Essay On Gladiators

Words: 1183
Pages: 5

Gladiators
I’m sure you’ve heard of gladiators. The big brass lion wrestling warrior. Well as it may seem there is more to these mighty souls. In fact they had classes. Not all battles ended in death, sometimes women fought, there are many bizarre things to these men and women. All the studies show gladiators were more than just brutes with armor, they had classes, life's, ways to gain popularity. First introduced in 246 BC, they began a prisoner's that were given the chance and the training to win freedom. They originally started by clashing at funerals outside of Rome before they were adopted it. Typically Gladiators were prisoners of war. But however they could win freedom by fighting in the arena. Although there were volunteers many,
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The weapons used by the gladiators are another story by themselves, some gladiators did use bizarre weapons. Each gladiator trained using the weapons from tridents and nets to a sword and shield. Sometimes people from the crowd would be called into the ring to fight. Of course this was a very unfair fight. A classic pair of weapons are the sword and shield, the most iconic piece of weaponry, especially when it comes to gladiators. The classes included Rudiarius (a free gladiator, a stereotypical gladiator was a slave who could fight for his freedom.), Tertiarius, and many more. These warriors would fight in coliseums, in these arenas they fought animals and other people. Each class would have it’s own signified weapons, from a trident, spear, sword and shield, or just nothing but bare hands. They all fought in different styles: for example the Retiarii (net fighters) these men fought with nets, typically against themselves. They wore no armor, unlike many. One very strange class where Amazones/Gladiatrices, strangely enough for the time these warriors were not men, but in fact women. They are believed to have fought with with no body armor other than two arm guards, other