Gladiatoren

Bloodlust or professional pride. The gladiator has become one of the most popular icons of Roman antiquity, alongside the legionary. He was the star of the first culture of mass entertainment in history. But do the bloodbaths in the arena, cheered on by an unrestrained audience, and the dismal living conditions of the enslaved fighting machines, as we know them from countless films, reflect reality? Marcus Junkelmann has dedicated decades to researching the world of gladiators and has arrived at many new and unexpected findings. The gladiatorial combat was a highly regulated sport under the supervision of referees. Only a minority of duels ended with the death of one of the combatants, as medical care was better than that of most civilians. The fights were staged operatically, accompanied by stimulating music. The weaponry and fighting styles of the various types of gladiators and their combinations into pairs were precisely defined. The author has not only identified them based on historical sources but has also tested the practices through reconstruction and experimentation, documenting them vividly. Many gladiators fought voluntarily and had a strong sense of professional pride. Not a few of them had wives and children. Moreover, the performances were not merely expressions of voyeurism and bloodlust; they fulfilled religious functions in the cult of the dead in early times and later served a heroic state ideology.