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Even though it’s at least 1,500 years since the last Roman gladiators fought, thanks to TV and movies such as Spartacus (1960) and Gladiator (2000), audiences remain fascinated with them and the brutal spectacles they took part in.

But these fictional depictions of gladiatorial combat sometimes take a few liberties with the truth. Here are six common misconceptions about gladiators we get from films and TV.

1. Gladiators weren’t all men

Judging by movies like Gladiator and Spartacus, as well as TV shows such as Those About To Die (2024), being a gladiator was an all-male pursuit; however, there is some evidence that women did engage in gladiatorial combat, if rarely.

Roman historian Suetonius records that the emperor Domitian made female gladiators fight at night and by torchlight, while poet Juvenal describes women who decide to fight in unflattering terms. In 200 AD, the Emperor Septimius Severus banned women from gladiatorial games, which suggests the practice did exist, although it may not have been widespread.

And there is some archaeological evidence for female gladiators too. A marble relief discovered in Halicarnassus, Turkey, dating from the 1st or 2nd Century, shows two female gladiators facing each other. The relief has been interpreted as marking the women’s release into freedom.

2. Gladiators didn’t often fight to the death

Going by what’s shown on screen, you’d think that almost all gladiatorial contests ended with the bloody death of one of the warriors.

While the contests were certainly gory, in fact relatively few fights ended up with a fatality. In most cases, one of the gladiators would finally submit (by raising his forefinger) and the fight would be over. A fight in which defeat meant automatic death for the loser was known as sine missio, which translates as 'without mercy'.

Owned and trained by a lanista - who was the head of a gladiatorial school, a ludus - gladiators needed to be fed three times a day, and have their injuries tended to. Given the cost of training and housing a gladiator, their owners weren't keen on one or more of their fighters being killed in every contest.

3. Gladiators weren’t always enslaved

Hollywood’s most famous movies about gladiators are undoubtedly Spartacus and Gladiator, and in both films the leading characters were enslaved men. This helped lead to the misconception that all gladiators were enslaved people.

That was true for the majority of them, but sometimes others fought as gladiators too. For example, some were criminals or prisoners taken in wars who were forced to fight in gladiatorial contests. Sometimes, even free-born Roman citizens who were down on their luck embarked on a career as a gladiator.

But it was a frowned-upon role. Gladiators were incredibly popular, sort of like the rock stars of their day, but they were still considered second-class citizens.

4. Thumbs up, thumbs down is… complicated

In many movies and TV shows about gladiators, including Ridley Scott’s smash-hit film, we often seen the crowd, or an important person, decide the fate of a submitting warrior by giving a thumbs up or a thumbs down. The gesture indicated the gladiator should, respectively, be spared or condemned to death.

In reality we don’t really know what thumbs up and down meant to Romans, if or how it was used.

There is evidence that Romans used their thumbs to make signals, but it might have been quite different to how we do so in the modern day: “Sparing is pressing the thumb to the top of the fist and death is a thumbs-up. In other words, it’s the opposite of what we think,” argued Anthony Corbeill, a professor of Latin at the University of Virginia, in a 2017 interview with Time.

The TV series Those About To Die (pictured above) might be a rare instance of the film-makers getting this right.

5. Gladiators didn’t fight animals

In one of the most iconic scenes from Ridley Scott’s Gladiator, Maximus (Russell Crowe) finds himself facing off against a tiger. It’s a thrilling moment, but not one that any spectator at a real gladiatorial spectacle would ever have been likely to see.

Gladiators only fought each other. Often shows would feature wild animals - including lions, tigers, bears, leopards, elephants, crocodiles, and even giraffes - fighting each other. And there were specialised warriors, called venatores, who fought wild animals. They appeared often on horseback armed with just a spear or a bow and arrow. The idea was to simulate a (very unfair) hunt.

These wild animal 'hunts’, or venationes in Latin, would usually happen in the morning, while gladiatorial combat happened in the afternoon. And they could be bloody spectacles. The Emperor Trajan held 120 days of games in which 11,000 animals are supposed estimated to have been killed.

6. A day at the arena wasn’t just about the gladiator fights

Movies and TV shows featuring gladiators understandably concentrate on the sight of two warriors fighting each other. But for a spectator, a day at the arena was much more than that, as there was a whole day of varied entertainment and events.

If the contests were being held for official or state reasons, particularly in Rome's Circus Maximus, the day might start with a parade, the pompa circensis. Then would come the venationes, in which wild animals would be showcased, or pitted against each other and against specialised animal fighters. The idea was to show the vast reach of the Roman Empire by displaying the variety of animals that could be found in it.

In the middle of the day were the executions of criminals, the ludi meridiani. They were cruel and bloody, with different methods of execution.

Only after all that did the gladiators enter the arena for the actual combat in the afternoon. Their sessions were known as munera and represented the real highlight of the day for Roman audiences.

This article was published in November 2024