Did Gladiators really do that?

So, you’ve watched Gladiator 2 and want to know more about the real gladiators of the Colosseum but don’t know where to start? You’ve come to the right place. It can be difficult when watching historical movies to spot fact from pure fiction, but I’m here to help.

Both Gladiator movies are set in ancient Rome, but they’re not (and don’t pretend to be) documentaries. They are unabashed, brash entertainment with some ideological concepts slipped in surreptitiously, which to be fair is exactly what gladiatorial shows were. More on that below. I’m not here to complain about inaccuracies, I’m just here to give a little context. So, let’s go through a few frequently asked questions, and soon you’ll be an expert in all things arena!

Lucius was a prisoner of war who was sent to the arena after his city was conquered. Was this how Rome treated prisoners of war?

At the beginning of gladiatorial combat in Rome, about 450 or so years before the movie is set, gladiators were pretty much exclusively prisoners of war. This made sense: Rome had a lot of wars and subsequently had a steady supply of prisoners from them. For free! Also, these prisoners were usually mercenary (i.e professional) soldiers and came with the weapons and armour they were captured in. Also conveniently free. Thirdly, they came pre-trained in combat and were ready to go straight away.

But the movie is set some time in the early 200s CE, not BCE, and gladiators had changed a lot since then. It didn’t take the Romans long to start formalising gladiators into ‘types’ a bit like we sort boxers and wrestlers into weight classes. They had gladiators who fought with swords, or tridents, or spears. Some had big shields, some small. Some had none at all. This produced different fighting styles to provide a little variety, and these specialisms (like the retiarius, murmillo or thraex) needed very intense, specific training. These individual gladiator styles are portrayed in the film, but only by extras.

Once Romans started training defined styles from scratch, prior experience became less of a necessity. Trainers started going to slave auctions to purchase men who looked like they had potential, even without prior military service. By the Augustan period, the number of free men who volunteered for the career because they were broke, or adrenaline junkies, also started to climb.

Criminals were also sent to the arena as Rome had no prison system; punishments for serious crime could be exile, hefty fines, or execution in some form because prisons didn’t really exist. Sometimes executions like being attacked by animals or burned alive were the lunchtime show (meridiani) between the morning beast hunts and afternoon combats, and some of the criminals would be condemned to become gladiators. Their careers were designed to be very short, and their deaths became execution and entertainment rolled into one.

By the time of the movie, there would be a mix of POWs, enslaved men, criminals and volunteers, though the movie only hints at POWs. Other alternatives for POWs were to be sent to hard labour in mines, quarries etc, so it is likely that gladiator owners like Macrinus would have inspected new arrivals and picked the ones they wanted for the arena, it was by no means the default fate. 

Did all fights end in death for the loser?

Nope. Again, when gladiatorial combat was in its infancy, death was very likely a foregone conclusion for the loser. But as gladiators slowly developed into a highly skilled profession, some of them became very good. Very good gladiators became popular, and popular gladiators became celebrities. This led to a greater chance for a really popular gladiator to survive a fight he lost for three reasons:

1. Crowds liked to see their favourites win. They weren’t usually fond of seeing their favourites die, it left them disappointed which is the last thing entertainment is supposed to do. The guy probably just had a bad day, let him live, fight again, because you can rely on his fame to draw in the crowds. Emperors did not want to annoy 50,000 Romans all at once, so keeping the crowd on side was a must. They could shout and gesture for a gladiator to be saved, and a wise emperor took their desires into account.

2. To get a gladiator to superstar level took at least a year of daily training. This also involved housing him, feeding him, paying for his medical care and paying for his trainers. True superstars could have a career of 5 years or even more, and that got expensive. The longer the career, the bigger the investment. A veteran was thus deemed less expendable than a cheap newbie. Some fights were advertised as sine missione, meaning ‘no reprieve to the death’, but this was likely most often used for condemned criminals or newbies who didn’t show a lot of earning potential.

3. By the era of the movie, gladiators were officially ranked according to their skill and popularity. When gladiators were hired, the top ranks were more expensive. The money paid by the organisers to the gladiator owner (Macrinus in the movie) to rent them for each show was a set price per appearance, but if a gladiator was killed the organisers had to pay the owner their full worth. You break it, you buy it. The superstars were far more expensive to kill than rookies, and each show featured multiple pairs of gladiators. If every combat ended in a death, the organisers would be facing a really hefty bill of compensation money. Emperors could skirt this issue because they had their own imperial gladiator schools and so didn’t have to pay rental fees - imperial gladiators had to rely on their star power and talent to keep them alive.

One gladiator in Türkiye boasted in his epitaph that he fought in 50 fights! Long careers were absolutely possible, even if a gladiator didn’t win every time. 

Pollice Verso - Jean-Leon Gerome

Did emperors use their thumbs to determine if a gladiator lived or died? 

Yes, but almost certainly not in the way the movie depicts. In Hollywood, thumbs up means mercy, and thumbs down means condemnation. That’s why today we use thumbs up for ‘like’ and thumbs down for ‘dislike.’ Even Facebook used the idea. Hollywood borrowed this from a famous painting by Jean-Léon Gérôme called Pollice Verso, which uses an ancient phrase. In the painting, the crowd makes the thumbs down sign to indicate they want the gladiator to finish off his opponent.

The problem is, we don’t have a lot of concrete evidence for this. If we want to get really technical, pollice verso doesn’t mean ‘downwards thumb,’ it translates as ‘with thumb turned’ but doesn’t say how, exactly.

Artistic depictions don’t help us much either, as we only have one example where a hand gesture is included. It’s on a terracotta medallion that you can see in the Musée de la Romanité in Nîmes, France. In it, the person deciding the outcome of the fight holds his thumb tight up against his closed fist, neither doing a thumbs up nor thumbs down. Gladiator artworks like this often put a little note to state the outcome of a fight.

The Greek letter theta, which looks like θ, was a shorthand for death. Theta for Thanatos, the Greek god of death. It became known as the ‘unlucky theta’, the theta infelix, because in Latin epigraphy (words carved into stone, clay, metal etc) a θ marked when a Roman had died. So gladiatorial art used it as a recognised symbol. But we know that some fights didn’t end in death, and the tiny writing at the top states that this one ended with both gladiators leaving alive. If you look carefully, you can see stantes missi which means they both left standing. In other words, the loser lived to fight another day.

So, if we know a thumb held against the hand meant mercy, pollice verso or thumb stuck out must therefore mean condemnation. The thing is, we don’t have another picture that shows which way the thumb was stuck out. It could have been, up, or down, or to the side, but we simply do not know for sure. Perhaps it didn’t matter as long as the thumb was held away from the rest of the fist. So, the movie isn’t correct in its thumb choreography, but what it does do is use the version that most people understand. 

Médaillon de Cavillargues

Acacius holds up his hand to concede. Could gladiators give up?

In most cases, yes. Only sine missione fights had no mercy. Many fights were fought ad digitum, meaning ‘to the finger.’ If a gladiator wanted to concede defeat, he could hold up his outstretched finger. The fight would then end, and the emperor would decide whether the gladiator had fought well enough to live and fight again, or if he should be killed.

One thing spectators dd not appreciate was a poor show, and what they really wanted to see was two equally matched men put in some serious effort. If a gladiator was weak, cowardly or just a bit useless stuck out his finger, he could then be killed because he had failed to display enough of the masculine virtues of strength, courage and martial skill. There was no point keeping him alive if he wasn’t going to put on a good show.

Alternatively, a gladiator could request to end the fight if they sustained an injury that meant they couldn’t continue. If they’d fought valiantly up to this point and the injury was treatable, they were far more likely to be granted a reprieve.

Gladiators probably didn’t kill each other during the fight itself as we see in the movie (although it likely happened now and then, outside of sine missione bouts.) Instead, the decision of life and death occurred after the fight had been halted and the decision was in the hands of the emperor, not the victor. Losers could then walk free if spared, but not get any winnings (though their owner would still collect the rental fee) or prepare for death. When this happened, they were expected to kneel and the winner would deliver a single killing blow. We know this because it’s a very popular moment to have depicted on gladiatorial souvenirs such as terracotta lamps. It usually involved the winner standing behind the kneeling loser and driving a sword through his shoulder and down into the heart, and gladiators were conditioned to never show fear when they were killed in this way, they were required to meet death with courage. This method was at least very quick.

The movie has Acacius raise his hand to end the fight, so that’s correct. Lucius then refuses to carry out the execution, at which point Acacius is killed by arrows from the Praetorian Guards. If this were the real arena, Lucius would also be killed by arrows for insubordination. But then, the movie would be an hour shorter, so…

Lucius has a cut stitched up by an in-house doctor. Did gladiators have personal doctors?

Absolutely they did. We already know that they were considered to be investments, and part of their maintenance was healthcare. Their rigorous training with wooden weapons, not to mention their real fights with metal ones, would have resulted in cuts, bruises, sprains. Regular treatment as well as emergency procedures were needed to keep fighters in tip top condition. We have a (comparatively) large amount of info about gladiatorial healthcare:

1. Galen was the most famous Roman doctor of the Roman age, and wrote several medical textbooks that survive to this day. He actually started his career as a gladiator doctor in Pergamon (in Türkiye) and credits his experiences treating large wounds with his exemplary knowledge of anatomy; most doctors did not get to see interior organs as frequently as he did. He boasted that he never lost a gladiatorial patient. The doctor in the movie was spot on to comment that an infected cut could still kill a gladiator long after a fight was over, so gladiatorial doctors were a vital and constant member of the auxiliary staff.

2. In Ephesus (also in Türkiye) and York (England) archaeologists have found cemeteries with peculiar skeletons. Disproportionately male, no children or the elderly, and all with significant injuries that have left marks on their bones (mostly from blades and spears, some from massive teeth!) Were these men gladiators? York had no gravestones, so some scholars (not me!) question if the men really are gladiators, but Ephesus did have gravestones right next to the skeletons, which confirmed it. There are some pretty gnarly injuries on those bones, and interestingly the locations of the injuries match up to areas on the body that weren’t protected by armour. Some injuries are very, very clearly fatal. Others, however, show the telltale signs of healing. Damaged bone repairs itself up to a point, and very clever bone experts (called osteo-archaeologists) can look at an injury and even suggest how long that wound had been healing for at the time of death. They can also tell when a bone has healed incorrectly, such as when an arm or leg has been broken but not put in a splint - if the bone isn’t straightened it would become forever bent and wonky. The osteo-archaeologists were able to ascertain that the Ephesus gladiators had the best care available (which probably cost their owner a lot of money) and that many fought on after previous significant injuries had fully healed. They were even put on a special diet of strontium (probably ingested as a drink made with ash mixed in) that helped bones heal and stay strong!

Lucius and Acacius fight wearing soldier’s armour. Other gladiators in the background have very little armour but massive helmets. Which is right? 

The extras (usually) have the correct outfit on. Gladiatorial combat was very different from the fighting Lucius and Acacius would have known as military men, and as such had very specific kit. First off, they need helmets. Only the retiarius didn’t fight with a helmet. If you’re paying megabucks for two famous actors to emote, they can’t do it with their faces obscured, but ancient gladiators considered it an essential part of their armour, and helmet types were tailored to best protect you from the type of opponent you faced.

Lucius and Acacius also have breastplates on. Real gladiators had bare chests. It showed off their physique, but also added an element of danger. They had to work harder to protect themselves if they were half naked.  So we really should have seen more bare chests. Real gladiators compensated for their bare chests by having shields, which could also double as a secondary weapon.  We see a few extras have arm and shin guards - that’s correct, if not done 100% accurately: depending on their type, the gladiator would wear one or two shin guards (ocreae) and one or two arm guards, like metal or padded sleeves (manicae.) Longer limb guards were used by gladiators with smaller shields, but gladiators using the larger scutum shield needed smaller guards. Retiarii, the gladiators who fought with tridents and nets, had no helmet or normal guards, but did have one distinctive guard on their shoulder called a galerus that shielded their neck. The various combinations of these individual components were very specific to each class of gladiator.

Underneath their breastplates, Lucius and Acacius have tunics on, and leather tasselled belts around their waists. Soldiers did wear versions of those, but gladiators didn’t. The correct gear is much less fancy - a single loincloth called a subligacum. So Lucius and Acacius are not in the right gear at all, they have their limbs exposed and their chests covered - the complete opposite of what they should be wearing. 

Why were gladiators so important? They’re a big deal in the society of Rome in this movie.

Gladiators were a form of entertainment first and foremost, but there’s quite a lot we can learn about Roman society in their existence. Gladiators were supposed to display the virtues that Rome believed all men should exhibit: courage, strength, discipline, honour, martial skill and no fear in the face of impending death. That’s what masculinity was, at its core. Gladiators were a demonstration of that; a teaching tool for the men in the stands watching: this is how a real man lives and dies.

In a militaristic society such as that, it is no wonder these values were inserted into entertainment; cultures produce entertainments that reflect their ideals and priorities. For Rome, that meant being really good at stabbing, in a very ‘manly’ fashion. We do the same kind of thing with war movies and cop shows, and the Marvel Cinematic Universe is a pretty good parallel too. Even the gladiator movies themselves do the same thing, with the ideology of the screenwriter and director apparent in the narrative choices they’ve made.

Could gladiators buy their freedom?

Gladiators could, yes. They would have to save the equivalent of their worth to their owner, essentially buying themselves out. If they had a good relationship with their owner, negotiation was possible. They did earn cash prizes from their victories, so could plausibly stash money away, though their rental fee went to their owner. Some of the volunteers fought under fixed term contracts, leasing themselves to men like Macrinus for a specified length of time. Alternatively, a gladiator could wait to be offered the rudis, the wooden sword that meant that he was free to retire. That was given to exceptional fighters as the ultimate prize. 

Retired gladiators found work as bodyguards, or could stick around the gladiator barracks working as a trainer or referee (who don’t feature in the movies but were an essential part of the combats.) Some continued their arena careers as freelance fighters, and were able to keep their entire fee to themselves.

There’s a lot of animals in this movie - is that accurate?

Kind of. The Romans loved to import exotic creatures from far flung locations to exhibit them in their arenas. Sometimes this was a parade of oddities, kind of like a zoo. Other animals were brought to fight each other, recreating how they might fight in the wild. Animals could be used as a form of execution (damnatio ad bestias) to kill criminals. Others were hunted down, or pitched against specially trained fighters called venatores. These were arena fighters, but not gladiators. 

Gladiators only ever attacked each other. Ridley Scott is merging two careers here, just for added drama. All kinds of animals were brought in to be viewed, to kill and to be killed. Julius Caesar proudly presented the first giraffe, Pompey Magnus upstaged him with a rhino. The movie rhino has a rider. That’s an anachronism, but is sure does look cool. A CGI rhino is easily trained, a real one is not. There were mounted gladiators, but they only rode horses.

Interestingly, if they had showed Joaquin Phoenix as Commodus loose arrows at a rhino in the first film, that would have been 100% accurate.

The sharks aren’t accurate, as even though Romans were familiar with them, they had no way of catching, transporting and containing them. If they could have, they would have, and the magic of CGI finally makes it possible.

What about the ships?

That scene was pretty cool, no? A naval battle on real ships in a flooded arena. And it’s TRUE. They were called naumachia which was a Greek loanword meaning ‘ship battle.’

Before the Colosseum was built in the 70s CE, naumachiae were held on lakes or in specially excavated basins close to rivers. In the Colosseum, the arena floor was wooden and covered with sand, and if you visit today you can see that the space underneath is a huge basement filled with all the kinds of cells, storage rooms and animals cages the Colosseum needed ‘backstage.’ Some of the movie scenes are set in these subterranean areas. To accommodate the depth of water required, the wooden arena floor was dismantled and the basement flooded with water diverted from a nearby aqueduct into the Colosseum’s own circuit of pipes. Archaeologists who are much better at maths than me have counted these pipes, and using estimates about pipe diameter and rate of flow, have concluded that the basement could be flooded in 4 to 5 hours. The Colosseum has multiple drains, and a completely flooded basement would be empty by the following morning. 

Gladiators were too specialised and too valuable to fight in these battles, which were reserved for ‘expendables.’ However, with a spectacle as awe-inspiring as this one, is it any wonder Ridley Scott bent the rules to get Lucius in there? 

And one last thing, in case it ever comes up on a pub quiz: gladiators did NOT say ‘we/those who are about to die salute you’ (morituri te salutant) which seems to have been said at a single event - a naumachia for the Emperor Claudius. The participants were condemned criminals, and this was their spectacular execution. Romans loved creative executions. The writers telling us about this event suggest that the criminals weren’t obliged to say it, but said it as a kind of plea for a last-minute reprieve - a show of respect and deference to appeal to the Emperor (which failed.) So the line is included in the first film, but should have been put in the second!

The Gladiator movies are a vivid and exhilarating depiction of ancient Rome, or at least an idea of what Rome was like. But, they are first and foremost films that bend the truth to fit the story it wants to tell. Sometimes that’s needed, sometimes it isn’t. Now that you can spot some of these changes, I’ll let you decide.