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  Adopted from the earlier Etruscans, perhaps by way of Campania, gladiatorial games ( munera ) originated in the rites of sacrifice due the spirits of the dead and the need to propitiate them with offerings of blood. They were introduced to Rome in 264 BC, when the sons of Junius Brutus honored their father by matching three pairs of gladiators. Traditionally,  munera  were the obligatory funerary offerings owed aristocratic men at their death, although the games did not have to be presented then. Elected  aedile  in 65 BC, Julius Caesar commemorated his father, who had died twenty years before, with a display of 320 pairs of gladiators in silvered armor (Pliny,  Natural History , XXXIII.53: Plutarch,  Life of Julius Caesar , V.9). Still mindful of the rebellion of Spartacus, a nervous Senate limited the number of gladiators allowed in Rome (Suetonius,  Life of Julius Caesar , X.2). In 46 BC, after recent victories in Gaul and Egypt, Caesar again...

Kyle Hoekstra 20 Aug 2024 Website Twitter   Image Credit: Those About to Die / NBCU While the bloodshed on film and TV adaptations might persuade us otherwise, leading speaker on  gladiatorial  life and historical consultant Alexander Mariotti insists that death in the ancient Roman arena was “an absolute rarity”. Joining Tristan Hughes on The Ancients, the consultant on Ridley Scott’s  Gladiator  and Amazon Prime’s  Those About to Die  (in which he even has a cameo) explains that deaths, when they happened, more often followed later from injuries. “Combat sports were very violent,” says Mariotti. “And gladiatorial combat is part of that pantheon of sports.” However the use of weapons made it particularly dangerous. “One of the reasons they don’t wear tunics is because the linen or the wool getting stuck in a wound would kill you [from] an infection.” Those About to Die Image Credit: Those About to Die / NBCU “But what we do find from modern forensics ...