I just got my latest issue of Archaeology magazine (November/December 2008) and in it is an article I thought would be interesting to some of you. It describes findings from analysis of skeletons from the only known gladiator cemetery (in present western Turkey). The whole article is not available on the web but good exerpts of it are at:

http://www.archaeology.org/0811/abstracts/gladiator.html

Among some interesting stuff is that gladiators ate a vegetarian diet, might have been fat to protect muscles and blood vessels and drank special brews containing calcium resulting in super strong bones. There is also discussion of wounds and weapons by which they died.

It's my understanding not much is actually known about Roman gladiators (forget Hollywood!) so I thought this would be of interest.

Thanks for the link. Interesting article....also the image of the trident wound and that strange weapon that looks like four nails with a handle. The article was not clear what that weapon was, and I had never heard of it.

Jan Svejkovsky wrote:

I just got my latest issue of Archaeology magazine (November/December 2008) and in it is an article I thought would be interesting to some of you. It describes findings from analysis of skeletons from the only known gladiator cemetery (in present western Turkey). The whole article is not available on the web but good exerpts of it are at: http://www.archaeology.org/0811/abstracts/gladiator.html Among some interesting stuff is that gladiators ate a vegetarian diet, might have been fat to protect muscles and blood vessels and drank special brews containing calcium resulting in super strong bones. There is also discussion of wounds and weapons by which they died. It's my understanding not much is actually known about Roman gladiators (forget Hollywood!) so I thought this would be of interest.

Some years ago I watched one documentary on gladiators' lives. It also mentions the food they eat and the yet unnamed four-pointed dagger that crippled one of them.

Cheap food, I suspect.

As for the calcium brew, I thought you didn't absorb calcium past like 17 years of age?

M.

Keep eating your calcium! One loses calcium constantly - women more than men, which is why older women are supposed to take extra calcium supplements in old age to prevent bone loss. I think it's amazing that the Romans were aware of this human nutritional need.

On another topic, what do you guys make of the 4-pointed dagger that one of the burried gladiators got shoved into his knee? Obviously, if you make your opponent unable to stand, he's toast in the arena. But to get so close (and low) as to jab that weapon into a guy's knee seems pretty risky. I imagine that weapon wouldn't do much deep damage against the chest or similar targets, so was it actually designed to strike against the leg or elbow?

These were what the gladiators eat and drink:
A fermented bread made of Farro (a famous cereal in Rome) and a soup made of that cereal and orzo were the base for the carbo and amids.
High protein sources derived from roasted meat, dry fruits, fresh cheese, goat milk and eggs.
Onions, garlic and wild lettuce were also eaten.
For strength and stamina, gladiators eat barley. Anethum graveolens is also eaten.
Goat milk with honey and walnuts, their own version of energy snack.

On the general subject of why a gladiator might want to be fat....



If you are fat, and you get cut on a little, you'll bleed, and if you bear it well, the crowd will think you are brave and romanly and spare you. If you are thin, they might so the same, but that cut might be harder to recover from.

So if you have alot of extra flesh between your 'harder to heal parts' and the other guy's sword, you can be injuried and give the crowd a nice show of blood without 'really' being injured. Which isn't to say it was ever a sure thing, but I imagine it might have helped.

Do we have any empirical data on whether it's harder to kill fat gladiators than skinny?
And what's your source on that diet, Shahril?

Douglas, I got it here -
http://www.romegiftshop.com/gladiatorsdiet.html

Hey,

On the whole "Bone ash drink" thing.... we don't have a recipe do we? It's not written somewhere "And they shall drink this, which you make this way," somewhere is it? I know there is atleast one cookbook surviving from the roman period....

And ya know, this might make a heck of a calcium suppliment... if it doesn't give you cancer.