GLADIATORS This engraving reproduces the famous painting Pollice Verso by Jean-Léon Gérôme in which a gladiator looks to the crowd for the fate of his opponent 10
INTRODUCTION evidence of this gleeful reaction many his torians agree that the era of the gladiator games in Rome was one of the bloodiest most troubling in human history This book will describe the lives of the gladi ators and what they endured to compete in these games in which winning meant everything 11
12 CHAPTER 1 WHO WERE THE GLADIATORS The gladiator games were costly and not just in terms of human lives They were grand affairs massive festivals that were intended to entertain the citizens of Rome and the nearby towns They could only have been put on by an empire that was very wealthy and the Roman Empire was certainly one of the wealthiest in history ENTERTAINING AN EMPIRE The Romans began building their empire more than two thou sand years ago and at its greatest point it included all of Eu rope even Great Britain and stretched across North Africa and into parts of Asia The Romans conquered all of these lands be cause they had a powerful and efficient army Rome produced the finest deadliest weapons and its massive army was big enough to protect the borders stop rebellions and maintain order among the many territories that became part of this vast empire All territories annexed to the empire were heavily controlled by Rome and paid taxes in either gold or other resources Egypt for example had abundant amounts of grain which it paid regularly to the empire That money flowed into the capital city Rome located in mod ern-day Italy had a population of approximately one million people
13 This map illustrates the Roman Empire at its peak when it reached from the Iberian Peninsula in the west to most of the Middle East who demanded regular entertainment The city leaders organized many events for the populace including the gladiator games The first known gladiatorial combat took place in 264 BCE in which three pairs of gladiators fought each other Julius Caesar once hosted a competition in which 320 pairs of gladiators battled one another The games became so popular in fact that most large cities across the empire eventually built their own arenas to host their own gladiator competitions PRISONERS FOR SPORT Gladiators took their name from one of the weapons they commonly
