what annoys me is the amount of sensationalism around gladiators.
The majority of Gladiators/Gladiatrixii (
) were
volunteers. Why? Why not. people volunteer to join the army, people want to become footballers, or racing
car drivers. Gladiators were sort of a combination of the two. If you won, you became wealthy, famous and could have as many girls/boys as you could cope with. If you lost, well, you died. but if you didnt become a gladiator you
had just as much chance of being murdered, being hit by a
chariot, catching some hideous disease etc. At 15 you might be able to join a gladiator group, most likely older. training was around 5-8 years, depending on the class of gladiator and
quality the group tried to produce. The chances of dying were quite small during training, you were isolated form most of the public so
had a decreased chance of catching a disease. for a women, whos avetage life expectancy was 18-18 (after first child born it jumped to 50 or thereabouts), just by doing the training youve already increased your lifespan.
this is for the actual
Gladiators/Gladiatrixii(
), not for the criminals who get sent to kill themselves. When msot countries
still have the death penalty (38 states in the US isnt it?) we can hardly call the
Romans brutal for doing that.
You also hve to remember that after 5-8 years of traiing, Gladiators were avery expensive invetment! They wre not just sent to their deaths in their thousands like popularly believed. Think WWF. If those guys did to each what they pretend to, they wouldnt be able to fight more than a couple of times year. Gladiators were the same, they did not often die, if they did it was by accident and probably pissed the hell out of his/her owner. Before 68AD things were a
bit more strict, but before Neros reign Gladiators wre not used in large numbers anyway.
LordBest.