built the coliseum he built an immense stadium and he gives

00:10:24.660 you tickets to come and for a brief moment of your life that hardship that you live you get to forget it

00:10:31.200 you get food you get wine you get games you get beast hunts you get gladiator fights you get ship battles

00:10:37.420 in the coliseum and all because of this very gracious and you know generous figure and so you

00:10:43.460 love the emperor and in exchange he rules and that's really not a relationship that's that different from

00:10:49.060 today because you know if you take the nfl or any sort of sporting body they do the same thing they

00:10:55.180 build the stadiums they put on the shows and in exchange they ask you to buy a product that in

00:11:00.960 ancient rome the product was the emperor's power today it's some sort of you know product placement but

00:11:06.580 it's the same relationship we have with our sports today and what's interesting too i did some reading

00:11:12.440 in preparation for this is that even the emperors who weren't really fond of the gladiatorial games

00:11:17.460 they just they had an aversion to it like marcus aurelius for example he wasn't keen on them he put

00:11:22.760 limits on the gladiatorial games but he still put them on because i guess he thought it was just

00:11:28.100 something he had to do to maintain his power oh yeah it's part of it you know either the power of

00:11:34.300 celebrity is is something that's universal you see it today whenever you know we recently had

00:11:38.540 elections and you see how celebrities roll out for their candidate and they use their their sway and

00:11:44.380 their popularity for a cause well you know it wasn't that different if you had the top gladiators

00:11:49.480 saying that you were the best emperor and what a kind guy and out comes a champion gladiator and

00:11:54.520 the emperor lavishes him with gifts and he says what a great emperor we have well it's the same concept

00:11:59.520 really and it seems like there's also even at the peak of gladiatorial combat in the empire in the

00:12:05.820 roman empire there were a lot of criticisms of it you you could find criticisms just as you'd find

00:12:11.120 criticisms today of mma fights oh absolutely there's an interesting notion which is that great roman

00:12:17.760 philosophers complained more not so much about the sport i mean the sport was seen as a very vulgar sport by

00:12:22.820 you know by the great minds i mean marcus thought it was a vulgar sport he loved wrestling he thought

00:12:27.980 wrestling was a very noble sport he didn't think gladiatorial combat was but it was more about the

00:12:32.980 effect that it had on the people that's the interesting part because they're more concerned

00:12:37.220 that these games bring out the brutal side of man and the romans just like the greeks had a great

00:12:43.380 philosophy about man being in constant battle with his urges so you see things like the centaur or the

00:12:50.340 story of the hydra with hercules they're really metaphors for man being half beast half you know divine

00:12:56.060 and in a constant battle to fight your urges so you you really should try and become more divine

00:13:02.060 but the games brought out the beast in you and that's what christians had a problem with gladiator

00:13:07.140 games we always think that the gladiator games stopped because the christians were so noble and

00:13:11.020 they wanted to save the lives of gladiators well the truth is the gladiators weren't dying that's not

00:13:15.460 the problem the problem is that christian writers say that the games turn men into beasts and i don't think

00:13:23.480 that's really hard to see if you go to a ufc fight you see what it does to the crowd if you're in the

00:13:28.440 crowd it's it's not a calm intellectual crowd it is a rowdy bestial pumped up adrenaline testosterone

00:13:35.100 pumped crowd fueled by the games yes sinica the famous roman stoic philosopher who's also the

00:13:43.380 the assistant uh nero he had a lot to say about gladiatorial games he had a lot of things that you

00:13:48.900 were mentioning there about how it just sort of depraves you and makes you feel less human he

00:13:53.780 said talked about how it you felt like less of a man after you watched the gladiatorial games

00:13:58.840 less human but then also the same time you'd say like but it was so hard not to watch because it is

00:14:03.560 oh but it is and isn't that true though i mean it's funny there's there's a great story by a christian

00:14:09.400 writer about a friend of his who's studying in rome and he's dragged by some friends to the coliseum and

00:14:14.320 you know he's like oh no he refuses and then he sits there in the crowd and he covers his eyes with

00:14:19.140 his hands and then he hears a roar and then he hears a clang and then all of a sudden he pulls his hands

00:14:24.320 back and he peeks a little bit and not before long he's just there cheering with the others and he says

00:14:30.660 he gets drunk on the furies and i think that's very true if you watch you know when we watch these

00:14:36.380 sports it does bring out a side of us that's primal that's sort of genetically in there and it's meant to

00:14:42.920 i mean it's meant to then then the purpose of the games is whether it's mma or gladiatorial combat

00:14:47.820 it's about the toughest it's about survival it's it's about an example and and that's when you reach

00:14:53.980 the philosophy philosophical side of gladiatorial combat which is that they represented to the romans

00:14:58.800 this great philosophy which i think would be perfect for a podcast called the art of manliness because

00:15:03.800 the manliness to the romans was vertus and what vertus was was a physical and mental endurance

00:15:11.660 that you basically could survive anything physically and mentally to be the toughest of the tough

00:15:17.260 and gladiators were that because they were incredibly well trained they were physically

00:15:21.420 brilliant they were courageous because they fought in a fight that you could die from you could die

00:15:27.840 from your injuries i mean you weren't joking around but you also were a great sign of resilience

00:15:33.640 mentally because in the midst of battle when the referee told you to stop you stopped that takes

00:15:40.700 great self-control so we don't really see the gladiators as such but they are a wonderful

00:15:46.460 example of self-control because they are obedient to their trainers to the referee to the emperor

00:15:51.420 and not to their instinct and their adrenaline that's vertus we don't have this philosophy spoken of today but

00:15:58.860 it does exist because we see it in our mma fighters we see it in our first responders that's manliness

00:16:04.720 to the romans that's vertus i love that it's really interesting let's talk about the gladiators

00:16:09.100 themselves i think the popular idea is that the gladiators were criminals slaves is that true

00:16:16.540 they were but they were also free men they were also athletes they were also hunters basically

00:16:21.980 you've got again look at the period of history right what opportunities do you have afforded to you

00:16:27.320 2 000 years ago so you know there's no public education so if you aren't lucky to have an education

00:16:32.760 how are you going to make your money how are you going to survive well if you're physically

00:16:35.940 you know in a good shape you could become a soldier but again that's only opened to the poor

00:16:42.280 by caesar's uncle in about 130 bc so what else could you do and again being a soldier it's not

00:16:49.440 like you're going to survive you might die but you get three square meals and you get taught a trade

00:16:55.420 but you're looking at 16 to 25 years of your life and and though of course you're going to get paid

00:17:00.420 it's not lucrative you're not going to get rich gladiatorial combat offered you another avenue

00:17:04.640 which is that you train to be a gladiator you did a two-year stunt as a rookie which was the time it

00:17:10.020 took to train them and then after that you took a five-year contract which stipulated how many fights

00:17:15.560 you did per year but also how much you're going to earn and what we know from marcus aurelius's time

00:17:20.040 because he passes some laws which effectively ended gladiatorial combat because he took the money out

00:17:24.560 of it is that these guys were making a fortune an absolute fortune you're you're talking about

00:17:29.640 anything up to 17 18 19 times the annual salary of a soldier in a single fight so you do one to three

00:17:38.580 fights a year you're set and you know they didn't have long careers of course they didn't just as

00:17:43.140 mma fighters don't because it was physically taxing you are still fighting you're still beating each

00:17:48.060 other up and you're still putting the body through immense stress so the gladiators themselves made that

00:17:53.440 money or did it go to their trainer it was a split of course it was a split but you had in your

00:17:58.200 contract stipulated how much you earned that's fat i didn't know that because i always thought it was

00:18:01.780 just like they were just slaves well no but that's because the slave part is more interesting you know

00:18:06.440 if if you made a movie about a guy who was out of work became a gladiator made a fortune bought a

00:18:11.140 villain retired i mean that doesn't sound like a great movie you want a guy who's a general who gets

00:18:16.540 his his family's massacred by you know a corrupt emperor he sold it to slavery and he has to fight to

00:18:22.840 win his freedom that's a story and those are the stories we pick but we also create them because

00:18:27.760 they sound good but that's not reality gladiators were about a split 50 50 of slaves and of free men

00:18:35.420 because people were drawn to the arena who wouldn't be i mean you know you get to stand in front of 80

00:18:41.100 000 people cheering your name the emperor of rome cheers your name who else can say that and no wonder

00:18:48.840 people were drawn to become gladiators so what was the social status of a gladiator in a interim so

00:18:55.020 it sounds like they're i mean the way you're describing it sounds like they were a professional

00:18:58.600 athlete today oh they were they were the first superstar athletes of their time uh more so than

00:19:04.180 you know i anytime i say there's someone on the comment section starts going on about the olympics

00:19:10.360 the olympics did not have the reach the athletes did not have the careers nor the money that

00:19:14.660 gladiators did when you look at sports stars today their reach throughout the world the wealth that

00:19:19.700 they amassed the popularity they have the only thing akin to that throughout all of human history

00:19:25.180 is the gladiator they're the first superstar athletes because when you were known in rome you

00:19:30.620 were known in the roman empire 60 million people knew who you were your fame did not just extend to

00:19:36.340 the regions it extended to the the entire empire from the north of scotland to the north of africa

00:19:41.840 now socially yes you you lost your social rights because the romans did not see they were very

00:19:47.140 against people making a spectacle of themselves or showing off so if you're a pimp an undertaker an

00:19:52.900 actor you were declared an infami so you had no political or social standing you're kind of the lowest

00:19:58.760 of the low but it did really matter i don't think people have a great view of conor mcgregor or any of

00:20:04.800 the you know mma stars today socially they you know they they rub shoulders with the with the big

00:20:11.280 wigs because of their popularity but they're not seen as intellectuals you certainly wouldn't imagine

00:20:15.860 an mma fighter becoming a president or a prime minister and gladiators were the same but they

00:20:22.260 didn't really care because they were absolutely adored i mean sexually no one else is more desired

00:20:27.060 in the entire roman empire than the gladiator he is the ultimate sex symbol of ancient times

00:20:32.120 more than the emperor okay so half the gladiators were slaves and then half were free men who volunteered

00:20:38.660 to become gladiators because i mean they just wanted a chance of the lifestyle they wanted fame

00:20:42.900 and glory and then with the slaves it was a way for the owners of the slaves to gain prestige and

00:20:49.480 financial gain through their slaves who were gladiators because if they wanted the arena they

00:20:55.200 would get the fame and glory for that and it was still a selective process because the owners they would

00:21:00.160 pick from among their slaves the best of the best and then they would train them and manage them

00:21:06.100 it was kind of like investing in racehorses yeah you know well the gambit of people who would become

00:21:11.220 a gladiator i mean you had to be tough let's be honest you have to be physically exempt you have

00:21:15.340 to be really the the sort of physical specimen of perfection because you had to have the the body to do

00:21:21.440 it not everybody became gladiators you know this notion that poor slaves were thrown into the arena

00:21:26.640 and told to fight it's just utter nonsense because you're talking about a war-like society who knew

00:21:31.420 combat who saw war who saw carnage so the shows had to be better than the battlefield and it's true

00:21:37.960 because the battlefield was uh scrappy it was ugly the battlefield was not beautiful it was it was

00:21:43.180 murder you know we sort of sanitized combat for for show because when we watch movies these great

00:21:48.860 battles with these great moves it wasn't it was people hacking each other like animals the arena was

00:21:55.740 different it was skillful it was elegant it was uh it was craftsmanship you know it was people studying

00:22:02.560 each other the same way that you know boxing and mma is not the battlefield it's not what war looks like

00:22:08.220 it's not what a street fight looks like it is about people who know their craft who've studied

00:22:12.880 so the gladiators kind of gave people the sort of show that they wouldn't have seen anywhere else

00:22:19.340 something else that i've read and you can correct me if i'm wrong on this with the idea

00:22:24.160 that some gladiators are criminals because it gets kind of confused or conflated because

00:22:30.100 criminals could be sentenced to fight in the arena as a form of capital punishment you know this

00:22:34.820 included christians because christians were considered criminals so it's like we're going to

00:22:39.440 pit these people against a lion but that wasn't gladiatorial combat right no no so there's three very

00:22:46.620 specific categories which always get sort of amalgamized into one and you know later writers especially

00:22:52.020 christian writers kind of confound things that they'd never seen they're there you know it's

00:22:56.000 kind of like people studying today studying me if i write a book about napoleon like a source like

00:23:01.460 you know and me telling you well napoleon looked like this and he did that i mean i can hypothesize

00:23:06.360 but you know i'm 200 years from napoleon and when you've got writers two three four sometimes 500

00:23:11.360 years after the the gladiator games talking about gladiator games they don't know really what they're

00:23:16.480 talking about they're talking about something that's sort of a whisper that's kind of come along

00:23:20.640 so you've got beast hunters which were bestiarai or venatoras so you had guys who basically were

00:23:27.380 hunters professional hunters who fought animals or people who kind of tried their luck and were

00:23:33.020 forced to fight against animals but gladiators do not fight animals for the simple reason you cannot

00:23:38.320 control an animal so when you've trained a guy and you've spent money feeding him and clothing him

00:23:43.640 and housing him and you know having a doctor on on call as gladiators did and then you put him against

00:23:48.580 the lion the lion is probably going to destroy your asset then you've got noxai and noxai are

00:23:54.820 criminals so at halftime show the halftime show involved criminals being executed now that's simply

00:24:01.320 because logistically the emperor has now the attention of 80 000 people who have come to see him

00:24:07.160 so here's a little bit of a you know an interesting part of someone fighting a lion excellent now i've got

00:24:12.200 your attention here's a bit of music here's some fire eaters and now we're going to condemn the

00:24:16.060 criminals because i want you guys to know that if you cross the lines if you defy me and defy my rules

00:24:22.120 this is the consequences so it's public execution and those people were people thrown into the arena

00:24:28.080 told to fight to the death or pitted against animals but they are not gladiators the gladiators

00:24:33.580 come afterwards in the afternoon and they are again professional athletes who've spent two two years or

00:24:40.460 more training who've been fed clothed skillfully trained and sort of brought up in a social way to

00:24:47.660 get us a following which is still important today so that when they perform you want to see them but

00:24:53.480 they are nothing to do with the other two categories okay that's interesting i think that's a good

00:24:57.420 clarification there we're going to take a quick break for your words from our sponsors

00:25:01.420 and now back to the show one thing i thought was interesting is that there are different types of

00:25:10.080 gladiators yeah so you have this section of guys who fought one-on-one but there was different types

00:25:15.540 just like there's different positions in american football like a linebacker or running back the same

00:25:20.480 thing with gladiators what type of gladiators existed well i would equate it more to the fact that

00:25:26.040 they were the first mixed martial artists because they're basically mixed martial artists you've got

00:25:29.460 different styles just as today you get the brazilian jiu-jitsu guys and they fight against you know

00:25:33.480 people have a taekwondo background with some grappling skills what you have is you've got

00:25:40.240 different categories of gladiators and they have different fighting styles and this is predominantly

00:25:45.140 based off the type of armor they have so basically you get two definitive types of gladiators you get

00:25:50.700 scutari and palmerlady which are ones with a large shield called a scutum it's about a four-foot shield

00:25:57.100 and it's the one that's used by the roman soldiers the parma is a smaller shield usually square

00:26:02.940 sometimes round and depending on the type of armor the type of category gladiator they're going to have

00:26:08.880 very specific helmets and that's going to change the way they fight so some of the most famous are

00:26:15.240 for example the retiarius he's the net man he's the only gladiator who didn't have a helmet he had

00:26:20.960 only a shoulder guard and he had a net and a trident and sometimes a small dagger but he's got

00:26:27.580 no armor whatsoever except for the shoulder guard called the galera so you think that's fairly unfair

00:26:31.940 because he again any strike any sort of blow he's going to get is going to give him a wound and he's

00:26:37.200 going to fight against someone like a secutor secutors had very large helmets looked a bit like

00:26:41.840 a fish very small eye holes a fin on the top he had a manica which was basically segmented armor much

00:26:48.740 like you see in the roman soldiers covering his sword arm he has a large shield called a scutum

00:26:54.060 and he's got greaves called okras so very well armored guy against a unarmored guy well that's

00:27:02.220 because the guy without the armor without the helmet is going to be very quick very nimble and his

00:27:06.860 fighting style is going to be sort of jabbing a lot keeping his distance with the trident swinging the

00:27:12.060 net to confuse him and eventually sort of tires his opponent out and win points whereas the

00:27:18.220 secutor being very heavily armored is going to be a thicker set guy more muscular he's going to be

00:27:23.800 slower but more powerful so he really has to study his moves because he's going to work on the

00:27:28.160 expenditure of energy and think how exciting where you do have guys with different skills different

00:27:32.860 armor different physiques fighting it out because you you know you've got your favorites but you also

00:27:37.940 see the skill of the fighter and something about the armor didn't all gladiators fight bare chested or

00:27:44.000 just had like a toga and some of it had like their grease but other than that that was pretty much it

00:27:48.160 well it's an interesting thing 174 bc gladiators appear in underwear uh now you can see this in

00:27:56.040 a place called pastem in the south of italy in these beautiful fourth century bc frescoes so they're

00:28:01.460 the first images of gladiatorial combat we have in italy and they look just like a greek i mean again

00:28:06.560 they're a copy of a greek funeral so they look just like what you see in the iliad but what you see

00:28:10.320 is these guys are in underpants which is called subligaculum it was a piece of linen fabric that was sort of

00:28:15.220 tied in a triangular fashion around you basically like briefs today and the reason why gladiators

00:28:20.760 are placed in them is because they're trying to save their lives so it's interesting that these

00:28:25.580 guys always fought in their underwear and the reason why is because if you wore a tunic and you

00:28:30.480 got a wound the wool or the linen if any of those scraps went into your wound you had a very high

00:28:37.600 probability of infection and dying the romans knew this 2 000 years ago you know that's one of the

00:28:42.440 major cause in the american civil war was death by infection because of the wool tunics that kept

00:28:47.480 going into the wounds so the romans to mitigate this already know this 2 000 years ago and they

00:28:52.740 have gladiators fight basically in their underwear for the entire time to preserve them to save them

00:28:57.460 which tells you that the whole thing of a gladiator dying is not what we we think it is it's nonsense

00:29:02.400 yeah i want to dig more into that myth that they fought to the death but before we do let's talk

00:29:07.740 about the just sort of daily life of a gladiator so if you became a gladiator you had to go to a

00:29:12.700 school it's like a training camp and you basically spent your life there what was life like in a

00:29:17.740 gladiator school well you know it was let's not joke around the moment you went to gladiator school

00:29:23.520 and you took the oath whether you were free man whether you're criminal whatever you were outside

00:29:27.580 was was irrelevant you became clay to be molded by the lenista and the doctore the gladiator trainers

00:29:33.940 so you can expect that their lives are most like professional athletes today think of mma fighters

00:29:39.160 you are tall combinations you're doing physical training to build yourself up so weight training

00:29:45.100 so they had a very intense system called the tetrad system which was a four-day training program

00:29:50.580 that was invented originally for the professional athletes of the olympic games and so basically the

00:29:56.300 first day you have like a preparatory day so you do sprints you do some light weights you do some

00:30:01.280 jumps the second day was like the intense training day so you would have done weights you would have

00:30:07.020 done combinations you would have lifted like medicine balls and i'm talking still ancient rome

00:30:11.940 by the way i know this sounds modern but this is what the romans were doing the third day was a rest day

00:30:16.200 which is very important so you ate a good meal you might have had a bath you might have had like a sauna

00:30:21.640 or a steam room which the romans had and then on the fourth day you did specialized training so that would

00:30:27.120 have been the day that you would have done weapons training tried out your combinations had your

00:30:30.880 trainer do your one twos against the post all right so if i strike you with the left and i come with a

00:30:35.480 shield you're going to duck at this point come back with a a shield hit so that's what it'd be

00:30:41.580 the sort of daily you know or their week to week and when they were coming up for a fight the intensity

00:30:48.500 of the training would increase and then when they were off season they would bulk they would eat

00:30:53.060 they would train lighter and they would prepare for the next fight exactly like professional

00:30:57.840 athletes today yeah that sounds exactly like a professional athlete training speaking of their

00:31:02.080 diet i've heard that they ate so much grain they were called barley men is that accurate no i mean

00:31:09.900 it's accurate and it's not accurate yes they were called barley men they did obviously have a look

00:31:15.160 you've got to take people and give them a diet right so you they're going to do a lot of weight

00:31:18.600 training they're going to do a lot of physical exercise people have tried to use this politically

00:31:22.540 to say that you know gladiators are vegetarians nonsense if you can find a vegetarian heavyweight

00:31:28.580 box of the world i'd love to meet them you needed protein of course so they had a thing called pulse

00:31:33.760 which is like a barley spelt stew which would have been the main basis a little bit like if you imagine

00:31:40.420 for sumo wrestlers they give them like a big sort of stew to beef them up right because you're taking

00:31:45.980 someone off the street and you're like right i'm going to make you into gladiator how do i do that

00:31:49.380 cost effective but they will have of course eaten meat and fish and cheese and pretty much everything

00:31:55.080 okay so yeah these guys they were professional athletes and so they were trained like professional

00:31:59.740 athletes right let's talk about the arena where they fought i think the most famous gladiatorial

00:32:05.240 arena is the coliseum in rome of course but were there other places that they fought in the roman empire

00:32:09.900 oh yeah i mean there was there was amphitheaters all around the roman empire it's why i think we are so

00:32:15.320 roman today is that you know if you go back three four hundred years ago there was no stadiums around

00:32:20.220 the world the stadiums started popping up because of the popularity of baseball in america and cricket

00:32:25.200 in england in the 1800s end of the 1700s and so they started building stadiums but 80 000 spectator

00:32:31.360 stadiums you know that they only started propping up about 80 years ago so nowadays you can go anywhere

00:32:37.280 in the world and there's stadiums for all sorts of sports and that's very much indicative of the roman

00:32:42.180 world where you could go to north africa you go to spain you go to gold germany scotland and they

00:32:47.860 were amphitheaters of various sizes the oldest surviving amphitheater dates to 70 bc it's found

00:32:53.360 in pompeii it's an incredible place it's only a 20 000 spectator stadium but still not bad for a small

00:32:59.900 town but yes the coliseum is you know it's the super bowl it's the place you want to fight at when

00:33:05.520 you've i mean who wouldn't again you know 80 to 80 000 people some say 50 but i i tend to think they

00:33:14.000 were more in the higher region because we don't have any seating so we don't know the exact size

00:33:17.700 but nevertheless you know 55 to 85 000 people cheering for you i mean what a sensation what a feeling

00:33:24.400 imagine coming out of those undergrounds and a tunnel and someone cheering your name and 85 000

00:33:30.240 people erupting and it's such a such an intense feeling that people chase it today you know and

00:33:37.300 very few of us get to experience it but imagine what it must have felt like 2 000 years ago did it

00:33:43.060 work like how you see in the movie gladiator where you know okay there were gladiatorial arenas in

00:33:49.380 different parts of the empire like north africa did you like work your way up till you got to the

00:33:53.960 coliseum is that how it worked you could do yeah or you could do the reverse which was that once you

00:33:58.660 were kind of a veteran you know and you're kind of a little bit past your date you could still go

00:34:03.060 fight in the lesser provinces just as you see sports stars today you know when they kind of

00:34:08.100 hit their heyday they go to different leagues and maybe a little bit lesser prestigious leagues but

00:34:12.660 still you know your name kind of rang true and was still a draw so i mean i could give you a great

00:34:20.380 example you know mike tyson you know we recently saw mike tyson fight yeah who's he fighting against who

00:34:26.420 cares it's mike tyson you know has he fought in a while no does it matter no it's mike tyson it's you

00:34:31.940 know his name is is legendary imagine applying that to gladiator so you're the guy who won the fight

00:34:39.780 you know in the coliseum in 97 ad and okay that was 20 years ago but still you're in relatively good

00:34:47.040 shape you can go to north africa you're a little bit overweight you're not quite the guy used to be

00:34:50.920 you're not quite as fast but people still know who you are they want to see you fight speaking of the

00:34:56.580 coliseum is it true that they filled up the coliseum with water to do naval battles yes absolutely and

00:35:02.740 that's in the beginning and it's to do with a little piece of fortuitous history which was that

00:35:07.660 the building of the coliseum incredibly came out of some very bad luck for the emperor nero which was

00:35:13.440 the misfortune of the fire of 64 ad so natural disaster changed the world politically socially

00:35:19.600 and culturally because the fire made nero unpopular it wasn't his fault but you know his political

00:35:25.080 rivals blamed him for it four years later he plunges a knife into his neck he kills himself

00:35:29.560 and the next emperor that eventually comes after a year of civil war is a sort of down-to-earth guy

00:35:36.220 called vespasian of the flavians and he says okay so the emperorship's in trouble how do i win

00:35:41.140 popularity well i'll tell you what let me take this a piece of imperial land i'm going to build a free

00:35:45.800 cinema theater sports stadium all into one out of my own pocket and i'm going to give you guys

00:35:51.160 free tickets and you're going to see the greatest show on earth but where they built it was on an

00:35:55.420 artificial lake that nero had built so they drained the lake but they used the drainage system for the

00:36:00.500 coliseum so in the beginning of the coliseum when it was first opened there was no underground there

00:36:05.400 were no lifts or trap doors and pulley systems that all comes afterwards as the games get more

00:36:09.680 elaborate but they did have the drainage system so they could drain it and they could pull the water

00:36:15.800 and then dump it into the river and have ships come out and do mock naval battles but eventually

00:36:20.900 the coliseum games got so elaborate that they had to build under the sands a series of trap doors and

00:36:25.820 lifts and pulleys and they moved them to a lake called nemi because it's just easier to do the guys

00:36:33.320 who took part in these naval battles were they your typical gladiator or were they another genre breed

00:36:37.720 they tend to be criminals they tend to be criminals because you it was again particularly dangerous

00:36:42.040 you've got to think of um actors and stuntmen you know your actors the asset he's the guy that you

00:36:49.000 just can't take a risk with so use the stuntmen kind of the same way you'd use criminals and in fact

00:36:54.640 it's from criminals and from a naval battle that we get one of the most famous misconceptions of

00:36:58.980 gladiators which is that during the time of the emperor claudius they they basically organized a

00:37:03.620 naval battle and these guys these criminals knew that there was no chance they're going to survive

00:37:08.840 so you know at least you got to give a criminal chance and say look if you fight you might win

00:37:13.240 your freedom but they knew they had no chance so they shouted to the emperor hail caesar those who

00:37:18.380 are about to die salute you but they were being facetious it was almost like saying well thanks

00:37:23.860 very much you know we're about to die hail to you great caesar you know what kind of a person are you

00:37:28.560 and claudius finds this funny and he actually retorts or not and so they take it as a pardon they take it

00:37:34.920 the emperor's pardon them and he has to hobble down because he had a medical condition and he has

00:37:40.300 to try and convince them to keep fighting to put on show for the spectators and that whole line those

00:37:46.180 are about to die salute you was never said by gladiators it's never recorded again and actually

00:37:51.120 has nothing to do with gladiators but it does sound cool and that's why it's attached okay so that's

00:37:57.000 that's a myth i think there was a famous book about gladiators that had that title

00:38:00.300 those about to die salute you there's a series i just worked on last year on amazon and that's

00:38:05.580 the title of it and the joke my joke is always a terrible joke it's a history nerd joke but my

00:38:11.200 joke is if it's called those who rarely die you wouldn't want to watch it you're like that that

00:38:16.000 doesn't sound particularly good you know you want high stakes you want the fact that your hero might

00:38:19.520 meet death and it's courageous enough to go and fight so yeah this leads to our next myth that i want

00:38:25.600 to hopefully debunk here gladiators did they really fight to the death so gladiators fought very rarely

00:38:32.180 on i mean an absolute occasion to the death but again it's an absolute rarity death did occur and

00:38:39.380 it wasn't that the gladiators didn't accept death they very freely accepted death that they knew that

00:38:43.760 there was a possibility in the same way that when mma fighters go and fight they know there's a huge risk

00:38:48.340 of being you know you you might end your life you might get life ending or life altering injuries

00:38:53.760 the gladiators accepted that but they also accepted that because by the time the gladiator

00:38:57.640 sports started to flourish you know greek sports were close to 900 years old so you know people

00:39:05.440 like boxers and pancration fighters wrestlers when you look at how brutal they were in the olympics

00:39:11.380 the rules we have recorded deaths of olympic fighters of boxers meeting death of pancrationists

00:39:17.740 killing each other we also have a huge amount of severe injuries that these guys sustained

00:39:22.300 so that was kind of generally accepted in the ancient world and gladiators were no different

00:39:26.460 they accepted that if they stepped into the arena they could die predominantly gladiators will have

00:39:31.000 died from injuries and and from infection but one of the greatest doctors actually the sort of great

00:39:37.120 grandfather of modern medicine a guy called galen of pergamum he became the doctor of the emperor

00:39:42.920 marcus aurelius and his writings by the way are the basis of modern medicine we wouldn't have modern

00:39:48.540 medicine to the degree if it wasn't for his writings which still survive today and he learned

00:39:53.540 from working in a gladiator school so we know the gladiator schools actually employed doctors and

00:39:58.580 because we found the gladiator cemetery in turkey and we can study the bones we see that these guys

00:40:03.540 have injuries that have been treated and that they've recovered from the injuries including medical

00:40:07.580 amputations so you see that death is not the purpose of the gladiator everything is being done from

00:40:13.240 the way they dress even their armor i mean what's the point of having a helmet that fully encases your

00:40:17.760 head you don't see that on the battlefield that's really not you know imperative having a big can

00:40:24.000 over your head with a couple of grades sort of holes for your eyes but it's to protect the head of the

00:40:28.420 gladiator and make him look cool at the same time but you don't see that in the battlefield yeah so the

00:40:33.220 goal of these bouts wasn't to kill each other it was to put on a good show the the purpose was

00:40:38.320 absolutely not death no it was to put on a good show and in fact there's historical evidence that they

00:40:43.760 didn't fight with sharpened weapons we have an inscription of somebody asking special dispensation

00:40:50.000 from the emperor um an emperor called alexander severus to be able to use sharpened weapons

00:40:55.240 because it was such a risk and because the gladiator uh sport was monopolized by the emperor the emperor

00:41:01.840 owns the schools and everything it's all under the emperorship so they have to ask permission to have

00:41:06.820 the gladiators fighting using weapons that are sharpened weapons because of the degree of risk

00:41:12.020 and we know that even marcus aurelius makes gladiators fight with wooden weapons because he

00:41:17.360 didn't like the injuries okay so if these guys didn't fight to the death like that wasn't the

00:41:23.420 goal how do they know when a battle was over like how long do these things last same as mma you know

00:41:28.020 it's interesting that we've worked out through how many uh games went on in an afternoon that your

00:41:33.060 bouts were between three to five you had rounds first of all because you had referees you had one in

00:41:37.700 the middle one in the side the rudis and the second rudis so exactly like today you had a guy in the

00:41:42.540 middle of the fight guy in the outskirts kind of giving you the opinion they fought in rounds because

00:41:47.180 again once this is the sort of interesting part of my work is when i was younger i spent a whole

00:41:52.040 period you know i was an ex-athlete so i was very physical and i worked at the museum where we've

00:41:57.800 rebuilt all the armor the weapons and we said right how do these work and tried on the helmets and i can tell

00:42:02.740 you that when you've got one of these helmets on uh and i played american football it's hard to have

00:42:08.060 everything on you know you do short bursts because otherwise you'd be exhausted so you've got to take

00:42:13.300 the helmet off so the gladiators will have been the same because your breathing is hugely restricted

00:42:17.120 your vision is hugely restricted they're very uncomfortable helmets even with padding the weight

00:42:22.880 of the armor bears down on you and you're fighting in the mediterranean heat so they fought in rounds

00:42:27.900 and they had points and the referee would of course then go ultimately to the crowd and say who won and

00:42:34.560 people would give their opinion and then you would name the winner so you know just the same way how

00:42:39.460 does somebody win a boxing match or an mma fight kind of give us an idea what the games are like so if

00:42:44.280 i were a citizen in rome and i heard okay there's games planned for this week what would rome be like

00:42:50.820 what would the coliseum be like on that day of the games well um i want everybody who's listening to

00:42:56.900 this to appreciate one thing we live in a time where we can go to stadiums of 80 000 people so

00:43:01.620 we're at a huge advantage that anyone has been throughout history to understand the gladiator

00:43:06.260 games because we know what the sound of 80 000 people sounds like we know when we go to the games

00:43:11.920 that it's an all-day thing just as it was in ancient times and by the time you hit you're walking

00:43:17.080 towards the arena you can see it in your vision you've got a whole bunch of very excited people

00:43:21.800 there's that sort of energy in the air you're ready to go do some tailgating some cooking and

00:43:27.520 eating which is what the romans would have done you've got your ticket in hand which is called a

00:43:31.880 tessera it's a coin it has a number on it so it doesn't matter if you speak latin or not you can

00:43:36.500 still today on the coliseum when you see the arches it has numbers that corresponded to tickets

00:43:41.240 so they had a gated ticketed system in 81 ad already when you walk through this stall there's a guy

00:43:47.460 who checks your ticket lets you through you go up some stairs and as you come out of a second set

00:43:53.200 of stairs you walk out onto the arena onto the stands you find your seat you get some food and

00:43:59.680 drink there's somebody passing by that's serving food that's serving wine you pass the souvenir

00:44:05.440 stalls you'll probably go to that later depending how the game goes you might have bought a flag for

00:44:10.300 your team and you're sitting there with your friends and all of a sudden the announcer starts playing

00:44:15.320 music and announces the entry of the emperor so think how exciting you are going to spend a whole

00:44:21.520 day with the most powerful and important person in the world the emperor of rome there he is right

00:44:27.760 there with you and they tell you why the games are on and as they tell you the reason for the games

00:44:34.200 the music begins and suddenly popping out of the ground are trees because underneath the sand of the

00:44:40.900 arenas are 50 odd trap doors and lift and pulley systems so they put trees on them so trees will be

00:44:47.160 popping out of the sand and transforming the entire arena into a jungle because you are never going to

00:44:53.120 visit the jungles of india but you don't need to because the coliseum rings the empire to you suddenly a

00:44:59.300 beast hunter pops out of a trap door lions pop out of another and with an aerial view and music playing

00:45:05.000 a whole soundtrack you're going to watch a hunter hunter lion so the lion's stalking him you see it

00:45:11.280 getting closer the music builds and he turns around at the last minute he starts stabbing the lion and

00:45:15.540 the music builds crescendos he kills the lion the games are over the trees stop popping down the ground

00:45:21.900 sand and it's time for the halftime show acrobats dancers executions and best of all a raffle you'll get

00:45:30.280 thrown to the stands little wooden balls open them up if there's a coin inside

00:45:34.600 there'll be a number keep a hold of it and later they'll call that number and you can win a horse

00:45:40.160 grain even a villa what a great guy the emperor is you start to see that democracy is overrated you

00:45:48.040 don't get free stuff but when you've got an emperor you get free tickets free food free wine free things

00:45:53.160 and the best part is yet to come because when four o'clock reaches and the weather gets a little bit

00:45:58.200 more moderate that's when the gladiators start so music plays and out comes from the dugouts you know

00:46:04.360 the lesser known guy build up the title fight that's why we're here this is the trilogy match

00:46:09.780 between two gladiators you know one's one one battle one's one another epic third that's going

00:46:15.600 to settle it who is the champion gladiator of the coliseum and as the music plays guy comes out

00:46:22.160 people cheer music plays another guy comes out people cheer and with music playing you get to watch

00:46:27.280 them fight and then at the end when your team wins and the crowd erupts you get this feeling of

00:46:32.460 euphoria or you might be on the other side and get the feeling of absolute dejection but then you

00:46:38.380 leave and for one entire day of your life you aren't you know an accountant a lawyer you were a

00:46:46.060 champion gladiator a beast hunter you were somebody you got to spend time with the emperor and then you

00:46:50.640 go back to your normal life and when we go to stadiums or we go to cinemas we reenact all of that

00:46:56.200 that's why we go to the cinema to see gladiator because we want to see these things and we're

00:47:01.880 in a period where we can and we can experience them exactly as the romans did as you're describing

00:47:07.020 that i was just thinking about this professional sports games i've been to i mean the big picture

00:47:11.680 is the same thing like the raffle you know if you've been to a sports game you've done that we

00:47:15.860 don't win villas you might win a some free arby's after the game you might get a t-shirt you might get a

00:47:21.360 t-shirt right um and then also the souvenirs like you always you got to pick up a souvenir you're

00:47:25.420 going to get a flag were there like souvenirs of like the specific gladiators could you buy like a

00:47:29.580 mug with oh yeah yeah and there was also like retro ones like vintage ones so you you know you'd go

00:47:34.340 to the stalls and you'd be like oh man i remember this my dad saw this one this is a cool one this is

00:47:38.780 a collector's piece i'll take this one you know but you had statues and lamps and dolls of specific

00:47:45.080 gladiators you had commemorative bowls and so on of particular fights so yeah not not any different

00:47:52.300 not any different at all and of course you could buy food and people then the animals actually were

00:47:56.920 butchered and then they were they were given to people and people they did actually tailgate they

00:48:00.620 would cook their food while they were watching the games that's really interesting all right so

00:48:05.020 the gladiatorial games the gladiator games were huge it was basically like nfl mma for the roman

00:48:12.420 and wrestling and for it for the roman empire yeah put together like all our sports today have

00:48:17.740 an element of it like i look at you know american football and probably why i loved it so much and

00:48:22.240 why i played it was because it kind of reminded me of being a gladiator the helmets the armor the

00:48:26.820 sort of clashing um but even mma of course that's ultimately the heart of what gladiatorial combat was

00:48:33.480 but wrestling's like it because wrestling involves like superhumans you know you look physically what the

00:48:39.160 wrestlers look like they're not like us you know i mean well i'm speaking for myself there might be

00:48:43.080 people who are six seven out there and how many hundred pounds but most of us aren't so you know

00:48:48.060 when you were a gladiator you were the physical exception you would have been six foot in a time

00:48:51.640 when people were between four six to five foot just as wrestlers today are six foot something and

00:48:56.240 almost seven foot you had music playing as you came out there was an element of the fight which wasn't

00:49:01.760 really real you know you weren't aiming to kill each other you were aiming to put on a show i think

00:49:06.880 that's the sense of wrestling oh yeah so when you say wrestling you're talking about like

00:49:10.500 professional wrestling like wwe or wwf wrestling the wwe that's right yeah i'm talking about the rock

00:49:16.760 like and again even the names like the names of gladiators really mimic perfectly the names of

00:49:21.940 wrestlers or wrestlers mimic the names of gladiators you know the the rock the undertaker these are

00:49:26.660 fantastic names because they evoke a feeling an image a persona and you had it with gladiators as well

00:49:33.740 you know you just need to say spartacus oh wow okay that's that's a great name blade we had one

00:49:38.860 called flamma fiamma the the blaze i mean you can imagine a wrestler called blaze and there was a

00:49:45.060 gladiator called blaze that's really cool so why did they go away well they went away for the same you

00:49:51.600 know the three things that changed the world money politics and religion so basically what happened was

00:49:56.600 throughout the roman empire because there was so many arenas the priests of the imperial cult which is

00:50:01.580 imagine it from an administrative point of view you have people out in the provinces because the

00:50:06.020 emperor doesn't actually physically go there most of the time who represent the emperor and to get to

00:50:11.400 show the locals that you are lucky to be in the roman empire you get all the benefits you know like you do

00:50:16.060 the sort of starbucks of ancient times you know you get civilization you get a starbucks a mcdonald's

00:50:21.200 well in roman times you get baths and you get a library and you get a senate house and you get an

00:50:26.960 amphitheater and periodically the priests will put on games in honor of the emperor so the locals will

00:50:33.840 be you know fantastic i've got a local amphitheater and i've got people fighting for me because the

00:50:39.440 emperor is so kind but the problem is that the people had to pay for them so marcus aurelius to

00:50:43.980 stop people ruining themselves financially to do this puts a limit on how much money you can spend on a

00:50:50.320 how much money the gladiators can earn he basically puts gaps on them and by the way i i feel that you

00:50:57.140 know our modern sports are going to hit something very soon just like that when you look at the

00:51:00.980 astronomical quantities that players are paid games cost to put on you know the superbowl i was looking

00:51:07.080 at the numbers i mean gosh the amount of money that it takes to put on a superbowl is going to reach

00:51:11.900 a level when the amount of money it costs is going to exceed the amount of money it makes and then

00:51:17.220 that's when you're going to have problems that's what happened gladiator combat is that there were

00:51:20.780 limits on how much people earned how much the games could be how much could be spent so all of a sudden

00:51:26.220 it wasn't lucrative like it was so the sort of heyday started to pass after 180 ad it still goes

00:51:32.260 on to 430 ad but it doesn't have the prestige it used to and i think a good example of this is

00:51:38.560 baseball where i don't think baseball is quite as prestigious as it was because the money's kind of

00:51:42.980 gone out of baseball so you know if i'm an athlete do i want to be a baseball player do i want

00:51:47.140 to be a basketball or an nfl player well who makes the most money yeah i think i'll be an nfl player

00:51:52.200 thanks and religion is ultimately yes socially things change because christianity came in but

00:51:57.680 again the christians were not so concerned with their well-being of the gladiators the athletes

00:52:02.140 they couldn't care less they were more concerned that they wanted people to be less animalistic

00:52:07.340 and they felt that the games brought out the worst in people so it just basically just faded away

00:52:12.720 and politics is because rome was of course the capital of the empire but the emperor constantine

00:52:18.600 moved this to turkey to istanbul and when constantinople was founded the public really had

00:52:24.080 no power in rome anymore so the point of putting on the games is to win people over politically to

00:52:30.600 keep them happy you know distract them but when they had no political sense anymore political power

00:52:35.640 it made no sense and they didn't do it for them anymore and of course that's where the coliseum

00:52:40.900 was so it faded into history so there's been a lot of movies made about gladiators and you've

00:52:46.680 consulted on shows about gladiators do you have your like top three favorite gladiator movies

00:52:52.000 uh my top you know i like uh i i love them all i love them all because they all have aspects that i love

00:52:59.200 you know obviously like gladiator one was amazing because it brought the coliseum to life i don't think

00:53:04.300 anyone really had a sense of what the games were like visually until gladiator came along there's

00:53:09.180 this great shot where uh maximus is fighting uh tigress in the middle of the arena and it's like a

00:53:14.900 wide shot and you just see the whole arena and you realize people were just concentrated on two little

00:53:20.460 figures in the middle you know i do love the series spartacus because i think it gives you a real

00:53:25.880 sense of what the gladiator was his life was like you know the sort of sex drugs and rock and roll of

00:53:31.380 its time or um sex wine and i guess uh harp music whatever the uh equivalent was in antiquity

00:53:40.440 probably opium i suppose um but it really showed the sort of life of the gladiator inside the ludus

00:53:45.280 i thought that was great and of course the sex involved because that was a huge draw you became

00:53:50.760 a sex symbol you know sex is a major drive for for anybody and being a gladiator was a sure way to be

00:53:57.280 just an object and it's amazing how many objects we find related to gladiators and sex from antiquity

00:54:03.680 so i i like different shows for different aspects and even gladiator 2 i have to say i really loved

00:54:10.100 gladiator 2 as well i did some work on gladiator 2 and uh i thought just the views of the coliseum

00:54:16.560 who's ever seen a naval battle we just got to sit and watch a naval battle in the coliseum

00:54:21.540 brought to life with our technology and how fascinating that to us it's amazing and then you

00:54:26.780 think imagine what it was like when you saw it in real life 2 000 years ago if it amazes us who have

00:54:32.200 all sorts of spectacle to you know blow us away in technology and yet we can still sit and see two

00:54:37.880 ships in a coliseum go wow that's cool imagine when you saw it in the amphitheater 2 000 years ago

00:54:43.800 last question why do you think people continue to find gladiators so compelling even in the 21st century

00:54:49.480 i think it's an easy one i think this there's a variety of reasons the first is because we still

00:54:54.980 admire vertus because we still you know admire strength and courage and resilience just like the

00:55:01.360 romans did you see it in our superstars and our sports stars our superheroes the gladiators were the

00:55:06.760 first version i think secondary is because we see ourselves more the gladiator the most relatable

00:55:11.280 of all the characters of antiquity because we don't see ourselves in emperors or nobles you know

00:55:15.860 very few of us do we don't live that life but the gladiator is the commoner it's the guy who comes

00:55:20.540 nothing and makes his way up the rank you know makes fortune and fame and success i'm still talking

00:55:26.780 about them but i also think that especially you know personally and i think most people can sort of

00:55:32.020 associate with it is that there's a great level of psychology the arena was a representation of life

00:55:39.520 so when you saw animals fighting people that was the savagery of wild and how man can confront even a

00:55:46.420 lion it's terrifying but you can do it you know you have to be brave you have to be full of vertus

00:55:52.220 when you saw criminals getting executed you saw it's chaos but there's order and bring order

00:55:57.980 and when you saw the gladiator you saw a representation of how we live we all find ourselves in a fight

00:56:04.360 at some point in our lives not a physical fight it can be an emotional or a mental struggle it's still

00:56:11.480 battle life is war it's a fight and somebody ultimately holds our fate in their hands so really

00:56:17.560 if you look at it you know it's a sort of metaphor there the gladiator is us the arena is life and the

00:56:23.820 emperor is whatever we're fighting whether it's health or bad luck who's going to hold sway of our

00:56:31.160 lives and they inspire us to fight and to succeed to face death and overwhelming odds of courage

00:56:37.260 and who cannot be inspired by that well alexander this has been a fascinating conversation where

00:56:42.680 can people go to learn more about your work oh that's very kind of you brett thank you you can

00:56:46.940 find me on my website alexandermariotti.com or follow me on instagram as the gladiator historian

00:56:53.020 i usually put out all sort of my talks or appearances or come visit me in rome i'm in rome i do some

00:57:00.520 work over there so whether rome and london you can come and find me at the british museum or

00:57:04.520 usually around the coliseum somewhere well alexander miriotti thanks time's been a pleasure

00:57:08.560 brett as they say strength and honor and thank you so much my guest here is alexander miriotti he's a

00:57:14.740 gladiator historian you can find more information about his work at his website alexandermariotti.com

00:57:19.060 also check out our show notes at aom.is slash gladiators we find links to resources we delve deeper

00:57:23.920 into this topic well that wraps up another edition of the aom podcast make sure to check out our website

00:57:35.580 at artofmanliess.com where you find our podcast archives and check out our new newsletter it's

00:57:39.680 called dying breed and sign up at dyingbreed.net it's a great way to support the show directly

00:57:44.160 as always thank you for the continuous support and 10 likes times brett mckay

00:57:47.700 remind you to on the list they went podcast but put what you've heard into action

00:57:51.320 you

The Art of Manliness - July 31, 2025

Are You Not Entertained？ The Myths and Truths About Roman Gladiators

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