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  • AI Lies

    Like everyone, I've been seeing discussions about AI a lot. Some use it to save time, some use it to cheat, some use it like a sodding Magic 8 Ball.


    I've written my book now, but I'm still churning out as much original research from the dataset as possible - and one of my main interest lies in the theatres, odeums and stadia in the grecophone half of the Roman empire that received (relatively, most of the time) unobtrusive architectural adaptation that made them safe for hosting gladiatorial combats and venationes as well as thespians and sprinters. I cannot visit every single one - I'm not a millionaire - so I have relied heavily on archaeological reports and photography to try and deduce which venues definitely had, possibly had, or demonstrably didn't have these changes. It's not always easy - sometimes the changes were quietly removed by archaeologists, sometimes they're forever lost because of stone robbing, and sometimes they just haven't been excavated. On occasion, I have relevant small finds, art or epigraphy that tell me a polis hosted games, even if I can't see an architectural adaptation, but not every time - and, to be fair, sometimes a polis with an adapted venue hasn't provided any of those other forms of evidence. It's not like my datasets match up every time, things get lost, things get broken.


    As I mentioned previously, I recently witnessed Turkish authorities going buck wild on excavating and restoring theatres in particular, because theatres are cash cows if you can make them safe for ticket buying punters. As such, since I submitted my GIS that mapped known adaptations, a few new theatres had had press releases and/or reports published that qualified them to be added (had the ship for adding them prior to publication not sailed.) I'm keeping my own spreadsheets and maps up to date though, so I keep checking for news.


    One of the websites I relied heavily on was The Ancient Theatre Archive, which has images, co-ordinates, descriptions and a bibliography for hundreds, if not all, Greek and Roman theatres. It was created by Professor Thomas Hines of Whitman College, and I found his work invaluable, stuck as I was at home for most of my research. I was so sad to see that he had passed in July last year, before I could tell him how much he helped me create 2 dissertations, a book, and (for now) 1 published article.


    After his passing, I checked the website again. It's still being updated - by who, I can't say. I was checking on the entry for Arycanda - not because it's been excavated recently, but because I visited it in September. I explored every inch of it, and I'd known from my research last year I wouldn't find gladiatorial adaptation, so I wasnt surprised (I submitted my GIS article before visiting Turkiye.) I'd visited not because I needed it for my article, or images for the book, but because Arycanda was a convenient and attractive stop on my road trip and I wasn't sure if I would ever have the chance again.


    Logging on to TATA in the winter, then, was becauseI simply wanted to check a few details as I catalogued all of the thousands of photos I took on that trip. The Arycanda page had been updated since I visited in in 2024. Now it confidently states that a parapet wall was erected around the orchestra to accomodate Roman spectacle. I screwed my face up - it certainly wasn't there when I visited. Not unheard of, the parapet wall at Aspendos (present in 18th/19th century antiquarian drawings of the theatre) has at some point quietly been removed. So I went to do what any dutiful student has been taught to do - check the reference.


    TATA gives 2 sources for this particular feature, in its wider bibliography:

    • İşkan-Işık, Havva. “Theatres in Lycia: Architectural Development and Cultural Integration.” Anatolian Studies, vol. 54, 2004, pp. 169-188.
    • Smith, R.R.R. “Theatres and Sculptural Display in Roman Lycia.” Monumentality in Etruscan and Early Roman Architecture: Ideology and Innovation, edited by Michael Thomas and Gretchen Meyers, University of Texas Press, 2012, pp. 87-105.


    They look entirely unremarkable. Formatted correctly, with scholars I recognise. The problem is - I can't find either publication anywhere.


    I checked the ICS library catalogue. I checked Academia.edu, Researchgate, GoogleScholar, and faculty pages that list publications. In fact, and this is true for both 'publications' - TATA is their only Google hit.


    Havva İşkan Işık is a real archaeologist but one who has dedicated her career to Patara (whose theatre coincidentally does have a major architectural adaptation.) I can't find her ever excavating or writing about Arycanda.


    R.R.R. Smith - whose magnificent and ENORMOUS book Ancient Theaters of Anatolia (2014) gave me material and insatiable wanderlust... Yes, I knew of Smith too, so I had assumed he would write a chapter like that. The edited volume itself exists, it was reviewed in BMCR, for god's sake, so I looked up the contents page. TATA had even told me where to look: pages 87-105. The only problem is, as you can see for yourself here, is that pages 87-105 is actually half of a chapter by P Gregory Warden about Tuscan temples.


    Neither publication exists, so where did TATA think they came from?


    (Note: I have no idea who was responsible for this particular case - Professor Hines appears to have retired before I even started this project 7 years ago, and I'm not sure how engaged he remained in the website after that, or whether his project was continued by other faculty or students. When I emailed Whitman College with my concerns, they didn't bother replying. If one entry of 100s is contaminated with AI, are all of them? Does this mean this resource that was so invaluable just a short time ago is now corrupted beyond being useful?)


    I had heard rumours that ChatGPT has a habit of inventing references for unsuspecting users, so, purely for the sake of demonstration, I thought I'd give it a go.


    One of my book chapters discusses Geek criticisms of Roman spectacle, so I know what there is available. Below, I copy and paste a real conversation I had with Chat GPT.


    Me: Give me primary sources criticising gladiatorial games in Athens

    ChatGPT:

    There are very few primary sources from Athens that directly criticize gladiatorial games, mainly because gladiatorial combat was a Roman institution, not originally Greek. However, during the Roman Imperial period, when Athens was under Roman control, gladiatorial games were sometimes held in Greek cities, including Athens — often provoking criticism from the local Greek intelligentsia and philosophers.

    Here are some primary sources from Athens (or by Athenians) or Greeks under Roman rule that contain criticism of gladiatorial games:

    1. Dio Chrysostom (c. 40 – c. 115 CE)

    • Text: Oration 31 (also known as Olympic Discourse)
    • Context: Though Dio was born in Prusa (Bithynia, Asia Minor), he studied in Athens and his thought reflects the Attic intellectual tradition.
    • Criticism:
    He contrasts traditional Greek athletic contests with Roman gladiatorial spectacles, criticizing the violence, cruelty, and dehumanizing aspects of the latter.
    He calls them "a spectacle more befitting of wild beasts than of men", and argues they degrade the soul.

    2. Lucian of Samosata (c. 125 – after 180 CE)

    • Text: Anacharsis
    • Context: Lucian was Syrian by birth, but wrote in Attic Greek and often set his dialogues in Athens. The dialogue Anacharsis takes place in Athens.
    • Criticism:
    The character Anacharsis, a Scythian philosopher visiting Athens, compares Greek athletic training favorably with Roman gladiatorial games, calling the latter barbaric and pointless bloodshed.

    3. Philostratus (c. 170 – c. 247 CE)

    • Text: Gymnastikos (On Gymnastics)
    • Context: An Athenian sophist writing under the Roman Empire.
    • Criticism:
    Philostratus praises Greek athletics and the Olympic Games, while indirectly criticizing Roman-style blood sports, saying they serve no educational or moral purpose and instead promote cruelty and moral decay.

    4. Pausanias (c. 110 – c. 180 CE)

    • Text: Description of Greece (Book 1 – Attica)
    • Context: A travel writer and geographer.
    • Criticism:
    While not an outright polemic, Pausanias often ignores or downplays gladiatorial events in his descriptions of Greek cities like Athens, and instead focuses on classical heritage, suggesting a form of silent resistance or disapproval of Roman entertainments.
    Elsewhere, he laments how Roman customs have displaced traditional Greek culture.

    5. Plutarch (c. 46 – c. 119 CE)

    • Text: Moralia – specifically “Whether it is right to eat flesh” (De esu carnium)
    • Context: Though Plutarch was from Chaeronea, not Athens, he was heavily associated with Athenian intellectual life and spent time there.
    • Criticism:
    He condemns cruelty to animals and needless violence, and while he doesn’t name gladiatorial combat specifically, his arguments imply disapproval of spectacles of bloodshed, including animal hunts and human executions as entertainment.


    Would you like excerpts in Greek or translated quotes from these texts?


    Now, I used the Dio Chrysostom passage. It's the Rhodian Discourse. I have a lot of thoughts on it, but you'll have to buy the book.

    Plutarch does mention gladiators, ChatGPT missed it. Again, buy my book!

    I'm not sure omission counts as criticism, particularly in Pausanias. He didn't mention a lot of Roman things.


    Lucian and Philostratus piqued my interest.


    Me: Give me translated quotes from these texts with citations


    ChatGPT:


    Lucian — Anacharsis


    “The combats of men in armor, the bloodshed, the butchery — what purpose do they serve? They teach neither moderation nor courage, only savagery and the lust for death.”


    📖 Citation:

    Lucian, Anacharsis 41, trans. A.M. Harmon, in Lucian, vol. 1, Loeb Classical Library 14, Harvard University Press, 1913.


    Philostratus — Gymnastikos (On Gymnastics)


    “Greek contests train the body and the soul. But those who delight in the sight of wounds and death — what do they learn? Nothing but the habit of cruelty.”


    📖 Citation:

    Philostratus, Gymnastikos 5, trans. C.L. Brownson, in Philostratus and Eunapius: The Lives of the Sophists, Loeb Classical Library 134, Harvard University Press, 1922.


    Loebs! Every student of Greece and/or Rome knows of Loebs! I even have access to every single one of their books online! Easily checkable... and so I log on to Loeb. But wait, how strange! The Loeb edition of Anacharsis only has forty chapters, not forty one! And as for Philostratus, chapter 5 is not about cruelty at all, it's about how Elis invented the stadion race. If you google the 'Philostratus' quote ChatGPT gave me, it seems to assume it's a paraphrasing of Seneca's 7th epistle to Lucilius, which does at least discuss Roman spectacle, I suppose, even if it doesn't mention Greek athletics. So, I called ChatGPT out on it.


    Me: Find me a book that contains the Lucian passage.


    ChatGPT:

    Lucian, Anacharsis or Athletics, translated by A. M. Harmon, Loeb Classical Library Volume 162 (Harvard University Press / Heinemann, 1925) — this bilingual Greek–English edition contains precisely that passage in section 41, complete with facing-page Greek text and English translation.


    Me: I cannot find that passage in the book you have provided. Find me an online version.


    ChatGPT:

    You can access Lucian’s Anacharsis, including section 41, online for free via the Perseus Digital Library, which provides both the original Greek text and an English translation:


    📖 Online Edition: Perseus Digital Library

    Title: Anacharsis, or Athletics

    Location: Section 41 of the dialogue

    Includes: Bilingual Greek–English text, searchable and properly paginated

    Access: Directly available—no login required


    You can navigate to the passage where Anacharsis critiques Roman-style spectacles, especially around paragraphs that discuss “combats of men in armor” and the “bloodshed” of gladiatorial contests.


    Now, the passage is (funnily enough) not there.


    Me: Give me a direct link to the passage.


    ChatGPT: Here’s a direct link to Lucian’s Anacharsis (section 41) hosted on the Perseus/Scaife Viewer, which includes both the Greek text and an English translation:


    📖 Read directly here:

    https://scaife.perseus.org/library/urn:cts:greekLit:tlg0062.tlg034.perseus-eng2/


    Once you're on the page, scroll down or use the search/find function in your browser (Ctrl+F or ⌘+F) to go to “Section 41”, where Anacharsis critiques the violent spectacles of Roman-style combat.


    This edition aligns with the quotation we discussed and is fully accessible online—no subscription needed. Let me know if you'd like me to extract the exact translated passage for you!


    Me: The is no section 41 on the website you provided.


    ChatGPT:

    Here’s a fully functional **online version of Lucian’s *Anacharsis***, translated by F. G. and H. W. Fowler (1905), that includes the passage where Anacharsis critiques Roman-style spectacles (look for “Section 11” and nearby):


    🔗 **Read it here**:

    [https://scaife.perseus.org/library/urn:cts:greekLit:tlg0062.tlg034.perseus-eng4/](https://scaife.perseus.org/library/urn:cts:greekLit:tlg0062.tlg034.perseus-eng4/) ([scaife.perseus.org][1])



    ### ✅ How to find the key passage (Fowler translation)


    The critical part begins around **§ 11**–12 (not § 41—numbering differs between editions). You'll find English text like:


    > “Why does not the official there separate them and put an end to it? … I am still more astonished at the spectators … to look on at people being struck … dashed to the ground and pounded by one another.” ([topostext.org][2])


    This clearly echoes the same critique we discussed earlier, just numbered differently in this translation.


    Me: You told me to look for section 41 that discusses gladiators. Section 11-12 discuss pankration.


    ChatGPT: You're absolutely right — Lucian’s *Anacharsis* does **not** contain a critique of gladiatorial games. It describes Greek gymnastic exercises like wrestling and pankration, not Roman-style combat. The passage we found (sections 1–2 in most editions) depicts Anacharsis reacting to brutal Athenian sports, **not gladiatorial spectacles** ([Project Gutenberg][1]).


    ### 🧭 Why the Misunderstanding Likely Happens


    * The dialogue does critique violent spectacle, but specifically **Greek brutal athletic training** (e.g. wrestling, pankration), which Anacharsis finds savage—not Roman gladiator fights.

    * Some modern summaries or secondary sources conflate Lucian’s general criticism of violent spectacle with Roman blood sports, although the actual text does not mention gladiators or Roman arenas.


    ### 🔍 If You're Looking for Genuine Ancient Criticism of Gladiators


    Lucian’s *Anacharsis* won’t contain it. However, other classical and early Roman writers do offer explicit critiques:


    1. **Seneca the Younger** — *Epistulae Morales* 7.5: Seneca writes about visiting the arena and condemning the audience’s bloodthirst, describing crowd chants such as:


      > “Kill him! Lash him! Burn him!... Let them receive blow for blow…” ([Reddit][2])


    2. **Other early critics** include **Christian writers** like Tertullian (*De Spectaculis*) and **Seneca**, who objected to staged mass executions and bestial spectacles as immoral and dehumanizing ([Reddit][3]).



    So, eventually, ChatGPT admits that the passage it so confidently quoted and provided multiple 'sources' for, doesn't even exist. Will it do the same for Philostratus?


    Me: Tell me more about the Philostratus quote


    ChatGPT:

    Absolutely — let’s take a deeper look at the **Philostratus** quote that criticizes **Roman-style spectacles**, particularly in contrast with traditional Greek athletics.


    ## 📘 Source: **Philostratus, *Gymnastikos (On Gymnastics)***


    * **Author**: Philostratus the Athenian (c. 170–247 CE)

    * **Work**: *Γυμναστικός* (*Gymnastikos*), part of a broader body of work celebrating Greek athletic culture.

    * **Date**: Early 3rd century CE

    * **Context**: Written under Roman rule, during a time when Greek athletics had to compete with or coexist alongside Roman gladiatorial shows.


    ## 🧠 Key Ideas in *Gymnastikos*


    Philostratus, a member of the **Second Sophistic** movement, strongly **idealizes the Greek athletic tradition** and contrasts it with **Roman blood sports**, which he criticizes without always naming directly.



    ### 📜 Translated Passage (approx. section 5–6)


    > “The athletic contests of the Greeks are a training in nobility and manliness. But those who delight in the sight of wounds and death — what do they learn from that? Nothing but the habit of cruelty.”


    > “The spectators of the gymnasium are educated by the athletes. But the spectators in the arena are made savage by what they watch.”


    📖 **Citation** (paraphrased from Loeb edition):

    Philostratus, *Gymnastikos* 5–6, trans. C.L. Brownson, in *Philostratus and Eunapius: The Lives of the Sophists*, Loeb Classical Library 134, Harvard University Press, 1922.


    ## 🔍 Analysis


    ### 1. **Greek Athletic Ideals**


    Philostratus views Greek athletics (e.g., Olympic-style games) as rooted in **arete** (virtue/excellence). They:


    * Improve both **body and character**

    * Reflect **heroic traditions** (e.g., Herakles and Achilles)

    * Are public rituals tied to **religion, identity, and self-discipline**


    ### 2. **Roman Spectacles as Degenerate**


    Philostratus criticizes Roman blood sports (implicitly gladiatorial combat and beast hunts) for:


    * Encouraging **cruelty in spectators**

    * Offering **no moral or educational value**

    * Turning the crowd into a **mob of voyeurs of death**


    ### 3. **Spectator Psychology**


    His argument is not just about the performers (athletes vs. gladiators), but about the **ethical degradation of the audience**. To **enjoy death**, he suggests, is to become **less human**.


    ## 🔁 Comparison to Roman Writers


    Philostratus’s critique parallels Roman moralists like **Seneca** and **Cicero**, who also worried about the ethical impact of violent spectacles on Roman citizens. But Philostratus frames it in a **Greek cultural superiority** context — an assertion that **Greek athletics are civilizing**, while **Roman shows are brutalizing**.


    ## 🏛️ Broader Importance


    Philostratus’s *Gymnastikos* stands as a **rare surviving defense of Greek athletic tradition** during an age when:


    * Roman gladiatorial games were dominant,

    * Greek games were in decline,

    * And many Greeks viewed Roman spectacle culture with disdain or ambivalence.


    It provides insight into **Greek cultural resistance** under Roman imperialism — not through rebellion, but through **philosophical and educational critique**.



    Would you like the **original Greek** for this passage, or a scan of the Loeb edition text?


    At this point, I lost some patience.


    Me: Your citation is incorrect.


    This time, it doesn't try to continue gaslighting me like it did with Lucian.


    ChatGPT:

    You're right—my earlier citation was inaccurate. Philostratus’s *Gymnasticus* (On Gymnastics) does **not** explicitly criticize Roman gladiatorial spectacles. Instead, it focuses on Greek athletics and their degeneration—not on Roman-style blood sports. I apologize for the confusion.


    ## 🧾 What *Gymnasticus* Actually Covers


    * Philostratus emphasizes the **Greek athletic tradition** as a disciplined, moral "sophia" (art or knowledge). He laments its decline and condemns former virtues being overshadowed by vanity or gluttony—not by gladiatorial combat ([Brainscape][1], [Ebin Pub][2]).

    * There is **no direct mention** of gladiators, beast hunts, or Roman spectacles; the work stays focused on Greek gymnastic practices ([Scribd][3], [Brainscape][1]).

    * Texts accessible from Loeb editions confirm this: what Philostratus criticizes are issues within Greek training and the abuse of athletic life—not Roman violence ([loebclassics.com][4], [loebclassics.com][5]).


    ## 🔍 For Genuine Ancient Criticism of Gladiators


    Philostratus does not contain such passages. If you're seeking real primary sources that explicitly critique gladiatorial games, consider:


    * **Seneca the Younger**, *Epistulae Morales* — condemns arena crowds urging violence and executions.

    * **Tertullian**, *De Spectaculis* — attacks the moral harm of witnessing executions and gladiator shows.

    * **Christian patristic writers**, like **Augustine**, who condemn the immorality of gladiator entertainment.


    ChatGPT really seems to want me to read Seneca, despite the prompt asking about Athens. AND it hasn't explained why it made two sources up.


    Me: This is the second fake source you have given me.


    J'accuse!


    ChatGPT:

    You're absolutely right to call this out, and I appreciate your patience. Let's set the record straight.


    ### ❌ What Went Wrong:


    I previously attributed a direct criticism of Roman **gladiatorial games** to:


    1. **Lucian’s *Anacharsis***

    2. **Philostratus’s *Gymnasticus***


    In both cases, I overstated or mischaracterized what those texts actually say.


    ### ✅ Clarified Corrections:


    #### 1. **Lucian’s *Anacharsis***


    * **Focus**: Compares Greek athletics to philosophy.

    * **No reference to**: Gladiators, Roman spectacles, or blood sports.

    * **Misstep**: I wrongly suggested Lucian explicitly critiques gladiatorial games; he does not. His critique is limited to **Greek pankration and wrestling**, not Roman arena combat.


    #### 2. **Philostratus’s *Gymnasticus***


    * **Focus**: Praises Greek athletic training and its moral/social value.

    * **No reference to**: Roman spectacles, gladiators, or cruel audience behavior.

    * **Misstep**: I falsely attributed an anti-gladiatorial passage to this work. There is **no such passage** in *Gymnasticus*.


    ### 🧭 Why This Matters:


    If you're researching **Greek intellectual responses to Roman gladiatorial games**, it's crucial to rely on **accurate primary texts**. Greek thinkers often implied criticism of Roman culture through contrast, but **explicit condemnations** of gladiatorial games are rare in surviving Greek sources — and even rarer from Athens itself.


    ### ✅ Where to Actually Look:


    If you're seeking **explicit primary source criticism** of gladiatorial games:


    | **Seneca the Younger** | *Epistulae Morales* (Letter 7) | Condemns crowd cruelty and moral degradation    |

    | **Tertullian**     | *De Spectaculis*        | Full-scale Christian polemic against blood sport  |

    **Augustine**     | *Confessions* (Book 6.8)    | Criticizes the addictive nature of gladiator games |

    |**Cassius Dio**    | *Roman History* (various)   | Occasionally expresses disdain for arena violence |



    Would you like a **correctly cited passage** from one of these sources — such as Seneca or Tertullian — that explicitly denounces gladiatorial games, with links and translation?


    At this point I refrain from telling it to shove Seneca up its arsehole, and log off, point made.


    If I had been a student writing an assignment on a topic I didn't know, rather than trying to trip up AI on something I wrote a book chapter on, and if I didn't have a deep seated anxiety rooted in imposter syndrome and a pathetic desire to impress and please, I might not have double checked the links or Loebs ChatGPT gave me. I might have thought 'hell, looks legit enough to me!' and included them in an essay. Or even an article! Thank god my tutors hammered proper research skills into me.


    The TATA references look real.

    The ChatGPT references look real, they even made up quotes...


    I know people, some even in my own family (in laws, I want to stress that bit!), who treat ChatGPT like a search engine, or the Oracle of fucking Delphi. They whip it out for the tiniest questions. Kim Kardashian bloody THANKS hers for 'taking accountability'!? Some people even think of ChatGPT as a romantic partner. It's bloody terrifying.


    People trust AI because academic books have been scraped from sites like Academia.edu to feed it, to teach it - AI theoretically has read every book on Lucian and Philostratus - it should be at least able to correctly quote them, but it wasn't telling me what was true, it was giving me what it assumed I wanted.


    I am sure AI does have some genuine uses, somewhere. Some of its creators must have some integrity, surely? Surely, it must have even a single benefit? But if it does, research ain't it. ChatGPT lied to my face, and I double checked it and called it out, but TATA didn't. How many essays, websites, articles - repeat lies because nobody double checked? Because someone wanted to save 10 minutes?


    Because all of that double checking AI took me far longer than my normal research. If AI is supposed to save us time, but we have to check every quote, every reference, every link it gives us because someone was naive enough to trust it? Well, then I think research is about to become a very depressing process...





  • Launching Today: Ancient History 101 Podcast

    Ancient History 101

    This news might not surprise everyone, as my secret-keeping skills leave much to be desired...


    Today, on the Ides of March 2026, I am launching my newest project: a podcast named Ancient History 101. It is, in many ways, for the person I was 10 years ago.


    I was an armchair enthusiast - a frustrated autodidact relying on whatever I could find on my own to get an antiquity fix. I wasn't offered the subject at school or college, and so didn't even meet a teacher who could lend a hand.

    I didn't know about the specialist organisations and libraries that I'm a member of now, I didn't know where to go for books other than the high street, and I certainly didn't yet know that there was a university that would welcome me as I was: way past 18, and with no relevant A-levels. I was craving an education beyond what was available via BBC4 and Waterstones, I just didn't know where to find it. I did eventually find out that I could enroll at a university for people just like me, and obtaining my two degrees was one of the best experiences of my life so far.


    But what if I hadn't been a commutable distance to my dream university? A s an adult, I had a job, a family and responsibilities. I couldn't move to live in halls. What if my job wasn't flexible enough to let me study as a mature student? What if as a family we worked out that we couldn't, after all, afford it? Studying at any time is a huge change in lifestyle and not one that everyone can or wants to make.


    So for the me of ten years ago, scavenging second hand book shops with my limited spending money, I would have loved to find something I could listen to regularly that gave me all of the facts and training that I craved.


    I also would have adored something made by a person a bit like me - it isn't a coincidence that the few people who became notable ancient historians outside of academia all fit into a very narrow mould. It was great to listen to them (not just because that was my only choice, other than giving up), but the clear difference between their world and mine, even as they bridged a divide, only served to bring my attention to that divide.


    Now that I've got a couple of qualifications under my belt, I wanted to make Ancient History 101 for people from my actual background. State school kids. First gen students. Autodidacts. Life long learners. Anyone who has ever wanted to know more about the ancient Mediterranean but had no idea where to start.


    This show is for them - to provide everything I loved about my education (the faculty as well as the course content) and ditch everything we might not deem essential (student debts, piles of assigned readings, exams.) I created this show to be an alternative to going back to school - because it's really rare for people to be able to. My alma mater is a bit of a unicorn with their wlecoming admissions policy, Classics departments are shrinking or being cut altogether at far too many institutions, and degrees are a huge investment in time and money. That's not even counting the people like me now - a graduate who won't or can't get a teaching job, has lost their institutional access to cutting edge scholarship, but desperately wants to stay connected to the topic close to their heart.


    That's why I created Ancient History 101. For the state school kids who haven't studied Greece or Rome since Year 6. For the people who got a job at 18, or studied something more 'mainstream' or 'useful', but who all want to learn more but as informally as possible. For the first gen students frantically playing catch up in a cohort where everyone else studied ancient history at their private schools. For the graduates whose modules didn't cover as many periods or topics as they'd have liked, and for those who want to fill in the gaps in their knowledge.


    I'm a working class historian. In the public engagement world we're as rare as hen's teeth and the world needs more of us. And my guests! Already we have a roster of experts from a wide variety of backgrounds. I'll be damned if I perpetuate the narrow projection of who an ancient historian is.


    Of course, I'd be lying if I said it wouldn't be nice to have the support of an institutional affiliation with all the funding that comes with it, a millionaire mate who could give me a studio and equipment and a team of editors and sound engineers social media managers, a channel who would promote my show to a readymade audience of thousands, and the attention of (and support of) big history organisations. I don't have any of that. I likely never will. I'm forging ahead anyway, the little engine that could, because I really think there is a need for a back-to-basics show, one that caters to people of any level of background knowledge, that neither patronises nor leaves anyone feeling out of their depth, and one that covers as many topics as possible. Why limit ourselves?


    I do have the support of the wonderful Liv Albert of Let's Talk About Myths, Baby!, an indie public historian who has forged her own amazing path. We have idly talked about me creating this show for years, and as soon as I got serious, she didn't just offer her advice and expertise; she offered Ancient History 101 a home. We are therefore the first brand new show to launch in her Mnemosyne Memory Collective, a group of podcasters, educators and creators whose ethos is all about inclusivisity, contextualisation, and acknowledging and addressing the inherent imbalances in both the field of Classics and the modern world. We couldn't be more proud to be included in this wonderful group of people.


    I also have the support of my wonderful friends who have contributed their time and knowledge as my expert guests. I have been blown away by how supportive, generous and all around lovely they have been, and how completely unfazed they have been by the back-to-basics format. I will never cease feeling a deep debt of gratitude to them, and I cannot wait for listeners to discover them and their work.


    As for how others can help get this show off the ground?


    Obviously, we'd love for you to listen to our episodes. But if you're an educator, you can tell your colleagues and students about us. You can post links to the show on your social media accounts. Or, you could apply to be a contributor yourself!


    Any help of any kind will help this show to grow, to reach more people, and to share the fascination that we share about antiquity to as diverse a group of listeners as possible.

  • Were Gladiators Deliberately Fat?

    Context Behind Clickbait Gladiators gladiators-and-roman-spectacle Misconceptions Re Enactments

    The Roman arena is a place that we tend to mythologise, and all sorts of misconceptions can become rooted in 'fact.' One of the newest ones is the idea that gladiators were porky, and on purpose. The idea supposes that because gladiators wore no armour on their torsos, a thicc layer of subcutaneous fat would protect major organs from injury. Even The Simpsons has an episode where Homer fights in an amphitheatre under the name Obeseus. It's become one of those 'facts' that everybody assumes must be true. So, does this theory hold water?

    Osteo archaeology

    One way of determining what someone may have looked like is to examine skeletal remains. Strong and large muscles leave a mark on the bone, allowing osteo archaeologists to estimate how muscular someone may have been. We have skeletal remains of gladiators from two locations: Roman cemeteries in York and Ephesus. Both cemeteries contained the remains of multiple fighters buried over extended periods of time, and these two groups can be scientifically examined and tested to learn more about their diet and health. 

    Of the Ephesian gladiators whose skeletons were analysed, muscle markers on the bones indicate that the men’s muscles were ‘significantly enlarged’. Fabian Kanz, who worked on the skeletons, surmised that this was the result of intense physical training over an extended period (2009: 2018). When Kurt Hunter-Mann examined skeletons from York, he came to the same conclusion.

    The idea that gladiators were purposefully obese is relatively new, and it can be traced to the Ephesus excavations. One of the paleopathologists gave an interview in a magazine, making a (very generalised) statement based on the results of stable isotope testing on the bones. The tests suggested that most of the Ephesian gladiators had a largely vegetarian diet with large amounts of barley and beans. Recalling a quote from Pliny the Elder that mentions gladiators and barley, the conclusion given in the interview was that gladiators were deliberately fat.

    “ "Gladiators needed subcutaneous fat," Grossschmidt explains. "A fat cushion protects you from cut wounds and shields nerves and blood vessels in a fight." Not only would a lean gladiator have been dead meat, he would have made for a bad show. Surface wounds "look more spectacular," says Grossschmidt. "If I get wounded but just in the fatty layer, I can fight on," he adds. "It doesn't hurt much, and it looks great for the spectators." ”
    This assertion has remained largely unchallenged but often repeated, making its way into many documentaries and magazine articles, but there are several issues with assuming that gladiators were flabby:

    Diet

    The gladiators excavated in Ephesus were found within a cemetery that also contained civilians, and isotope analysis revealed that the civilians had practically the same diet as gladiators: a largely vegetarian diet heavily featuring barley and legumes (Lösch et al 2014: 13). The only difference scientists found between gladiators and civilians was that the gladiators had higher strontium levels, which could be attributed to either increased dairy intake or an ash supplement that Pliny mentions gladiators taking to speed up healing. Quoting Marcus Varro, Pliny says “your hearth should be your medicine chest. Drink lye made from its ashes, and you will be cured. One can see how gladiators after a combat are helped by drinking this” (Natural History 36.69). Pliny suggests ash as a cure for a lot of ailments, but there is evidence that this particular drink was indeed beneficial for bone strength. It would not, however, make a gladiator fatter than a civilian. The York gladiators also had a comparable diet to the civilians excavated beside them, though did not show evidence of drinking ash supplements (Müldner et al, 2011: 286). 

    Pliny’s quote about gladiators being called hordearii, or ‘barley-men’, remarks on the nickname in the past tense in the original latin. Gladiators used to be known as barley-men (Natural History 18.72). Pliny died in 79 CE, and the Ephesian gladiatorial burials mostly date to the second and third centuries CE. Moreover, when Galen, himself a gladiatorial physician in the second century CE, quotes this passage of Pliny in his own work De Alimentorum Facultatibus, or ‘On the Nature of Foodstuffs;’ he elaborates that this was an outdated Athenian nickname for gladiators. This nickname therefore seems to be both regional and old-fashioned by the late first century CE, so it is inappropriate to apply it to gladiators en masse. 

    Galen writes in ‘On the Nature of Foodstuffs’ that the gladiators he worked with in Pergamon ate a lot of beans. He states that this diet made them ‘fleshy’ (1.19)  However, if Galen meant ‘fat’ he could have used the appropriate words he uses elsewhere in his medical texts; the word he uses for obese is ‘polisarkos’ and is not used for gladiators. Instead he clarifies that the gladiatorial body type is not rock hard, but softer and less dense. Gladiators could perhaps pinch an inch, but their rigorous training ensured that they remained mainly muscle. If Galen, a ludus physician who treated these men daily didn’t call gladiators fat, then perhaps neither should we. 

    If the barley and beans diet was commonly used in ludi across the empire, as it seems to have been in specific locations, then the protein-rich food provided would have indeed been calorific, but was used as fuel for the intense physical activity involved in training. The daily exertions of gladiators meant that they were unlikely to gain thick layers of fat as someone with the same diet and a sedentary lifestyle would. 

    Weapons

    Most gladiators fought with a short sword called a gladius, which was also used by the army. It was primarily a stabbing weapon, the point of which could prove fatal at a mere 5cm of penetration (Bishop 2016: 54). Extra subcutaneous fat, even in the obese, is not going to prevent a fatality from a gladius thrust. Carter has compellingly suggested that most of the time, the point of gladiatorial swords must have been blunted, citing that there are only a few inscriptions, either advertising fights or commemorating them, that describe the swords as having sharpened points, suggesting that this was not the norm and added a heightened layer of drama (Carter 2006). When we consider the nature of gladiatorial combat, this makes a lot of sense:

    Legionaries used short swords in a thrusting manner to methodically deliver fatal blows to as many enemies as possible in a short space of time. Gladiatorial fights, however, were one-on-one and designed to be as entertaining as possible for a prolonged length of time: average fights are estimated to have lasted on average between 10-15 minutes (Potter 1999: 314). Blunting the points of swords reduced (but did not eliminate) the probability of fatalities (Carter 2006: 166). Of course, the owners of gladiators were reimbursed for their full worth if they were killed; dead gladiators were incredibly expensive for whoever was staging the show and lowering the odds of death was in their interest as well as the fighters. But did a blunted tip change how gladiators fought, and inspire them to get fat as a form of defence? The gladius could be used in a slicing, slashing motion, but the Romans seemed to consider it a reckless technique. The idea that a few shallow slashes with the long edge of a sword could produce safe spurts of blood to entertain the crowds doesn’t align with how the Romans saw using the sword in that way: Vegetius writes 

    “The Romans not only easily conquered those who fought with cutting motions, they even ridiculed them for doing so. [...] When a cut is delivered, the right arm and side are exposed, but the stabbing point is delivered with the body protected and wounds the enemy before he sees it. This is what characterises Roman practice with respect to combat.” (Vegetius, Mil. 1.12) 

    Gladiators wore less armour on the torso than legionaries, so it does not make sense for them to regularly raise their arms to slice, leaving so much of themselves exposed. So if points of swords were usually blunted, how did gladiators fight?

    Techniques

    We don’t have a surviving ancient manual to reveal the rules of combat, though we know rules existed. What we do know is that gladiatorial bouts were carefully controlled by referees, and that fighters were placed in traditional pairings according to their armature and fighting style, for instance retiarius versus secutor or murmillo versus thraex. Fighters were given their speciality early in their career, and their training would have been specific both to their style and to defending themselves from the style of their normal opponent types. Beyond this, much is a mystery. Junkelmann, having studied gladiatorial arms and armour and artistic depictions, decided that the best way to fill in the gaps in our knowledge was with practical experimentation, and so formed his own modern gladiatorial familia to test out various techniques and theories which he documents in his book Das Spiel mit dem Tod: So kämpften Roms Gladiatoren (2000). The results of years of this experimental archaeology are fascinating. 

    Firstly, we must forget the cinematic hacks and slashes we’re accustomed to; the swords are too short for the constant clanging we see in movies. Junkelmann’s heavyweight gladiators found that it was their shield, the scutum, that was the primary piece of kit with which to parry a sword. The scutum is a large shield that protected most of the body. Usually, a gladiator’s forward leg would be protected by a greave called an ocrea and their striking arm by an armoured sleeve called a manica. Combined with the helmet, if the scutum was held in the correct position, the gladiator would be almost entirely protected. Slashing blows with a sword would often do little more than produce a loud clang, and such ineffective manoeuvres in heavy gear were too tiring to waste time performing. Not only this, but a hacking slash leaves the side of the attacker’s torso dangerously vulnerable. However, careful thrusts aimed at gaps between sword and armour were more effective, and as we’ve seen, thrusting blows are dangerous at any percentage of body fat. This aligns with Carter’s theory that sword tips were frequently blunted to minimise physical damage to the gladiator’s bodies.

    Not all gladiator types were equipped with a scutum. The thraex, or Thracian, and the hoplomachus, loosely based on Greek hoplites, carried a smaller shield called a parmula. However, it does not follow that less protection from a smaller shield might induce their opponents to slash instead of thrust; both the thraex and hoplomachus compensated for their shield size with longer ocreae on both legs. They were also able to capitalise on the  greater agility a smaller shield allowed, so these fighters, despite their smaller shields, would have had reason to stay light on their feet and not bulk up. Similarly, the retiarius, or net-fighter, had no shield, no greaves and only a thick padding protection on his non-dominant arm. This was topped with a metal galerus, or shoulder guard, which was the only protection for his bare head. A retiarius, then, was the least defensively armed fighter. He would not want to be large and ungainly; his best defense was to be nimble. He fought against heavily armoured gladiators, usually secutores. ‘Secutor’ means ‘chaser,’ and their name proves that retiarii used speed and agility to their advantage, forcing the secutor to abandon the protection of his defensive stance and go on the offensive, whilst the net-man, armed with a long trident, could keep him at a safe distance. As artistic depictions prove, retiarii did not compensate for their lack of armour with fat, but with lithe bodies built for agility.
    None of Junkelmann’s conclusions indicate that a gladiator would have benefitted in any way from a thicker-than-normal layer of subcutaneous fat. A gladiator’s armature was his primary protection, and a second layer of defence, such as obesity, would be superfluous at best and a hindrance at worst. Of course, if a fighter let his guard down or dropped his shield, he left himself vulnerable to a slashing blow. When this happened, the gladius as a chopping sword was simply too effective to reliably produce mild yet ‘theatrical’ injuries, no matter the physique of your opponent. Particularly when we remember that most gladiators wore vision-restricting helmets, defending oneself whilst dealing blows that were deliberately not very serious but looked spectacular would be really difficult to achieve.

    Galen, as physician to Pergamene gladiators, witnessed the damage a slashing injury could make first hand, noting that most physicians found these cuts difficult to treat and that they involved long periods of recovery. In one example, a blow to the upper thigh had sliced deep into muscle (Scarborough 2013: 102). Against a     gladius, thick subcutaneous fat is simply no substitute for a shield or armour. 


    Artistic depictions

    There are hundreds of ancient images of gladiators. We have mosaics, frescoes, figurines, graffiti, reliefs and piles of terracotta lamps. These works of art are found across the empire and were popular for centuries. Livius.org has catalogued an excellent selection here: https://www.livius.org/tag/gladiator/. There is evidence for some diversity in physiques amongst these fighters; most are broad and heavily muscled, but the level of muscle definition varies. A few, particularly amongst the ‘lightweight’ gladiatorial types such as the retiarii and hoplomachi tend to be more slender. It is rare to find an ancient image of a bulky gladiator. Not all gladiators are depicted as ‘ripped,’ with six packs, but it is hardly appropriate to describe these men as ‘fat.’ 

    Conclusion

    The idea that gladiators deliberately ate to bulk up does not align with the evidence that we have for gladiatorial combat. Their diet, unlike bulky Greek contact athletes, does not seem to have included a lot of meat and bread. Instead, it seems that the little archaeological evidence we have supports the literary sources, which together indicate that a gladiator’s diet was largely vegetarian with cheap, humble ingredients and designed to provide the energy needed to train and compete. We also know that gladiatorial training was arduous and highly specialised, it is unlikely that such regular physical exertion allowed these fighters to grow obese on such a diet. Finally, careful experimentation through recreation of actual combat confirms that fights were not frenzied slashing as depicted in movies, a fighting style that would not have impressed Roman fans. Rather, gladiatorial combat was characterised by defensive stances, tactical use of the shield (which movies omit,) and economical, carefully judged thrusts and lunges. Because of this fighting style and the lethality of gladiatorial weapons to any physique, obesity was unlikely to have been a priority. Some gladiators may have naturally carried some extra weight, but it was by no means deliberate, nor the norm. Just because a six pack isn't visible (think: most WWE heavyweights, the front row of a rugby team, etc etc) doesn't mean that an athlete is classified as obese. A healthy layer of fat provides the energy required to endure prolonged periods of hard physical work, meaning that the (modern, Hollywood/social media) concept of the ripped ideal athletic physique is probably unsuited to an ancient professional gladiator,  but we simply do not have enough evidence or reason to believe that gladiators were obese on purpose.

    Bibliography

    D.S. Potter, 'Entertainers in the Roman Empire' in: D.S. Potter & D.J.Mattingly, Life, Death and Entertainment in the Roman Empire (1999) p.256-326
    F. Kanz & K .Grossschmidt 'Dying in the Arena: the Osseous Evidence from Ephesian Gladiators' in: T. Wilmott, Roman Amphitheatres and Spectacula, a 21st-Century Perspective (2009) p.211-222
    J. Scarborough, 'Galen and the Gladiators,' Episteme, vol.5 (1971), p.98-111; revised with an 'Epilogue' (2013)
    M. Carter, 'Gladiatorial Combat with 'Sharp' Weapons' : Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik, vol.155 (2006), p. 161-175
    M. Junkelmann, Das Spiel mit dem Tod: So kämpften Roms Gladiatoren (2000)
    M.C. Bishop, The Gladius: The Roman Short Sword (2016)
    R. Dunkle, Gladiators: Violence and Spectacle in Ancient Rome (2008)


  • Sexy Southwark Gladiators

    Art Gladiators gladiators-and-roman-spectacle
    Picture
    A lot of Romans found gladiators to be really, really sexy. Other Romans could not wrap their heads around it. Take Juvenal's 6th Satire, a poem about rich ladies and their shocking and inappropriate boyfriends/side pieces. He talks about Eppia, a senator's wife. He says she ran away from her husband, home and children to follow a troupe of gladiators to Alexandria where she shacks up with a gladiator named Sergius. Juvenal doesn't get the appeal; Sergius has cauliflower ears, a bent nose, scars, missing teeth and an eye that constantly weeps a little. Sergius is a walking wreck as far as Juvenal is concerned, yet he says that because Sergius is a gladiator, he might as well be Hyacinthus in Eppia's eyes. Juvenal can't see the sex appeal, but a lot of women certainly could/can - in the darkest recesses of female sexuality, there is often a deep desire for a musclebound bad boy who, whilst perhaps not a witty raconteur, can nevertheless find plenty of things to keep a lady from getting bored. It's a satire, so Eppia is likely a fictional character Juvenal concocted to illustrate his concerns over who women were lusting over.

    Sexy gladiators even pop up in the archaeological record. One of my favourite objects that illustrates the concept perfectly is actually from London. A terracotta lamp was found in Southwark, on the south bank of the river Thames. For centuries, Southwark had a (well deserved) reputation of being a bit seedy and sordid - you could get drunk, watch a cock fight or bear baiting, go to a Shakespeare play full of innuendoes, then catch venereal disease from a sex worker, all within a five minute walk. From the looks of it, this reputation is even older than we thought. Let's take a closer look...

    There are two gladiators in the throes of a 'combat'. This one looks a little more fun than the traditional stabby variety, certainly from a participatory perspective. The arena is swapped for the bedroom. The gladiator on top is a woman, and she has the smaller shield and curved blade (sica) of a thraex. She's clearly in a dominant position, and has her opponent right where she wants him. She's in control and looks really happy about it. Her opponent, on the other hand, is pinned down and prone on the bed, with minimal options for retaliatory manouevres. He's dropped his weapon and shield on the bedroom floor - the straight blade of the gladius and the large, rectangular scutum shield lines up with him being a murmillo, the typical  opponent of the thraex.

    So who is winning? At first glance, the thraex clearly has the upper hand in this bout. At the same time, the Romans weren't the first or last people to spot the psychological paralell between sword and phallus, and this murmillo seems to have penetrated his opponent with his secondary weapon. She seems quite pleased about this, so perhaps we can call it a tie?

  • Gladiator II - Pedantry, Passion and Pictures

    Classical Reception Gladiator Ii gladiators-and-roman-spectacle Hollywood
    It’s been a few days since I watched Gladiator II, during which time the dopamine has firmly worn off and I’ve been wrapped up in writing and presented a paper on Those About to Die and comparing it to other cases of spectacle on screen. Gladiator II has been percolating in my brain, and I’ve been able to think about it a little more deeply, now that the popcorn has run out. There's a joke that graces my feed every now and again that pokes fun at the idea that if you enjoy music, literature or art, studying it at university will soon put paid to that. There's some truth in that, because we're taught to forensically analyse, instead of passively consume. That's certainly true of me and Gladiator. I first watched it as a teenager obsessed with the ancient Mediterranean, who never once dreamt that I'd one day get to properly dedicate myself to its study. My mouth hung open the entire time, at the score, at the aerial shots of a reconstructed city I hadn't yet seen the ruins of, to the sheer scale of it.

    I thought about this a lot when the trailer for Gladiator II came out. In the intervening years, I've very recently earned two degrees and extensively researched and written about gladiators. 24 years ago I was a wide-eyed teen, and now I'm much older and (currently) write about gladiators full time. I've dipped my toes deep into the pool of classical reception, and have written about the movie from that standpoint. I enjoy classical reception - I love to see snippets of antiquity where I least expect them, and I love to see how the ancient world is woven into modern media. I had a little trepidation with Gladiator II, though. In writing about the movie, (because who wouldn't get a kick out of writing about one of their favourite movies?) I was obliged to read about the movie. And so I did, holing myself up in the library reading articles and chapters upon articles and chapters. I was instantly reminded of why I quit my English Lit A-level after a couple of months - deep engagement in a piece of media, really grappling with it and dissecting it to examine the entrails can really change how you think and feel about that media. I have now read all of these clever observations about fascist aesthetics, mixed constitutions and the agrarian ideals of the American dream. Worse, I'd just finished and submitted a lengthy study of usages of the film's script and imagery by various far right groups and individuals, using the (ample, as I see now) fuel provided in the movie to fan the flames of their shitty ideology. My beloved Gladiator has become 300.

    I watched the sequel on the day it was released with anticipation and not a little trepidation. Nostalgia and nerves, all in one. And it was... fine. The kind of fine I'll watch again, probably. It's adequate. The aerial shots still made me shiver, but the niggles I now have about the original were all present and correct.  This time I was bracing myself for more elements that would give me an uncomfortable feeling, when once upon a time they whooshed over my naive little head. To quote Sondheim: "isn't it nice to know a lot!? And a little bit not..." And you can't voice your anxiety on social media, because then you're the curmudgeon who doesn't realise that it's just a movie. Few things are ever just anything, but Gladiator II is apparently firmly just a movie. Except it isn't to me, because this is my subject now. I read about gladiators because I'm fascinated by them, and because I believe they're misrepresented by both Hollywood and, to be frank, various eminent scholars.  One thing I quickly came to realise is that the arena is a place of far more nuance than we give it credit for, which is missing from what much of the public gets access to. I'm putting my money where my mouth is on this, and trying to put out as much objective, nuanced content as I can.

    Working Classicists, always keen to produce content for enthusiasts of every level, asked me to provide a quick companion to Gladiator II, because within 24 hours of release they were already getting questions about what was real. I was delighted to oblige, because I genuinely love writing for people who are new to learning about the ancient world in general. There is no such thing as a basic or stupid question, and it may be a hangover from my tour guide/museum days but I just get such a kick out of teaching someone something cool that might be pretty new to them. And, to be frank, it can be a useful skill that takes time to hone. So I sat down and got writing. Quickly, I realised I needed to add a disclaimer: I'm not here to preach, and I'm not here to whinge. I'm just here to sort fact from fantasy. You can read what I came up with here, if you like. But people don’t like feeling lectured, so a waiver had to go in. There's the constant retort that 'everyone knows it's not accurate' so there's no point presenting our research to explain what is real and what isn't. I have two questions about this POV:

    • When exactly are we supposed to share what we know with the public? Or are we admitting that we don't want them sniffing around, wanting to learn stuff without chucking thousands of pounds a year at an institution? Antiquity is not usually a part of the zeitgeist for very long, beyond the men who Think About Rome Every Day; I'd have thought striking whilst the iron was hot would be ideal regarding public engagement, but what do I know?
    • Do you not have enthusiasm enough for your own niche that you want to talk about it? Share it? If the right moment came and the planets aligned, would you not want to talk about it? 

    I do wonder if there isn't an element of hierarchy going on, regarding sub-topics. This goes for the public as well as for academics. Adaptations of Homer are something that can be acceptably cross examined because Homer is literature, and high-brow literature at that. See also: Shakespeare's history plays. Novels fill this same category if they are hardbacks with that snazzy gilt font on the jacket. They are deemed sophisticated and as such can be critiqued freely.

    Gladiators are pulpy in comparison, I suppose. They're a base entertainment, with elements that fascinate the darkest corners of our minds in a way that isn't discussed in polite society. Because gladiation can be so easily dismissed as crude, it's all too tempting to not have those conversations that attempt to contextualise them. Hence why they lack nuance in material the public sees. You'll forgive me, then, if I was left a little cold by Gladiator II, which was distinctly lacking in the nuance department.

    There’s also an assumption from the public that academics don’t read ‘high brow’ texts critically, instead placing them on high pedestals as works of art to be revered with a fervent devotion, like a sacred text. This couldn’t be further from the truth, with various philologists, historians and archaeologists scrutinising every last consonant and vowel. Whilst we’re at it, a good theologian will tell you the same about actual sacred texts, except they can name wars that have happened over translations and interpretations of those texts. Scrutiny at a deep level is literally in the job description, so if historians talk about the ancient world all day, you can’t expect them to clam up when they see it interpreted in the modern world.

    I suppose any historian latches on to a person, event or  institution because it fascinates them, because it is interesting. I now know of a dozen gladiatorial stories - fragments of stories, really, that would make great movies. I've been trained to search for context clues and to read between lines, and much of my job is to construct a plausible frame around the little evidence I have. Plausible. There's the keyword. What is possible? What is probable? The joy of gladiators is that they provide such riveting narratives without the help of a screenwriter. The drama is built-in, and needs no fuss or fanciness to augment it. The first movie trod a fine, quite wobbly line between plausibility and dubiousness, but the reason I think it still holds up so well (and why I'll never quit it) is that it has a faint whiff of authenticity about it. This is probably due in an unknowable part to Kathleen Coleman, the professor hired to be their historical consultant. Most of Coleman's hard work did not make the final cut, and after seeing the movie Coleman asked that her name be taken off of the credits. Coleman wrote a chapter about her experience, entitled "The Pedant Goes to Hollywood: The Role of the Academic Consultant." You can read it here, with no paywall. If it wasn't in an edited volume dedicated to the movie, you'd barely guess which movie is being discussed. I read it as a scathing indictment on working with this particular set of writers, producers and Ridley Scott - that same Scott who told historians to shut the fuck up when they pointed out some inaccuracies in Napoleon. Her frustration is palpable, because she knows it could have been better. 

    It sounds, from this chapter and literally everything I have ever read about Ridley Scott, that he doesn’t like being questioned, or critiqued. After Dan Snow made a TikTok about Napoleon, Ridley had a tantrum and banned historians from coming anywhere near the Gladiator II set. It shows. One may even say that what he seems to want is unquestioning deference and adoration, like the deference and adoration people think academics reserve for Homer, and I doubt that he got that from Coleman. Good for her. What he seems to want is a starstruck yes-man who will let a dozen egregious things slide because they’re just happy to be there. Without wishing to sound mean, it looks like that’s exactly what Ridley found for this sequel, leading to the consultant being invited to fact check the film he consulted on and being forced to admit it’s chockablock with anachronisms. But, he says, Ridley is an artist. This is not a documentary. The insinuation here is that it’s Ridley’s genius vision, and that authenticity couldn’t enhance the finished product if it tried.
    It's giving Annie Edison in the 'Redux' episode.

    For this to be true, the movie had better be good. When Ridley proudly boasted that he refused to consult historians for Napoleon, (even though he seems to have,) was the genius vision enough to make a great movie? Hell no, do you know anyone who liked it? Let’s be really honest, when it comes to historical epics, Ridley has more misses than hits. To be charitable, perhaps this movie would have been better if Ridley hadn’t thrown his toys out of his pram and allowed a historian (any historian) on set. It’s no secret that consultants work more efficiently if they’re permitted on the property.

    Gladiator II is OK. It’s mid, it’s meh. It’s mediocre. The combat and aerial shots are still pretty great. The plot, pacing, dialogue and characterisations are all inferior to the original. CGI baboons look worse than a real tiger did 24 years ago. It’s not particularly immersive. Certain scenes require the suspension of disbelief, which is easier to do with speculative fiction rather than historical drama. Viewers are happier to accept the implausibility if the protagonist has superpowers, or is on an alien planet, or has a pet dragon. Suspension of disbelief is the Achilles’ Heel of immersive ‘historical drama,’ though; as plausibility fades in the face of improbability. 

    When improbable elements start being sprinkled in, plausible elements start to masquerade as improbable. Even Charlotte Higgins, an ancient historian, commented that the Colosseum wouldn’t have been flooded in her list of anachronisms, despite very convincing evidence that it absolutely was. Herein lies the rub: ancient spectacle doesn’t need implausible anachronisms - it is perfectly capable of still being a spectacle on its own merit. The same is true of the rest of Roman history, generally. 

    Let’s go through a few alternatives that would have vastly improved the the vibe of the film:

    • Ben Paites has already made the excellent suggestion that the ridiculous café set was jarring, and that the scene would have felt much more natural and, well, Roman, if it had been set in a bathhouse. The idea of shakedowns and shady deals being done whilst naked and marinating in human soup is so weird to modern sensibilities, it would have made for a wonderful scene, adding an extra layer to an otherwise thin scene. The power imbalance could have had so much more impact if, for instance, only one of the interlocutors was nude. Or if Thrax was forced to awkwardly stand whilst Macrinus manipulated him mid-massage. Hell, they could have even thrown in an easter egg along the lines of ‘Caracalla is a lunatic, but he sure can build a frigidarium.’ A meh scene becomes elevated, simply because it would feel a bit more authentic.
     
    • I rolled my eyes at the newspapers. Ridley famously doesn’t listen to historians, preferring to draw from existing examples of Rome on screen. Why, then, did he not realise how great HBO’s Rome newsreader was? Ian McNeice, stood on a stool, reading the headlines with oratorical flair and gestures. It looked right, because it felt authentic and plausible. You can still get an authentic feel without reading a book, if you nick the bits from films and shows that manage it fairly well.
     
    • The rhino - the rhino was fine! We know of Romans watching rhinos in the Colosseum. Commodus even fought one (if you count shooting arrows at it from the safety of a platform ‘fighting…’) Making the rhino slightly larger than reality is fine! Jurassic Park does it with dinosaurs and it’s fine! What Jurassic Park doesn’t do is saddle the triceratops, and if it did it would rightly jump the shark. Note that the Jurassic World films are a little bit rubbish because they flirt with exactly this kind of idea. Of course you can’t ride a wild rhino. But here is where a history book or consultant could have made an improvement: swap in that rhino for a war elephant with mounted archers. We know that ancient Persians, Hellenistic states and Carthaginians had them, we know that Romans soiled themselves when first confronted with them. Keep the rhino, unmounted, and have it replace those laughable baboons. Then have Lucius face an elephant. I have been killed by war elephants in Assassin’s Creed Origins enough times to know that such a battle is a) tough b) looks incredible. You’re welcome.
     
    • Those About to Die beat Gladiator II both to the flooded arena and Cinecittà Studios punch. Theirs was an elaborate execution with senators dressed as Egyptians, being preyed upon by crocodiles. It felt more authentic, and not because Romans didn’t know what sharks were, they did (and claiming otherwise without checking beforehand may result in public embarrassment.) Those About to Die has its own issues with authenticity and plausibility, but not in this case. I’m not saying the sharks are a terrible choice, necessarily, just that the crocodiles are a better one.

    Of course, there is a particular demographic that will forgive mutant baboons if they can find what they loved about the first film, and I suspect that there is an agenda behind why they don’t want minor anachronisms deflated lest the whole facade starts to crumble; Scott provides a very alluring version of Rome that appeals to wonky ideas of what it was like. 

    • Lucilla is the only woman to speak in the original. She’s smarter than any man she shares a room with, and she knows it. She was supposed to die in the original script, because the historical Lucilla predeceased Commodus. Her death was going to reinvigorate Maximus’ quest for revenge. She was only saved when a female Executive Producer insisted that half the women in the movie (2) should survive, and it should probably be the only one with lines. In the original, Lucilla never succeeds as a politician but she is maternal, and that makes her weak. She’s punished for her cleverness and her quiet defiance with emotional and implied physical abuse. Lucilla is still the smartest person in any room, but in a room where everyone is just that little bit dimmer than before. Her maternal instincts have proven to be her undoing again. If you’re the type of person who likes to see clever women in manacles, psychologically tortured and then pretty soundly silenced, then this is the movie for you. I had supposed that in a movie featuring Severans, a Lucilla that had ahistorically survived was going to be the stand in for Geta and Caracalla’s mother, Julia Domna. Like Lucilla in the movie, Julia Domna was smart, and she held real power. She was the centre of a circle of philosophers and writers, and administration was delegated to her by her sons because she was so damn capable. Another missed trick; Julia Domna witnessed Caracalla order guards to kill his brother, holding Geta in her arms as he died. What a scene that would have made! Granted, it’s watching a woman suffer, but in an accurate way that’s far more believable than what happened to poor Lucilla.
    • This movie has a grand total of three women who speak! But the two who show some capability and equal skills and abilities as men (Lucilla and Lucius’s warrior wife) are the ones to die horrible deaths. Scott loves to see smart Roman women silenced. I suppose I should be grateful that Gladiator(s) doesn’t go down the Starz Spartacus and Those About to Die route of portraying elite women as nymphomaniac sociopaths, but the bar is low. Lucilla was the total opposite in fact, as quite the sexless matron. She’s over 40 now, and doesn’t do that kind of thing anymore. Having zero sexual chemistry with Pedro Pascal is quite the achievement.
    • Speaking of the brothers - I was horrified when I saw the casting announcements. For the uninitiated, Julia Domna was Syrian, and her husband Septimius Severus was from Leptis Magna (Libya.) Initially Caracalla was going to be played by Barry Keoghan, and when he dropped out to lick jizz out of plugholes, they found the only actor paler than him to step in: Fred Hechinger. Geta is similarly lily white. Their whiteness is emphasised by thick white pan stick and burgundy rouge, which makes them look like hungover clowns. Commodus was pale, yes, with those eyes that looked bruised as if he hadn’t slept in a month. If anything, the first movie toned down Commodus’ adventures in the Colosseum, preferring to signpost him as the bad guy with SS Praetorian guards and incestuous tendencies. So far, so corrupt. But the Severan brothers weren’t anything like Commodus. Geta seemed to be a good, level headed administrator who was cursed to hate his brother. The movie Caracalla is a small, syphilis ridden sybarite who has a retinue of twinks and a pet monkey he makes consul - we get it Ridley, you really wanted Caligula. He's easily manipulated and clearly incapable of critical thought. Physically, he's small and weak, and dresses effeminately. This is a world away from battle-hardened soldier of the sources. The sources give plenty of cruelty for a writer to play with, but he seems to have been manly. Hechinger’s Caracalla is a cheap stereotype of the debauched queer man, behold, he bends gender norms and as such is a terrible guy. Only Lucius can be truly masculine, because Lucius is the Good Guy. Also - a missed opportunity. Caracalla was assassinated whilst mid-pee at a roadside. That’s the kind of death that a show like Game of Thrones would jump on with glee (and arguably a crossbow bolt whilst pooping may be a direct homage.)  
    • So why does the portrayal of the brothers matter? Their father is depicted in art as having a dark skin tone, theirs slightly less so. They weren't pale, they didn't make their faces whiter to emphasise a whiteness they didn't have. They had darker skin and ruled the Roman empire. Accurate representation would have been valuable to help dismantle the concept of Roman power being paper white. It's a misconception that fuels the idea of western civilisation and white supremacy. It's tricky, because the whitewashing doesn't tie in with presenting the brothers as good rulers or even good people, but most people only engage with antiquity through Hollywood. The problem now is that audiences will equate Severans with pasty dissipation, not a darker skinned dynasty who achieved a lot. I'm not suggesting a portrayal that shows Caracalla as a saint, because he certainly wasn't one, but he also wasn't a witless puppet. It would have been interesting to explore why he was hated by Roman historians but so adored by his troops, or to explore why he could be so brutal without explaining it away with advanced venereal disease. It would have been amazing to see the immediate ramifications of Caracalla's Edict, for example. By whitewashing the Severans and eradicating their actual deeds, Ridley is racialising them in a manner that Romans never did. How on Earth can someone produce such a thinly drawn picture of a man like Caracalla? It takes deliberate effort to get it so wrong.
    • I’ll paraphrase what I’ve said previously about Macrinus:  I worry about Denzel Washington's arc. By making him an ex-slave, and a Black one at that, who holds such a grudge against his white former masters that he schemes to bring them all tumbling down… Macrinus (as great as Denzel is) will be seen by some as the Angry Black Man. With the original having the fan base it does (white supremacists) - making this choice after BLM is adding fuel to the fire. Showing a Black former slave having such a violent vendetta against his former masters... It just made me feel uncomfortable. Macrinus isn't given a chance to elaborate on the trauma he clearly carries, and IMO his anger is 100% justified - I'm not sure everyone in the audience will agree with me there. He doesn’t want reparations, he wants revenge. He wants ultimate power and will kill those in power to do so, but we’re shown that he plans to be even worse than the STD-ridden spoilt white boys. An angry Black man (in this movie) should never be trusted, and never allowed to threaten the (unrealistic) utopia that the Good white guy is working towards. Ridley Scott has all the grace of a sledgehammer when it comes to race so I’d love to know his reasons for casting Washington specifically - he’s too willing to whitewash Severans with lesser known (and frankly second tier) actors to get away with using the star power excuse this time. 

    I feel comfortable saying this because I am nowhere near the rank of public historian that would ever be brought to his attention. But one does wonder why Scott is so determined to make historical dramas with so little history in them. Proud of it, in fact. Does he enjoy trolling historians? Does he revel in our frustration? Which secondary school history teacher hurt you, Ridley? He definitely seems to enjoy baiting us like a matador with a bull, or Lucius with that rhino.  Why not go down the fantasy route, if so determined to make stuff up? Ah, but that still involves a deep engagement with scholarship if you want it to be any good. GRR Martin loved reading about the Wars of the Roses so much he created Westeros, a place that has dragons and ice zombies but is still a richly textured world only conceivable to a mind that has spent hours in libraries, been to the museums and sites, and talked to historians. Tolkien similarly created a universe and a narrative that felt fantastical, yet grounded in a profound understanding of myth and its reception. They both feel more historical than Gladiator II because that sheer amount of work can’t help but saturate every element of storytelling. It becomes real because it feels real. Even with Smaug and Shelob and hobbits. You want authenticity? You have to do the work. You want to still have fun with the unbelievable? Make it speculative fiction and go nuts. But don’t refuse to do the homework, make a movie that’s just fine and then complain that people who study and work on this as their vocation have something to say about it. That reeks of a fragile ego. Authenticity makes films better.

    To wit: Russell Crowe may be popular as Maximus, but the CHOKEHOLD that Master and Commander has on fans is astounding, myself included. That’s a film that sandwiches minutiae between broadsides, and offers a complex portrait of male comradeship, friendship and masculinity. There’s more. Saving Private Ryan has a quasi-fictional plot, but the attention to detail and respect for the history took it (and its iconic opening scenes) from good to great. Band of Brothers is a masterpiece. Wolf Hall is just about as immersive as television can get, down to using candles as a sole source of light at night. My husband wouldn’t forgive me if I didn’t mention Sharpe at some point (though I’m a Hornblower girl at heart.) None of these examples are 100% accurate but there’s a reason historians quibble less with them. Films that play fast and loose by cutting corners don’t age well - see Braveheart, Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, Troy and of course, 300. Authentic details aren’t pedantry, they’re an expression of passion, and an addition that elevates the vibe of any movie. Authentic details are also a demonstration of care, so it is no coincidence that you find authenticity paired with thoughtful dialogue, a meticulously paced plot, and layered character studies. 
    Compare Coleman's experiences to those of Rebecca Usherwood as consultant on the Domina series. Usherwood speaks of a collaborative process with mutual enthusiasm and desire for authenticity. Usherwood's efforts paid off, too, because the series is commendable. That’s why I’m not a fan of Ridley's  inauthenticity. It betrays a lackadaisical attitude towards a sequel that didn’t need to exist that does a disservice to the original and to us as the audience. It screams ‘cash grab.’ It screams ‘resting on laurels.’ It practically bellows ‘half arsed.’ For a movie that features so many unabashed callbacks to the original, it manages to disservice both the characters of the original and its fans. The original managed to present itself as a serious movie: pretending this sequel isn’t deeply silly is risible. Even Russell Crowe has problems with it!! Tell him to chill out, I dare you. 

    In many ways, the movie is not my Circus Maximus and not my schlocky CGI monkeys, but you’re never going to convince me that this is just a movie. If it really were just a movie, historians wouldn’t be reprimanded by the creatives nor the fans. I wonder if Maximus stans will cease complaining about perceived pedantry when they too realise that the movie they’ve waited 24 years for is just OK. When they too start compiling a list of things that could have been done better. Or, has Ridley consistently depicted a Rome that they prefer to the historical one? By questioning the veracity of rhinos and flooded arenas, we challenge the wider depiction of Ridley’s Rome and reveal the sinister elements of his narrative that get missed in a superficial viewing. The deeper analysis from scholars will come after the wave of arena based fact checking, and it won't be neutral. That's the criticism Ridley should throw a tantrum over, and I really hope it sticks in his craw.
    ​

  • The Kids of Pompeii

    Arena Ideology Art Children Context Behind Clickbait Gladiators gladiators-and-roman-spectacle Pompeii
    With new excavations in Pompeii, there are exciting finds being shared every few weeks. Pompeii stirs the public imagination like nothing else in antiquity (whether we like it or not) and each new find is assured its place in the news cycle. Pompeii, to the public at least, encapsulates Rome. All of it. The entire empire, over centuries. That's a forgivable misconception, and the clickbait articles that follow each announcement are devoid of any contextualisation. 

    That's predictably true this week; excavations have found graffitied doodles of gladiators on a Pompeiian wall, close to the ground and with a simplistic style that can only the be work of little children. They're charcoal doodles, and it's all too easy to picture the kids scribbling on the walls when Mum wasn't looking, in what must have been only a few days or even hours before Vesuvius erupted. Archaeologists of Pompeii have written up a mini-report of the excavations of that particular building, if you fancy a read (in Italian.) Or, if you like, you can watch Gabriel Zuchtriegel (the current Director of the archaeological site) show you the drawings, complete with English subs:

    ​


     The children drawing these gladiatorial fights and arena hunts are young, perhaps five to seven, and the archaeologists, together with Italian psychologists, have decided that the kids are drawing what they've witnessed. That would mean they're not copying gladiatorial graffiti by adults, they're not looking at the professionally painted depictions of gladiators in Pompeiian art, or the gladiators carved in relief on Pompeiian tombs. This is evidence, they say, that children were spectating.

    I'm on the fence about this. After all, Pompeii was full of gladiatorial art. Let's look at some, because why not? (All photos but the first are my own.)

    ​
    This is a fresco from a bar in Regio V, and was excavated in 2019. The match is over, and the gladiator on the right, bleeding profusely and utterly exhausted, is extending a finger to signal that he gives in. His fate (the nature of which depends on the stakes of the match) will be decided by the person presenting the Games. He could be spared and live to fight another day, or he could be killed. Click the photo to go to the official press announcement about this discovery.
    This is a close up photo I took of a Pompeiian fresco now kept in the Archaeological Museum in Naples. It was found in the House of Anius Anicetus (I.3.23.) The whole fresco shows the Pompeii ampthitheatre in the middle of a famous riot between local fans and spectators who'd travelled from Nuceria twenty years before the eruption. The fans behaved so badly Pompeii was slapped with a ban on spectacles!
    Thank goodness Francesco Morelli painted a copy of this fresco, found near the Porta Nola in Pompeii, when it was discovered in 1813; the fresco is long gone and this painting is all we have as evidence for it.
    It wasn't just kids doodling gladiators - an adult Pompeiian scratched this one into a plastered wall.
    This little terracotta murmillo was found at Pompeii; cheap little souvenirs of gladiators have been found all over the empire. Lamps were also wildly popular. This, I suppose, is the equivalent of an action figure!
    This massive relief was part of the funerary monument of a Pompeiian and was found in the necropolis outside of the Stabian Gate in 1854. It was in a prominent position to be viewed by passers by, and depicts an entire day of Games - the 'pompa' procession at the beginning, the beast hunts, and the gladiators. Archaeologists now think it was part of the monument to Gnaeus Alleius Nigidius Maius, a prominent local politician. The base of the monument, (if the two do indeed belong together,) was finally excavated in 2017, and the inscription records that this politican paid for Games, earning himself some goodwill with voters and constituents.
    My point is, Pompeiian children had lots of opportunities to see art of all kinds that depicted gladiators. So does their doodling mean that they were spectating, or just surrounded by images of a cultural mainstay? 
    It's open to interpretation, but it's an exciting window into Roman childhood all the same. You can almost picture them playing at gladiators in the atrium, using sticks for swords. 

    The archaeologists seem pretty convinced that the kids must have attended the amphitheatre, and that conviction has definitely convinced the press. Let's look at a few headlines and quotes:

    "The youths’ vivid drawings illustrate the degree of violence to which they were casually exposed on a regular basis." - Smithsonian

    "Today we have warnings on certain films and video games that are thought to be too adult for children to watch, but at the time that Pompeii was buried by the volcanic eruption, children would have seen gory things like gladiators fighting to the death!" - CBBC Newsround

    "Newly discovered Pompeii graffiti reveals horrifying secret about brutal and bloody gladiator fights 2,000 years ago." - The Sun

    "Shocking Pompeii Graffiti Exposes Brutal Truths of Ancient Gladiator Battles!" - Central Recorder

    Comments on social media are less formal, with accusations of Romans being bad parents due to an insatiable bloodlust. Zuchtriegel rightly points out that modern children are exposed to violence too, but that hasn't stopped the accusations that Romans were particularly brutal in comparison. Naturally I have a few thoughts on this, and I aim not to defend Romans nor condone their behaviours - I merely seek to understand.

    Firstly - as a parent and aunt, I have witnessed some weird drawings by young children. Some have some pretty heavy themes, and I vaguely remember drawing some pretty horrifying stuff myself. Children pick up on the culture around them and are exposed to darker aspects of life whether vicariously through entertainment, or from lived experience. They're negotiating discovering the birds and the bees, death, and everything in between and they're doing so with or without adult permission or encouragement, though I will suggest that shielding children merely stokes fascination. In the Roman world, such subjects were dealt with without the reticence of our modern, western societies, and were likely more conspicuous in day to day life. Most Pompeiian children would have been exposed to death early - mothers dying in childbirth, high infant mortality rates, and gnarly illnesses for which cures were not yet known. Again, I'm not saying that an amphitheatre was the ideal place to introduce children to the concept of mortality, but I am going to point out that Romans had to face death far more often than we do, which we can take for granted. 

    Secondly - beware of generalisations. This does not demonstrate that children watching gladiators was common even in Pompeii, let alone the whole empire throughout its entire existence - this demonstrates that one or two children may have attended at one point. We all know that one kid with a lax parent who had access to stuff we didn't even know existed and would never be allowed near ourselves. One parent =/= Roman parenting.

    Thirdly - and most importantly - modern revulsion at children watching bloodsports comes from a long tradition of modern moralising; we're so busy being vocally disgusted by bloodsports that we don't spend the time seeking to understand them. It's easier, and lazier, to declare that Romans were bloodthirsty savages. That they exposed their children to guts and gore merely cements this idea in our imagination. But if we look deeper into why gladiators existed, it's a different picture altogether. 

    The arena wasn't a conveyor belt of mindless violence; it was a teaching tool. Gladiators existed to teach Romans how to be Roman. Think of it as ideology by stealth - 'edutainment.' In the amphitheatre, gladiators taught Romans several things:
    • Martial excellence. Rome loved a bit of war, and needed a huge amount of soldiers to feed its habit. In the early days, they were citizen soldiers who'd leave their farms and workshops to pick up a sword and go on campaign for a couple of months each year. Before long, the army was a bona fide force of professional soldiers. Gladiators were a how-to display of all the skills that came in handy on a battlefield, and a reminder to all Romans of exactly how a small town in Latium had turned into a massive empire. Gladiators were even used to train troops on occasion, teaching them tactics and tricks that gave them an edge over enemies. If you think that the American military obsession is OTT, they ain't got nothing on Rome. And think about it - to keep that pro-war sentiment going and recruitment high, you need to do a couple of things - one is to make war look like a grand adventure, and to instill that thirst for glory in the kids you want to fight your wars for you. I had a full set of Playmobil knights when I was a kid, my brother had Action Men, you may have had a G.I. Joe, Pixar included that bucket of soldier figurines in the Toy Story movies. My daughter has quite the armoury of foam medieval weapons purchased from various castle giftshops... for Romans, gladiators made combat look cool.
    • Masculinity. We'd call this toxic masculinity now and it definitely is to our (incredibly recent) modern sensibilities, but then again we'd be considered pansies by most Romans. Gladiators also functioned as a demonstration of expected gender roles. There were a couple of personality traits that Romans wanted to instil in little boys and grown men alike, and the term virtus was an umbrella term for all of them: courage in the face of danger, self discipline, martial prowess, et cetera. Virtus wasn't just applicable to battlefields but to all facets of life, and gladiators were the live demonstration of putting virtus into practice. They were brave, they were skilled, they were tough. Most importantly, as a lot of them were enslaved, prisoners of war or criminals, they provided a convenient low bar for which spectators. If the scum of the earth could demonstrate such excellence inside the arena, well then ordinary Romans had no excuse not to be even more excellent outside of it.
    • Domination. Gladiators in the early days were styled and named after 'barbarian' enemies of Rome. One type was the Samnite, was a facsimile of a defeated foe indigenous to the region Pompeii was in. Pompeii wasn't a Roman town, it was taken over after the Romans pummelled the bejeezus out of it in a massive siege. Samnites were phased out to avoid offence, and became a new type of gladiator with an innocuous name. However, the point still stands, particularly when we remember that gladiators were largely purchased or recruited by the lowest of society, that gladiators were a demonstration that Rome always, always won. Not only did it enjoy reminding itself of its own military and imperial domination, it liked reminding those it dominated of their place. Rome filled its arenas with men and animals from lands as far as it could reach, and had final say over their fates. The moral of the story? Don't question Rome's authority, they're large and in charge and they will absolutely squash you like an ant. Pompeii's amphitheatre was built only a decade after that siege, a visual reminder and demonstration of Roman imperialism.  

    For centuries, people have been and are still instilling nonsense into their young boys. For us, this is a pretty shocking example of it, but I can think of far worse examples from more recent history, like the Hitler Youth, or watching young Israeli children gleefully destroying aid shipments on lorries bound for the Gaza strip. These two examples are extreme, but they're examples that hopefully prompt us to try and understand the ideology that produced them rather than merely shake our heads. Nazis and Zionists aren't 'mindlessly' bloodthirsty, and most of them consider themselves civilised and morally sound. The Romans did too. 

    Perhaps knowing a little more about the ideology of the arena makes you more horrified that these children in Pompeii might have been watching real combats from the age of five. But when you think about it, children of all ages absorb or are explicitly taught some questionable stuff in every era, and that's how prejudice seeps into every new generation. Again, I'm not saying this is a good thing, but it's something that we need to delve deeper into in order to understand.

    Perhaps, rather than clutching our pearls at the 'barbarity' of the past, we can use this to pause for a moment and consider what we're instilling into our own children in the 21st century, explicitly or otherwise. What messages are we giving them about our own concepts of gender roles? What are the virtues we urge them to foster? How are we answering the questions they are asking about life and death? What forms of entertainment do we deem appropriate? What levels of violence and dehumanisation do we deem socially acceptable? Who are we teaching our children to trust, whose authority to unquestionably accept? And this one is particularly relevant right now: whose deaths are we saying it is OK to witness or even cause? 


    wly discovered Pompeii graffiti reveals horrifying secret about brutal and bloody gladiator fights 2,000 years ago