The Roman Empire went on for so long, it has a lot of history to talk about! One of the most famous jobs in Ancient Rome was the gladiator - an armed warrior who fights other gladiators in an arena to entertain a big crowd. You've definitely heard of them, and maybe you've got a few stereotypes in your head - but there are some things that might surprise you! Read on to find out whether they were really all men, what weapons they used, and how long their careers could really last! Don't forget to check out more Roman facts, take our Roman trivia quiz, or learn something completely new with some Anglo-Saxon facts!

1. The name means “swordsman”

“Gladius” is Latin for sword, so a gladiator is a person who has a sword!

2. No one’s quite sure when it started…

Historians aren't actually sure when gladiators became a thing! The Roman Empire lasted from 753 BC to 476 AD, which is about a thousand years, and gladiators weren't around for the whole thing. One ancient historian places the first gladiator games in 264 BC, and other early writers thought they might have been an import from the Etruscans (a civilization assimilated into the Roman Empire).

3. ...but it might have originally started in funeral rituals

Modern historians think that gladiator fights could have come from a weird funeral ritual for wealthy Roman nobles. At these funerals a fight would be staged between slaves as a blood sacrifice for the deceased person. It was thought that this helped purify their soul for the afterlife. This became popular, and transformed into the staged arena fights we think of now. Good thing it isn't still a custom!

4. There were different types of gladiator

And they all had different names! The most popular ones were the thraeces and the murmillones, who fought using a sword and shield. Other types included the equites, who fought on horseback; the essedarii, who fought on chariots; the dimachaerus, who had TWO swords; and the retiarius, who had a net and a trident!

5. Their outfits were designed to look cool

Gladiators wore helmets and carried swords and shields, but their outfits actually didn't offer a lot of protection from their opponents! The idea was to look cool, more than anything else.

6. Many gladiators were enslaved

Ancient Rome was a slave-owning society, which is when a person legally owns another person and can use them as an unpaid servant. It’s wrong to do this, and it’s completely illegal in most modern societies, but it was one reason the Roman Empire was so successful for so long. Slaves could be born into slavery, or they were people captured from societies conquered by the Roman Empire. Slaves who were particularly strong might become gladiators.

7. Some were also criminals

Gladiators could also be criminals, who also had no choice about being sent into the arena. Usually they were people who had been spared execution, but sent to the arena instead as a punishment.

8. But some signed up for it!  

By the 1^st century A.D. people had started to sign up for the job! These tended to be ex-soldiers, working class men or desperate freedmen (former slaves). Being a gladiator meant you could have shelter and food, as well as a fighting chance of fame and riches. And speaking of that...

9. Some were celebrities!

Gladiators could become REALLY popular! They were kind of like the athletes of their days, and the msot popular ones would appear on murals, paintings and statues!

10. If you were famous, you might survive!

Because the public had favourite gladiators, it didn’t make much sense to kill them off when you could get a good profit out of them!  Some were trained to wound rather than kill so they could return and fight another day.

11. They had fangirls

Grossness warning! There were lots of women who LOVED the gladiators - well, they were mostly strong young men, so that makes perfect sense! But they would go so far as to dip their hairpins in gladiator blood (ew!) because they though it had magical powers. They would also collect gladiator sweat (eewwwww!) and use it in perfumes!

12. Their lifespan wasn’t the longest

Even if you became a top celeb fighter, your lifespan as a gladiator was still pretty short. The average gladiator only lived to his mid twenties, and historians estimate that they typically only fought about ten battles before being killed.

13. Some gladiators were women

Women gladiators (called gladiatrices - gladiatrix is the singular) were less common but show up a lot in historic records of gladiator fighting. Women gladiators were often a novelty and not taken very seriously, but some were very good fighters. Emperor Commodus banned female gladiators by 200 AD, because he thought they made the crowd behave badly.

14. ...and children, too

Think P.E. is stressful? It could be so much worse! Gladiators began training when they were very young, and though they weren't the norm there are accounts of children being sent in to fight, usually as a novelty. Remember, children could be slaves in this society, so a lot of lives weren't valued very highly at all.

15. Some were also emperors

Gladiators were very low-born, but that didn't stop the occasional emperor from getting in on the action! Caligula, Hadrian and Titus are some emperors known to have definitely joined in - but historians agree that it's very likely the gladiators went easy on them and allowed them to win unwounded. Emperor Commodus also liked to slaughter animals in the arena, but from the safety of a big platform. Lovely!

16. The “thumbs down” didn’t mean what you think it means

Famously in the 2000 Russell Crowe film Gladiator, the emperor decides whether a gladiator will be killed by giving a thumbs down. But some historians think this isn't true, and that a thumbs up was the actual signal for death, and a thumbs down meant mercy. It was probably changed for the film because those gestures mean the opposite things for a modern audience.

17. They fought animals too

In a lot of modern films and TV shows gladiators are shown fighting animals in the arena - lions and tigers and bears, oh my! This was actually not as common as you might think, though lots of animals were killed in the arena. They might be forced to fight each other, or be used to execute criminals by mauling them. Only one type of gladiator would fight animals, and they were called bestiarii.

18. They had trade unions

A trade union is an organisation of workers who want to improve their working conditions. That sounds VERY unlike the jobs the gladiators had, which had pretty awful working conditions all things considered! But there was a kind of brotherhood among the gladiators, and they called their unions "collegia". These groups would organise proper burials for fallen gladiators, and sometimes organise a pension for that gladiator's family.

19. The Hunger Games are based on the gladiators

If you're a Hunger Games fan you'll have noticed a few similarities between the gladiator matches and the Hunger Games - disadvantaged young people who have no choice but to fight each other to the death in a big arena for entertainment? Sounds familiar! Author Suzanne Collins has said this was her intention, and she even based the fancy Capitol off the Roman Empire. Most Capitol characters have Roman names, and the architecture in the films is very inspired by ancient Rome, too. The name "Panem" comes from a Latin phrase panem et circenses, which means "bread and circuses". This comes from a satirical Roman poem, which says that people won't care about politics or things that actually matter as long as you feed them and keep them entertained.

20. The famous clown song is actually about gladiators

You’ve definitely heard “Entrance of the Gladiators” by Julius Fučík before (YouTube it!), and you probably associate it with clowns and the circus. It’s actually supposed to be an epic tune about a bunch of gladiators entering the colloseum and fighting for glory. Try listening to it and thinking about that!