“Unveiling the Blood and Glory: The Untold Realities of Life as a Gladiator in Ancient Rome”
Training as a gladiator was harsh. So harsh that there were protocols to ensure the gladiators-in-training did not try to end their own lives. They were chained and lived in rooms devoid of anything they could hang or stab themselves with. As they fought and gained a reputation, they moved up in the hierarchy of gladiators and gained better accommodations. If you have something to gain by living, you don’t necessarily resort to ending your own life to escape a bad situation. Lower gladiators, however, were kept under lock-and-key and their movements were limited.
We do have some examples of gladiators sharing a room with their so-called “wives” such as Spartacus, keeping in mind that legally, slaves could not marry. Gladiators could have children with these women and live as a family, sometimes in private houses if the gladiator was successful enough. Groupies and prostitutes were also allowed into the gladiators’ private quarters depending on their level in the hierarchy. Gladiators could have some sort of domestic life, and often when freed, their families also became freed and paid tribute to their father in posthumous memorials.
The schools also employed experts– also freed gladiators – to train in one or more combat styles, which we’ll get into shortly. They ran drills with the recruits and showed them how to fight according to their style. The experts and trainees practiced with wooden swords approximately twice as heavy as the swords they would ultimately fight with, same for wooden shields, and on wooden posts as tall as a person. They also practiced various offensive and defensive drills known as dictata. These were seen as the basics of their style of combat, and audience members were known to call out the dictata they wanted to see, essentially exhorting the gladiators to fight in a way they found to be exciting. These drills were important to the training of a gladiator, and experienced gladiators could build off of them to have more interesting or efficient fights. The hierarchy within the gladiator class or style was based on the victory record of the fighter. Trainees who had not had their first fights were usually considered the lowest. Noteworthy on this one, many did not survive their first fight. After these beginners came four levels of hierarchy with the first two considered the lowest. The top levels were where being a gladiator got really interesting. This is when you started to be a known commodity and started building a bonafide fanbase. The hierarchy was maintained by those with the same fighting style, with the top level of each style being considered the troupe’s main draws.
