25 Gladiator Facts

1. Gladiators were both professional and amateur fighters in Ancient Rome 2. They fought to entertain “civilized” spectators 3. The first match of Rome took place in 264 BCE, as part of a funeral ritual 4. Marcus and Decimus Junius Brutus hosted the first contest with three pairs of slaves serving as Gladiators in the Forum Boarium, in honor of their father who was deceased at the time 5. Matches took place in Amphitheatres and were held after animal fights

and public executions 6. The “Munerator” was the person who hosted the fights and was honored with the official signs of a magistrate 7. People used criminals and slaves as Gladiators 8. If slaves/criminals were selected to fight, they had no choice, but to obey the rules 9. By the time of the end of the republic, about 50% of all gladiators were volunteers 10. Volunteers would spare the life of a slave and take his place in a match 11. Volunteers were known as Auctorati 12. Auctorati had to take (say)the gladiators oath, saying that the Auctorati had to be treated like a slave (not outside of the match) 13. Gladiators were trained in special schools to learn the basics of fighting 14. Most Gladiators would not fight more than 2 or 3 times per year 15. Gladiator contests were first known to be illegal by Constantine in 325 AD, but no one paid attention to that rule

16. Emperor Honorius tried to put a stop to it, because the gladiators are wasting their lives dying in fights, when they could be used for Rome’s army 17. The largest contest of gladiators was given by the emperor Trajanas part of a victory celebration in 107 AD in Dacia and included 5000 pairs of Gladiators 18. Awful violence took place in the arenas with the use of sword, arrow, trident, tooth, and claw 19. As time went on Gladiators started to fight beasts 20.Even for executions in Rome the no longer decapitated people, they let ferocious beasts kill them 21. Duels between only two gladiators took place in the afternoon 22.Duels between 3- 900 gladiators took place in usually morning, noon, and sometimes afternoon 23.fighting Beasts made matches a lot more exciting and complicated 24. Even when people were executed people went crazy with applaud 25.Also if someone was wanted, you could take the money from the reward and put the wanted criminal in a gladiator match