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