10 Ways Gladiator Life Was Different From The Movies

10

They Didn’t Live Too Long

Bit of a downer way to start, huh? Well, either way, it does make sense. If your entire shtick is fighting to the death for a living, luck’s eventually bound to run out. And according to researchers, luck typically ran out when a gladiator was around 27 years old. 

Live free or die. Gladiators did the latter.

Continue Reading Below

Advertisement

Much like a modern-day MMA fighter, a gladiator would usually fight about two to three times a year, and the odds of survival after so many fights just kept getting lower. On the bright side, though, while Romans could live as long as people today, the average life expectancy of a regular civilian was around 25, so maybe it was better to be a gladiator? 

9

Not All Fights Ended In Death

Hollywood makes it seem like every fight ended in a rolling head, but this wasn’t the case. If a gladiator was defeated but still alive, it was up to the sponsor of the game, a wealthy hotshot, to determine their fate. If the fighter was famous enough or if the crowd seemed to enjoy the fight, then the gladiator would be allowed granted stans missus, which means “sent away standing.”

That’s how we started calling enthusiastic fans “stans.”

Continue Reading Below

Advertisement

This was done for a few reasons. First off, if a sponsor had a popular gladiator killed, the crowd would not be happy, and an unhappy crowd could genuinely ruin a sponsor’s political career. There was a logistical issue too. Training a new gladiator took a lot of time and money, so it was honestly more convenient for everyone involved to just leave the loser alive.

8

A Majority Of Gladiators Were Slaves …

Rome had a lot of slaves. Slaves worked around the homes of the rich Romans and built the architectural marvels that Rome is remembered for today. Some Roman slaves were prisoners of war from the vast territories conquered by Rome. Others were born into slavery from generations of slaves. Some of these slaves, for better or worse, were turned into gladiators. 

And they will have their vengeance, in this life or the next.

Continue Reading Below

Advertisement

This seems like the cruelest fate a person could get, but there’s an argument to be made that if you were a Roman slave, this would be the life to live. Rich Romans staked a lot of their reputation in putting on impressive gladiator shows, which meant that money was invested into gladiators. They had training, a proper diet, and even celebrity status if they were good enough. Because of this, they marked a strange place in the social hierarchy where they were slaves who were in constant danger, but they also had relatively okay lives by Roman slave standards.

7

… But Some Chose To Become Gladiators

Let’s say that you were having a Roman mid-life crisis (which probably occurred at age 18 due to the whole “low life expectancy” thing), or maybe you watched a gladiator fight recently and thought, “I could do that.” Well, put up or shut up, because you could fight in the arena if you wanted! A free Roman could take an oath and become an auctorati, a volunteer gladiator. This was seen as a highly shameful thing to do because taking the oath effectively turned a citizen into a slave. So if that was the case, then why would anyone do it in the first place? 

The chance to hang out with cats?