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GLADIATORS with Alexander Mariotti · The Smart Cookies podcast

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  Alexander Mariotti is an award-winning Roman historical consultant and a leading speaker
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  on gladiatorial life, combat and weaponry. Following academic work, his main focus has
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  been working as a historical consultant and advisor to the media, featuring in countless
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  documentaries, TV shows and movies, most recently for the Amazon Prime TV show, Those About
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  to Die with Sir Anthony Hopkins himself. Alexander, welcome to the show.
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  Thank you so much for having me. It's a pleasure.
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  I was really looking forward to this conversation, to be honest. I am a massive fan of gladiators.
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  We're going to talk about it later on. But I wanted to ask the following first. Now,
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  I'm sure that your job is outrageously fun. I can feel my jealousy dripping from the very
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  sentence I just uttered. But is it also a tiny bit frustrating because you're graciously
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  giving away all of this awesome knowledge that you have, trying to make everything look
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  more authentic? In other words, better. But then the director is just like, I'm sorry,
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  Alexander, but the shot is going to look much more epic if, I don't know, Spartacus stabs
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  the gladiator in the crotch or something. Yeah. Well, the joke I always say is that
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  I'm actually paid to be ignored. But it's not as glamorous as it sounds. For me, it
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  is an incredibly rewarding thing to work on films for a simple reason. Historians spend
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  a long time reading books and formulating ideas of what things should look like. But
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  it's purely imagination. And I remember many years ago being at a lecture where the lecture
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  was giving this great description. And I was thinking to myself, he's talking about things
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  he's never seen. How's he so sure? And so I ended up working on a couple of shows. I
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  worked on the HBO series, Rome. And what I found was that I actually got the opposite.
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  I got to see these things in person. I got to see the massive sets of Rome rebuilt. I
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  got to see the Roman soldiers. I got to see people dressed as gladiators fighting. And
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  it was interesting to note what the imagination caught, what the eye caught, what the mind
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  remembered. And these things certainly have helped me in being able to try and bring that
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  world to life. So for me, that's the side. That's why I do it. That's why I enjoy it
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  so much. And on the other side, it's not really frustrating because I don't see film and television
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  as a means of historical descriptions. I see them really in the same vein as the games
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  of the Coliseum. They're not meant to be accurate. They are an entertainment. They're an imaginative
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  version of events. When people sat in the Coliseum, I really see it the same way as
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  when we sit in the cinema. We sit in our seats. We have an experience which we don't actually
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  physically experience. We visually, we mentally experience it in the same way that those who
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  sat in the Coliseum did not really, you know, they weren't the ones fighting the animals.
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  They weren't the ones fighting each other with weapons, but they were in a way, they
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  were visually and imaginatively doing so. So for me, film and television is just the
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  modern version of gladiator games. And that's why I don't go there trying to make it historical.
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  I do try and put as much history as possible. I think actually that the truth is far more
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  interesting than fiction. I don't actually think there's a necessity, but I also understand
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  that the film and TV industry is not an academic industry. It is an entertainment industry.
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  I see your point, but surely sometimes you must go like, I wish they did it this way.
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  Sometimes like you said, sort of like some sort of a historian's itch. It would just
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  be better if it was more authentic, right? Well, I've walked off shows because of it.
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  I've walked off shows, but really because, oh yeah, yeah, yeah. I worked off a show called
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  Domino. I walked off it because I had a disagreement which I didn't, at that point, the problem
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  was that there's a lot of negative stereotypes which are reinforced historically. And I felt
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  that they were being intellectually dishonest on purpose. So there I walked off. But that's,
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  I mean, that happens. That happens. But it's very rare it happens. I've actually walked
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  off a couple of things. I walked off in like a tantrum. I just said, you know, thanks very
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  much. I have other obligations and kind of terminated it there. I worked on a, I shouldn't
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  really mention the names of things, but I walked off something where someone was trying
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  to tell me because the costumes were made out of denim. Oh yeah, denim is historical.
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  It's not, it's not historical. I can tell you for a fact it isn't, especially when we
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  talk about a time period. But yeah, sometimes it is a little frustrating because I think
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  there's no need sometimes to make things up. I think history is fascinating in itself and
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  you could actually use things that are historically accurate and still wow crowds. In fact, I
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  think you might get more of a wow factor because people say, oh, this never happened. And then
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  they look it up and go, oh, it did. Wow. That's amazing. A good example is in the first gladiator,
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  they were going to have Russell Crowe coming out the Coliseum as the general maximist or
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  as the gladiator. And he was going to be advertising olive oil. And they thought, no, that's ridiculous.
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  No one's ever going to believe that's true. Whereas the fact is the gladiators actually
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  did advertise products when they went to their fights. So it's funny that they thought the
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  more modern audience would never accept something of that caliber when in fact it's absolutely
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  true. Now that you mentioned it in the context of that film that I'm a massive fan of, imagining
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  Russell Crowe suddenly advertising olive oil would throw me off a little bit. I have to
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  say probably. OK, so now I understand there has to be like a dramatic, it has to make
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  dramatic sense within the context of the genre and the film and the story. You can't just
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  go authenticity and then like advertise olive oil. And it's going to be a funny little scene
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  that sticks out like a sore thumb. Well, put it this way, you know, the whole premise of
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  those about to die is the title because it's so dramatic. It just really grabs your attention.
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  Those about to die salute you. We all know this phrase. It's not an actual phrase that's
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  attached to gladiators. It really doesn't have very much to do with gladiators at all.
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  And the truth about gladiators is that if it was accurate, it would be those who rarely
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  die salute you. But that would make a great title of a film. You know, if that was the
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  name of the series, those who rarely die, you're like, I don't know if I'm a bit underwhelming.
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  Yeah, I hope someone does die. Maybe they you know, how exciting is that going to be?
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  You know, but yeah, the truth sometimes isn't as dramatic as directors want them to be.
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  And that's OK, because film people are film people. They're not history people. Yeah,
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  exactly. Exactly. Fascinating. That's why I love talking to historians, because the truth
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  is more more fun. It's more fun if it's authentic and it's more fun if it's more complicated
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  and more nuanced than it's more relatable. Exactly. It's more relatable. If we take I
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  mean, that's that's my thing with gladiators is that I always try and get to the human
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  side of it and try and make people understand we aren't talking about superhumans. We're
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  you know, we're talking about people. And when you talk about people, then you understand
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  that you and I could be gladiators. We are part of that experience. We're not detached
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  from it. There's a there's a certain attitude when people go to the Coliseum to feel detached
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  from it like the Coliseum, some sort of alien structure is from a different time period.
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  We can't understand it. You know, we're so much more moral and noble. And the truth is,
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  we're not. We are the Romans. We're very much Romans. And had we existed in that time, we
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  would either have taken the chance to be someone in the arena, or definitely to be the ones
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  watching from the spectator stands of the arena. So when you get to the human side,
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  you start to relate more to it. You know, when you take away the myth that gladiators
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  were guys who, you know, fought for hours on end, and, and you're like, No, because
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  the body's a machine. And we're using the same machine that our ancestors were. So when
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  you get in a fight, after about five minutes, and it doesn't matter if you're like the champion
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  most, you know, greatest athlete of the UFC, you see these guys after a round or two, they're
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  they're gassed. So why do we look at that and then look at gladiator movies and go,
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  Yeah, these guys had swords and they're swinging and no, they fought in rounds and they had
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  referees, because they were humans, they were people, and they had limitations. So you got
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  to get through the myth to get to the person. And when you get to the person, then it becomes
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  more relatable and you go, Oh, this is my history. It's about us. Okay, let's start to go through
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  the myth. Something I always wondered was, why was it the Romans specifically as opposed to any
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  other ancient culture in the region, let's say, like, I don't know, the Egyptians, the Persians, or
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  the Greeks, who developed this sport? It's a good question. You know, it certainly is, I think the
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  size and scale of the Roman Empire and the nature of the Roman Empire that led to gladiator sport
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  being the sport. But its origins, you know, its origins are a little bit shrouded in mystery,
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  because we have sort of two versions of where the gladiator came from. And I actually do attribute
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  it to the Greeks, I think, well, first of all, I think that there's elements of gladiatorial combat,
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  which are intrinsically sewn into our DNA. I mean, there's just, you know, the idea of combat,
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  of superiority of combat, that that's always going to be part of us. And you see it prevalent in our
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  sports, in our culture, in our entertainment still today. And you've seen it throughout history.
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  So I would argue that there's elements of gladiatorial combat that have been with us
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  since the beginning of time. But as a sport, you really see it with the Greeks. And the Iliad,
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  Homer gives us a great scene in the Iliad in Book 23, which is the funeral of Patroclus. Patroclus
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  is Achilles' friend. He's killed by Hector, Prince of Troy, and Achilles puts on a show. So the show
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  has three elements which have to do with gladiatorial combat. The first is the funerary element.
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  So because it's a funeral, he puts on games. The second is the entertainment element. So he gets
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  all his prize champions, Greek champions to fight for prizes. So they're not fighting to the death.
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  They're putting on exhibitions of bravery, of skill, of martial skill to honor the dead.
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  But at the same time, they're not killing each other. And then there's sacrifice,
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  because then Achilles sacrifices 12 Trojans. So in one scene, you've got the three rudimentary
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  elements of gladiatorial combat. So that's the seed. And of course, the Greeks conquered most of
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  southern Italy. In fact, it was known as Maniagres, or Great Greece. So it's prevalent in Italy. And
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  when the Romans start conquering, as they did, and taking over these settlements, they inherit a lot
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  of Greek culture. And that's where the sort of, let's say, the beginning of gladiatorial combat
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  really comes from. It's in Italy already, but it's brought by the Greeks. It's just that the Romans
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  take it to another level, because they introduce it first of all as funerary games. But then you
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  have the right environment, which is that you have the Roman Republic. You have a period of guys who
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  are becoming excessively wealthy and powerful and political. And what they do is they start using
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  gladiatorial combat, because it has such a draw to make themselves popular.
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  And what happens is that Rome becomes an empire. So it's really, it's funny how
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  the sport is tied to the rise of the empire and the rise of the emperor. And they're so linked
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  that one needed the other, because the emperor used the games, used the draw, and the interest
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  in gladiators as a way to make himself popular. And the gladiator needed the industry,
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  which was supplied by the empire, to become the sport it did and to reach the levels it did.
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  So that's why the Roman gladiator exists as it does and why its history is so tied to Roman history.
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  Fascinating. But if we go back to the Greeks for just a second, Roman culture obviously owed a lot
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  to Greek culture, right? And I always kind of imagined, I don't know if that's accurate,
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  but the ancient Greeks is maybe a little bit like the modern French, a stereotype obviously, but as
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  sort of epitomizing the high culture of the day, being super bougie, looking slightly down on what
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  they perceive to be less sophisticated societies, even if some of those, like the Romans, actually
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  conquered them, right? So do we perhaps know what the Greeks thought of this for them, probably
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  quite Rufian activity? You know, the Greeks, well, we do know because they had a philosophy.
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  So the Greeks philosophy was Arete. Arete is personal excellence in what you do. And it
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  actually came to a sort of conflict with Roman philosophy, where the Romans believed in a
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  philosophy which I think is a very important one. It's called Vertus. Vertus is mental and
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  physical strength and agility and endurance. And I think that Vertus is again a very DNA,
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  it's in our DNA because you see it in our culture. You know, UFC fighting is Vertus. It is the
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  appreciation of physical, mental endurance. If you watch two guys in the championship of the UFC,
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  even if the other guy gets beat, but he puts in, he takes the punches, he gets back up again,
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  and we really admire that. That's Vertus. And I think it's funny because I would say in recent
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  years, there's been a real attack on that aspect of culture, of society, sorry. And the more we
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  try and suppress it, the more we create it. You know, superheroes are Vertus, like Hercules was
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  to the Romans. He's a superhero. He's more than human, but he's there to remind us to go forward,
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  to get, to be better, to endure what life throws at you. And Arete and Vertus,
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  really came to a head because Arete then what happens is when the Romans conquer the Greeks,
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  the Greeks are no longer about war. So they become obsessed with personal excellence in sport.
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  And the Romans hated it because they were all about these bodies. They were all about the physique,
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  about being perfect. They weren't actually functional, but they wanted to look like the
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  statues. Originally the statues were made aesthetics aesthetics. And I think that if you
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  look at today's gym culture, you have the same problem. You have like, if you go on Instagram,
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  you've got all these perfect bodies, but they're not functional. You know, they're great to look
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  at, but they don't have any function behind them. And that's exactly what the Greeks and Romans had
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  a problem with. The Romans are like the Greeks are just, you know, they're obsessed with their
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  looks and their diets and they, they're not really tough. They don't have the Vertus that the Romans
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  do. Wow. That is what a superb analogy. So like Greeks in contemporary terms, gym culture, Romans,
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  UFC functionality versus aesthetics, functionality versus aesthetics. You know, anyone who goes to
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  the gym or who's becoming an old man like me and goes on Instagram and sees all these like these
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  poses, you know, and then you're like, you can't actually run, you know, you look at these great
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  bodybuilders, you can't run, you couldn't probably fight. And I feel, I feel very Roman when I do
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  that. And I think, okay, well, that's, that's what the Romans were experiencing. So, and I'm sure
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  many people can relate to that.
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  Amen. Okay. Slight pushback. One last time on account of the ancient Greeks. So they did enjoy
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  famously, of course, watching sports, including fighting like pancratio and wrestling as part of
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  the Olympic Games. So yes, but so what would you say was the crucial difference then there between
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  these sports and gladiator gladiatorial combat.
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  So gladiator sports is so the Greeks call these the heavy sports. And gladiator sports is an
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  extension of that. You know, it's kind of like, okay, we can get two guys boxing each other.
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  Great. Now, okay, let's, let's go one further. What can we do? What about if they could wrestle
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  each other? Okay. What about if they could punch and kick each other? Okay. Then you got
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  pancratium. That's like, well, how do we go further? What if we added weapons? Okay. Perfect. So
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  really it's an extension, but the mentality that the Greeks originally had towards their sports is
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  inherited by gladiators because majoritally gladiators didn't die, but there was always the
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  risk of death. The gladiator did not walk into the arena thinking, okay, I'm going to go to the
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  gladiator did not walk into the arena thinking, oh, I'm going to, I'm not, I'm going to avoid death
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  completely. The gladiator walked in knowing that death might be waiting for them, but they took it
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  with courage. They laughed at it. The, anyone who did pancratium, who wrestled, who boxed face the
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  same mentality because when you boxed, it wasn't in rounds. You went to you were incapacitated.
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  Many of the injuries you would receive in boxing in pancratium. I mean, they were life threatening,
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  life changing injuries. You know, you're talking about two guys. So somebody had to get knocked
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  out. No, you want the only way the fight stopped was if you put one finger up, which is what the
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  gladiators later, in fact, you see that there's elements of the sports that are then inherited
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  into gladiator combat. So in gladiator combat, when you were done, you did the misio, you put a finger
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  up, which by the way, I always think is so funny that if you go to modern sports stadiums, there's
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  people with foam hands that have the same finger, you know, the big foam finger in a, in the American
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  sports, the glove. Yeah. And that symbol is a Roman and Greek symbol. So in boxing, you put your
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  finger up. If you're like, I'm, you know, maybe you got smashed in the face and you're like, no,
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  that's me done. Or you were incapacitated. That's when the, when the round stopped, when the fight
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  stopped. So there are no rounds. You imagine two guys, they've got leather or wood or metal in
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  their gloves. They are clocking each other. In fact, there's a famous statue called the boxer at
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  rest. It's a beautiful bronze statue in a museum in Rome. And you see the guy and he's kind of
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  resting and you can see his face has smashed his nose has smashed his ears are cauliflowered,
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  his lips, you know, cut Jesus and you understand. Yeah. In fact, there's a very famous inscription
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  from Greece that says a boxer's victory is earned in blood. So they, they, the violence,
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  um, of sport is definitely prevalent in Greek sports. Of course it is, but the difference between
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  the Greeks and the Romans. And I always say that the Roman gladiator was the first modern sports
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  superstar. And people always get upset. In fact, if you go on Instagram right now, you'll see,
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  there's a couple of videos of me saying it and everyone's always like, what about the Olympics?
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  The Olympics did not reach the reach that modern sports stars do today. If you look at modern sports
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  stars, the reach they have, the wealth they have, the draw they have is unparalleled in history.
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  Unless you're talking about the Roman gladiator, the Olympians didn't come close to the fame or
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  the scale or the wealth that the Roman gladiator did. So I'm not saying obviously the Olympians
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  were the first sports star or for sports men, but the first sports superstars that are relatable to
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  modern superstars are the Roman gladiator. They experienced fame on a level. I mean, the Roman
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  empire is 60 million people. And if you are a good gladiator, you will be the draw. People don't go
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  to the Olympics or never went to the Olympics to see a particular athlete. Romans would go to a
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  match to see a gladiator. And we know this because there are posters in Pompeii that say,
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  you know, come to the games, Fiamma will be appearing. You're like, oh my God. And if you
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  go to a poster, it says come to the UFC because Conor McGregor is fighting. You're like, oh yeah,
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  yeah, definitely. I'm going to go to that. So that's the difference. The Greeks did not do it on the
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  level the Romans did. So one of the most persistent myths is that all gladiators were basically
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  slaves either acquired as prisoners of war or simply sold to gladiator schools. Is that view
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  generally true? No. So there's a great misunderstanding with gladiators, which is that
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  a lot of things that have nothing to, not nothing to do, but are sort of tied into the games are
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  lumped together. So for example, when you went to a gladiator's a game or a spectacle, what you would
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  see is you would see hunters fighting animals. You'd find criminals called Noxii who were condemned
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  to death. And that could be by fighting animals, by fighting each other with weapons. And then
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  you've got gladiators. And later on, Christian historians kind of lumped these things together.
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  So what we get is the image of the gladiator that we are accustomed to, which is the poor slave
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  thrown into the arena, fights people, fights weapon, sorry, fights people, fights animals to the
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  death. And that myth has perpetuated itself through modern culture, through film, through television,
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  through theater even. That's not true. Gladiators did not fight animals because beast hunting was
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  an entirely different sport. Criminals did not get any training and were condemned to death. They
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  were not gladiators. And gladiators fought each other and very rarely, if ever to the death.
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  It's a real rarity. In fact, we know that they used, for example, blunted weapons. We know this
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  because there's inscriptions. There's one, for example, from an emperor called Alexander Severus,
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  who says to this guy, I give you permission. He's giving permission to use sharp weapons,
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  because that was way more exciting, but way more dangerous and above all, way more costly,
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  because these guys were athletes, professional athletes that are paid, that are trained,
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  that are fed, that are clothed, that are housed. There's such a cost involved. That cost does not
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  apply to criminals. So condemned criminals would fight each other, yes. And you said it right,
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  prisoners of war. Well, what is a prison of war? You are an empire. You're fighting against a tribe.
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  You capture a couple of thousand guys. What do you do with them? You capture a bunch of
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  men. What do you do with them? You know, we're talking about a society that values slavery.
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  So what you're talking about in terms of human costs is a commodity. You've got a thousand men.
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  You can put them to work, but you can't because the Romans have a history of slaves rebelling.
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  And the most famous is the story of Spartacus. So you have to kind of weigh your odds there and
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  say, if we keep a thousand fighting men in prime condition, who speak the same language in our
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  country, there's a risk they're going to turn against us. So one of the things they did was
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  they used them to their advantage. As an example, fight against the empire, disrupt the peace. You
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  will find yourself in the arena with weapons fighting against your own people. So they would
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  make them fight to the death. They're not gladiators. Gladiators by 75 BC are half slaves
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  free men. So it was open to pretty much everybody. They were slave gladiators. Of course they were,
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  but we forget the most fundamental thing to be a gladiator. You had to have the physical attributes.
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  It's like saying, you know, if today you could just grab anybody and make them a boxer,
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  you know, you could just pick anybody you wanted and force them to be a boxer.
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  No, they had to have the physical attributes to be. So even slaves, you had to be physically
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  right. It wasn't like they just picked some guy off the street and went, oh, he's a slave. No,
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  you have to have the physical attributes to be a gladiator. Okay. You just said you had to have
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  the physical attributes to be the gladiator. Could you talk a little bit about the process
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  of scouting potential gladiators? What did that look like? I'm a big NBA fan, for example,
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  and there you have professional scouts sent out to every corner of the planet investigating
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  talents, writing scouting reports, hoping to stumble upon the next Michael Jordan. Was it
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  sort of similar to that? Yeah, we have it. We have actually, we have inscriptions of the most famous
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  gladiatorial agent in Pompeii who goes and scouts, he has scouts and you know, the scouts will go
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  and they'll say, hey, listen, you know, the decline of gladiatorial combat came because the money
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  got taken out of the sport. When there was the money in the sport, it was like every sport today.
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  Like every big sport, right? First of all, it's monopolized. So you have the NBA. So you and I
• 25:12
  can't put on basketball games, unfortunately, you know, back then the NBA was the emperor. The
• 25:18
  emperor says, no, I'm the only one who puts on gladiator games. So all the best gladiators are
• 25:23
  reserved for me. And you had talent scouts and agents who would go around and then they would
• 25:29
  sell to the teams because they were teams. There was what they were called familiars. They were,
• 25:33
  we say family, but they were gladiator troops, teams. And you go to a guy and say, listen,
• 25:38
  I've got this, I was just in a slave mine, assault mine, I don't know, on the outskirts of the
• 25:45
  empire. I bought this guy. He's six foot two, which by the way, was very tall for Roman times.
• 25:50
  Romans were not particularly tall people, but nobody in Europe was particularly tall
• 25:54
  back then. So, you know, six foot, he's big, he's muscular, he's good looking. So he'd make a great
• 26:02
  retiarius because he's the one who doesn't have the helmet. Or, you know, I got this big stocky guy.
• 26:06
  So yeah, it's exactly the same. They would scout out physical exceptions that would make great
• 26:11
  gladiators and they would know exactly what to look out for. And equally, you could come and
• 26:17
  volunteer yourself, but you had to physically go through a medical. So to do a medical, you had to
• 26:22
  go through a medical. So to do a medical examination, then they'd look at you physically and say,
• 26:27
  yeah, you know what? Okay. And you had a rookie, a sort of rookie contract, which was a two year
• 26:32
  contract in which you were trained and they say, if you've got what it takes, and if you don't,
• 26:37
  they let you go. And if you do, they sign you to a five year contract, 2000 years ago.
• 26:44
  What was the training regimen like once you did make it into the gladiator school? Do we have any
• 26:50
  descriptions or particular exercises or routines preserved maybe? So we do and we don't. And I
• 26:58
  know that seems like a strange thing to say, but we've got a great Roman writer called Vagetius,
• 27:02
  and he writes about military training. And what we do know is that military training, gladiator training
• 27:07
  are actually linked for most of Roman history. Because in 105 BC, we have a guy called Rutilius
• 27:18
  Rufus, who starts using gladiatorial training. He actually goes to the schools and he says,
• 27:24
  train my soldiers. Because that shows you that already in 105 BC, these guys are exceptionally
• 27:30
  well trained. So we know that the military training and gladiatorial training are linked.
• 27:35
  And through that, we can work out, as Vagetius says, no man either in the battlefield or on the
• 27:42
  arena has ever been successful without first fighting against the palace. So the palace is a
• 27:48
  six foot log, like a wooden dummy, and they would strike against it with a weighted weapon,
• 27:55
  usually a wooden sword called a rudis, which was to build up your muscle. And so they would have
• 28:00
  done kind of what we do in boxing or UFC. When you watch those guys training, they do combinations,
• 28:07
  right? They do combinations, takedowns. That's what it would have been. But we also know because
• 28:13
  we inherited this from the Greeks, there's a system called the tetrad, and it is a split training
• 28:20
  system. It's a four day routine. So you do one day skills, you do one day physio, you do one day
• 28:27
  rest. And then you kind of have another day where you focus on like specific skills, and then you
• 28:36
  restart again. So the training would have been very intense. But part of the training would have been
• 28:43
  when to stop. Because if you think about, again, when you think about UFC, when those guys are
• 28:49
  knocking each other out, right? They have to often be pulled off each other. Because you're in a fight
• 28:54
  or flight situation, your adrenaline is kicking in. It doesn't matter how good you are, how much
• 28:58
  training you have. When you get in a ring, and there's people chanting your name, and they're
• 29:02
  booing and they're shouting and you're getting punched in the face. You don't reason. The fight
• 29:08
  isn't about reasoning. It's about your mental strength, because it's the ability to control the
• 29:13
  body to do the right moves. Glad to hear a comment was the same, but it was even more so because you
• 29:18
  had weapons. So the point of the training wasn't to kill. It was to put on a show and to stop
• 29:25
  when the referee told you to stop because there's two referees. Or most importantly, when the editor,
• 29:30
  who was usually the emperor, the guy who put on the games, told you to stop because they decide
• 29:34
  who wins and who loses, not you. So very intense training, and so much so that the military starts
• 29:41
  using their training. You partially answered this question already. But did gladiators, as a rule,
• 29:48
  had to look good and be kind of ripped? Or could a successful gladiator, if he was a showman, also be
• 29:56
  a bit chubby and potentially as ugly as a gargoyle if he was wearing a helmet, let's say?
• 30:02
  We have a very beautiful mosaic in a place called Galleria Borghese, which is in Rome.
• 30:10
  And you see all types of bodies. You see from... Because you had different disciplines.
• 30:15
  The gladiators were mixed martial artists. Every type of discipline, a gladiator had a specific
• 30:22
  type of fighting that went with it because they had a specific weaponry and specific armor that
• 30:28
  complemented it. So they didn't fight the same way. They all had different styles. And a bit like,
• 30:33
  again, like UFC where you've got the guy who does grappling. And then it's become now where everybody
• 30:40
  has to be a little bit good at something, right? Gladiators became the same. So they became
• 30:44
  ambidextrous. One could fight as a ritiaris, but then maybe learn another style. So yes, so physically
• 30:51
  they look different. So like you get a Murmillo, he was wearing very heavy armor. So he would
• 30:55
  usually be like the big stocky guy, like the big sort of heavyweight looking guy. Then you get like
• 31:01
  the Thracian, he'd be a little slender. He'd be quite muscular because he's all about speed and
• 31:06
  agility versus the Murmillo that's all about power. Like you're whacking against him. He's got a big
• 31:12
  shield, big helmet. So yeah. And of course it had to draw also for aesthetics. You know, we see this
• 31:19
  in our sports today, you get some fighters that are technically brilliant, but man, they're boring
• 31:25
  to watch. But then you get the showman, the person who gives you the show, who entertains the crowd.
• 31:32
  He might not even be the best fighter, but that's the ones we like. And the gladiators knew that it
• 31:37
  was more about the show than about the fight itself. And that's because the Roman world is based on
• 31:43
  fighting. People experience fighting. We experience fighting as men. We live in the realm of violence.
• 31:51
  We have to be constantly aware that if we go to a football game or a pub or any sort of social
• 31:57
  gathering, there's always, especially when you throw in alcohol, the propensity for violence.
• 32:02
  So we know violence, which is why when we look at our sports, we kind of accept what is good violence
• 32:09
  in the sense of who's able to actually overcome physically these obstacles, who's really good at
• 32:14
  fighting and take that to the ancient world where weaponry fighting was very, very frequent.
• 32:20
  So they knew what weaponry fighting looked like. The arena wasn't a representation of what a real
• 32:26
  fight was like in the same way that movies are not a real representation of any fights, of street
• 32:31
  fights, of war. They give us an imaginative, entertaining version. And that's what we look for.
• 32:37
  Same with the Romans. Okay. What about diet? Do we have any archaeological evidence or written
• 32:43
  records for that matter on how, what were these guys eating? Was it like today all about like
• 32:49
  consuming lean protein or was it again different depending on the class of gladiator?
• 32:59
  The thing with gladiators is I don't give a given rule for anything. We are talking about a sport
• 33:03
  that's 700 years old. You look at our sports, UC I think is like 30, 40 years old.
• 33:11
  Football, American football is what? 100 and something, 200 years old. This is a sport that
• 33:18
  lasted for 700 years. There was bound to be different periods of different things. There are
• 33:23
  always theories go around that they were like barley eaters or they fed them a lot of like
• 33:28
  a lot of like kind of like sumo wrestlers, like a stew is called pulse, which is a lot of grains.
• 33:36
  But we find gladiator skeletons and from the tests they do on them, they seem to have very
• 33:42
  balanced normal diets. So it depends where, think of it this way. Imagine they found skeletons of an
• 33:51
  NBA player 2000 years from now in America and they found one in Italy, you know, from the Italian
• 34:01
  basketball team. There would be comparative differences physically, you know, but if we
• 34:06
  only found basketball players bones from Italy, we'd say, oh, they weren't actually that tall.
• 34:13
  We find that they weren't as tall as we think they were. It's so isolated because we are so dependent
• 34:18
  on archaeological finds and they aren't as frequent as we think they are. But they would
• 34:23
  have had very dice. And, you know, there's some great advice from even Olympians who say when it
• 34:28
  comes to the games, try and consume less sweets and drink less alcohol. Well, that makes sense.
• 34:34
  It makes sense because going back, not to repeat myself, the body is a machine and we aren't using
• 34:39
  a different machine from them. They're using the same ones. So if you do a certain diet, you know,
• 34:45
  the results you're going to get. So it stands to reason that they will have had diets very similar
• 34:49
  to what we have a little bit of protein, carbs. They would have they would have worked it out over
• 34:54
  the course of time. Well, they figured out that carbs are problematic already back then.
• 35:01
  Well, you couldn't certainly eat bread and look like the statues, could you?
• 35:09
  Yeah, I guess that it's not so hard to figure that out. I'd love to meet somebody who eats
• 35:13
  bread. You know, I love bread. I'm addicted to it. I'm addicted to carbs. I know.
• 35:19
  But I don't look like the statue. So, you know, I realized that if I want to look like
• 35:24
  the statues of the statue of Hercules, I probably need to change my diet and eat
• 35:28
  whatever that guy was eating to look that way. I'm never going to be able to let go of croissants.
• 35:35
  It's just it's just a fact. Oh, well, I wanted to ask you, what was Gladiator's social standing
• 35:46
  in Roman society? Were they perceived as the lowest of the low, as people usually say?
• 35:53
  Yeah, but Roman society is a little Victorian in that case. They don't like people who show
• 35:57
  themselves off. The Romans were very about modesty. They're actually it's quite funny
• 36:01
  because I'm half Scottish. It's very Scottish. We don't like to show off where, you know,
• 36:07
  we're kind of suspicious. So like self-deprecation is big kind of. Yeah, yeah, yeah. In fact,
• 36:12
  the Emperor Augustus is the one who puts visors on helmets. The helmets are open before. And this is
• 36:17
  a really excellent move. First of all, because he kind of adheres to the modesty of the Romans.
• 36:24
  You're covering the face. So it's not about the person anymore. That person actually melts
• 36:30
  into a character. And that's what's also clever, because the Gladiator helmet is so iconic.
• 36:37
  And we see this in modern culture. Like if you think about Darth Vader, right, in Star Wars,
• 36:44
  one of the most sort of iconic bad guys, if he didn't have the faceplate,
• 36:48
  you know, it wouldn't be as frightening. It wouldn't be as daunting, would it?
• 36:52
  So we have psychology ingrained in us where when we see something that isn't human,
• 36:59
  it's almost like a robot or a titan. And gladiators have that same effect,
• 37:03
  but it also hides the person. So you don't see them, you know, are they in pain? Are they struggling?
• 37:10
  Are they angry? We don't know. Their face is expressionless. And this adds to the lore of the
• 37:17
  Gladiator. It becomes a little bit like a robot or a machine like the Terminator, you know, it has no
• 37:24
  human side to it. And the Romans didn't, for example, like nudity. And this is a big difference
• 37:30
  between Greek athletes. Greeks loved their athletes to be naked and Romans absolutely not.
• 37:34
  So they were armored and clothed and then eventually, yeah, they're just wearing underwear.
• 37:40
  Because to show you how much, by 174 BC, they're just wearing underwear. The reason was that they
• 37:47
  realized that if you got a wound or a cut and your tunic went into the wound, it caused infection.
• 37:53
  So they took, they stripped the guys to their underpants to avoid infection and avoid death.
• 37:58
  And that's 174 BC. So we already know through history that they're trying to keep these guys
• 38:03
  alive. They're not just killing them. But the social standing, the social standing,
• 38:08
  is that you are an infamous infamia, which is the lowest of the low. And these are deemed like the
• 38:14
  worst. You have no social, you know, protection. You are like an actor or an undertaker or a pimp,
• 38:24
  these for some reason. And again, these are people who, who first of all do things that the Romans
• 38:29
  deemed very moral, but also do things that show themselves off like actors. And the crazy thing is
• 38:34
  that they don't have a great social status, but they are loved and admired. And they're very
• 38:41
  contradictory as figures. But I mean, they're part of human society. That's, that's a complex thing.
• 38:48
  I would say the same of sports stars today. You know, you take like some of the most famous UFC
• 38:53
  guys, they're not really seen in a very high social status. They're very wealthy. They're at
• 38:59
  the great parties, but they're not being taken, you know, to political parties to have a discussion
• 39:06
  about what they think about the world. We don't really care what the, it's, we're not interested
• 39:10
  in their intellect. We're interested in their physicality. And gladiators were the same. They
• 39:15
  were entertainers. They were very popular, but they weren't seen in a very high light. Now,
• 39:20
  however, there were several emperors who fought in the arena, sort of like gladiators, right?
• 39:26
  Although I imagine these fights were probably a tiny bit fixed. I presume that whole shtick
• 39:32
  didn't go down particularly well with the Roman public, did it? No, no, but it says a lot about
• 39:38
  the gladiator. Yes, he has no social status, but then you've got the guy who has every social
• 39:44
  status, who is the most wealthy, powerful, influential person in the world at that moment,
• 39:50
  who wants nothing more than to be the gladiator. You know, and you see this, you see this in
• 39:56
  everybody, everybody. I mean, a lot of very famous people, a lot of celebrities, a lot of politicians.
• 40:02
  And what's funny about them is they all have one thing in common, which is every one of them wishes
• 40:06
  they'd done something else or in another life, you know, who, even myself, I would have loved to
• 40:13
  have been a famous athlete. Gosh, that would be amazing, you know, and I think that's the
• 40:18
  thing about it. That would be amazing, you know, I played a professional sport until I was 21 and then
• 40:27
  I stopped playing, but I always thought about it. And even The Rock, you know, The Rock, who I think
• 40:31
  is one of the great examples of a real gladiator today, you know, the hype, the name, the size of
• 40:39
  the guy, the lack of fighting, you know, The Rock is the most famous fighter who's never had a real
• 40:46
  fight in the world, but he's the toughest guy, you know, that's very gladiatorial. There's a great
• 40:50
  amount of gladiatorial pageantry in American wrestling. You know, these guys call themselves
• 40:57
  Flame or Blade, and then you've got the guys called The Rock or The Undertaker. And The Rock
• 41:02
  wanted to be a football star, you know, all these interviews. So you get someone like the Emperor,
• 41:09
  like Commodus, who's the son of Marcus Aurelius, he's born into the Empire. People literally kill
• 41:15
  each other to become Emperor. This guy wants to be a gladiator. And we understand because he grew up,
• 41:20
  you know, it's like growing up in a political family. So like being the, think about Prince
• 41:27
  William. You know, you grow up and you watch football and you're like, man, I just want to be
• 41:31
  a footballer, but I have to be king, you know. And if you have enough power, maybe he says, you know
• 41:38
  what, I'm actually just going to play for Manchester United. We'll be like, well, you're the king.
• 41:43
  That's kind of ridiculous. And you see him on pitch playing because he has all the, you know,
• 41:47
  he has the power to do it. That's what the Emperors are doing. Commodus says, I want to be a gladiator.
• 41:51
  Who's going to stop me? But you're Emperor. And they did. And he trained and, you know, they
• 41:58
  weren't, they were just exhibition fights. They weren't actual fights. The guy who's the Emperor
• 42:01
  wants to be the guy in the arena. And the arena really is incredible because when you look at the
• 42:07
  structure of the stadium, you've got the gladiator in the middle of the sand, and you've got from the
• 42:12
  bottom all the way up, you know, you've got the Emperor, you've got the Imperial family. And as
• 42:17
  you go up to the top, you've got the poor, right? Which is the same as stadiums today. You know,
• 42:24
  where you sit in a stadium is how much money you have. It's, it's, it's economic. If you have a lot
• 42:30
  of money, you can sit right there where the game is at the bottom, great view. And if you don't,
• 42:34
  you get to the top. But what's incredible is that when you watch the games, it turns upside down.
• 42:40
  The focus isn't on the Emperor or the rich or the poor, it's on the gladiator. And I think after the
• 42:47
  Emperor, the gladiator was the one who could command the attention of thousands. They were the most
• 42:54
  popular, admired and worshipped figures of, of, of 60 million people.
• 43:01
  Silly question while we're on it. Was it possible to see any action at all from the bat seats,
• 43:06
  from the poor people seats at the Coliseum? I've never been there myself. Yeah, of course, Coliseum
• 43:12
  probably, you know, they estimate between 50 to 85,000. I tend to go towards the 80,000. Yeah,
• 43:18
  when you go to the top and you look down, it's kind of like being at a stadium. It's the same,
• 43:22
  like, you know, it's not great, but you can kind of make out what's going on. My fascination,
• 43:28
  like I said before, with gladiators obviously began with Ridley Scott's movie, Gladiator,
• 43:32
  which we had on VHS tape in our house. I still remember the epic looking. Yeah, amazing times.
• 43:40
  It was in a golden case that the tape was in. Anyway, in Gladiator, Maximus is beginning as a
• 43:46
  gladiator. It kind of shows the local fighters that if successful, they would eventually work
• 43:51
  their way up from some backwater province all the way to the Coliseum. Was that depiction accurate?
• 43:58
  Yeah, I mean, again, it's accurate of sports today. You get guys that come from, you know,
• 44:04
  some lower leagues, the middle of nowhere, get picked up by an agent and then signed to a big
• 44:08
  team. So yeah, I mean, it's not true of every gladiator, you know, but some certainly would
• 44:14
  have made it from the outskirts and made their way up because you want to play in the big leagues,
• 44:20
  and that's of course the Coliseum. But it's also the reverse, which is that after you were done in
• 44:25
  your career, you could go to the lower leagues. So you see that with football, soccer players,
• 44:31
  right, where they go and play in like obscure leagues that really, the money's great, but
• 44:37
  there's no prestige to it. As a gladiator, once you were done, you could either go into training,
• 44:44
  you could train other gladiators, you could, or you could go and do a stint on the lower provinces,
• 44:50
  you know, such as you saw in the movie gladiator, where they go to Morocco. I keep being kind of
• 44:57
  gobsmacked at how similar it all is to modern professional sports, not just combat sports,
• 45:03
  but sports in general, you know, like a lot of players will, once they finish with their careers,
• 45:08
  would then go on to be coaches or managers or assistant managers or scouts or whatever.
• 45:14
  It sounds so very familiar, everything. Well, there's a historical context for it,
• 45:23
  which is that we are more like the Romans than anyone else has been in history.
• 45:27
  And there's a couple of really important reasons for it. The first is that if you look at the world
• 45:35
  today, it resembles the Roman world in that you can go anywhere and there's a stadium,
• 45:39
  you can go to a small town, to a big city, and there are stadiums. And that's the Roman Empire.
• 45:45
  You could go to a small backwater province, you could go to the big cities, there was a
• 45:50
  stadium, there's an arena. But this is a relatively new thing, because this has only been,
• 45:55
  it's the last 200 years have brought us to this moment, because 200 years ago
• 46:00
  is when they started building the first stadiums again. It's predominantly because in the Victorian
• 46:05
  era, baseball became quite popular in America, cricket in England, and so they started to build
• 46:13
  stadiums. And then you get to our moment, which is where the culmination, we're like at the golden
• 46:17
  age of gladiatorial combat, where you've got these fast stadiums, they're packed, there's a ton of
• 46:22
  money involved, you have all these guys who are making this money, this fame. You don't have that
• 46:27
  in history when you look back, unless you look at the gladiators and Rome. And again, it's a
• 46:34
  time of great change. And again, Greece didn't come close. So we're very similar in that fashion.
• 46:43
  But we also have something else that the Romans have. We live in cities of millions of people.
• 46:48
  And throughout history, that's a blip. The fascinating thing is when you look at history
• 46:52
  as a whole, on a timeline, most of human history doesn't look like the way you and I are living.
• 46:57
  Cities, abundance, sports, amphitheaters. For the last 1500 years, or actually, sorry,
• 47:07
  previous to that, the first city to be a million in the world was Rome. And it was also the last
• 47:13
  for 1500 years. So when you think about even our surroundings, and you look at human history,
• 47:20
  it doesn't look like that. Romans knew what it was like to be in a city of a million people.
• 47:27
  No one else did until 200 years ago. Yeah, I think it's hard to remember that.
• 47:34
  Because we often think of, or I think of, human history of being kind of teleological,
• 47:41
  going towards progressing slowly. And then it doesn't enter your mind that for 1500 years,
• 47:50
  there were no big cities, there were no metropolises anymore. What was it then?
• 47:56
  Maybe Paris in the 19th century or something? Nope, Victorian London is the first city since
• 48:02
  Rome to be of a million. Oh, interesting. Yeah. And you know, it's crazy is that it goes the same
• 48:07
  with construction, right? When the Roman Empire collapsed, the ability to build on the scale the
• 48:13
  Romans did got lost. Things like concrete were basically alien technology. So they could even
• 48:19
  build stadiums the way the Romans did, until we started rediscovering those techniques.
• 48:25
  And we only put them into use, even though we discovered them in the 1500s, in the 1800s.
• 48:30
  So really, we're at this wonderful, fantastic golden age of human history. But we're the blip.
• 48:37
  Most of human history doesn't look like us. The only period comparable is ancient Rome. That's
• 48:42
  when you go, they were kind of doing it before us. And that's why they are so similar, so many
• 48:47
  similarities. It isn't coincidence. If we return to the Colosseum, could you perhaps through the eyes
• 48:54
  of, let's say, an average Roman citizen attending the games, describe the typical sort of events
• 49:01
  of the day for us? Sure. And well, that's actually somewhere else we resemble the Romans.
• 49:07
  If you 500 years ago went to the Colosseum, you'd look at it and go, I don't know, I know what it was
• 49:11
  like. What does it sound like for 85,000 people to cheer when they won, or boo when they lose,
• 49:17
  or that wonderful noise when you're going to the stadium? What's wonderful about the experience of
• 49:22
  the Colosseum is that it is an experience we share with the Romans, because we know exactly what it
• 49:27
  was like. Because you and I have been to a stadium. And when you get towards the stadium, there's that
• 49:32
  great noise of people excited, making their way through the stands and stalls. You go up the
• 49:37
  stairs, as you did in the Colosseum, you come through an entrance onto the seating and into the
• 49:42
  arena. And then the noise really hits you as it does when you go to any stadium today, because
• 49:48
  you've entered in and the echo of the acoustics of the amphitheater. So we know that noise.
• 49:55
  You would sit down with your friends, you'd have some drinks, you'd go to the bathroom because
• 50:00
  there was toilets in the Colosseum. They would put awnings over the top to protect you from the sun.
• 50:06
  Same as today. And then you would have the announcer telling you why you were there.
• 50:11
  And you would have, as you do when you go to the football game, or to the NBA, right, you have the
• 50:17
  announcer telling you, you'd have music playing. So you actually had an orchestra playing or a band
• 50:23
  playing music. Because the interesting thing about the gladiators is they fought to a soundtrack,
• 50:29
  because they had music playing that would play with the game. So for example, when you're there
• 50:33
  and the emperor comes out, how exciting. Just as when you are sitting in the stadium and you see
• 50:38
  on the big screen, there's the president. He's come to say, Hi, oh, wow, look, there's the president,
• 50:43
  or there's the head of FIFA or some nonsense, right. And as you sat down, there was a parade.
• 50:49
  So the parade was music playing, and the announcer would call and out would come the beasts.
• 50:57
  Because you'd never see them otherwise, where would you see a lion in Rome, that, you know,
• 51:00
  so you've got to see the world brought to Rome, lions, tigers, the hunters were called out there,
• 51:06
  the guys are going to be fighting and they go in and around. You'd have the criminals that
• 51:13
  were condemned walking around, and then you'd have the superstars, you know, the music start playing,
• 51:19
  here he is, two times winner, 16 wins, three draws, no losses, the people's champion,
• 51:28
  blade, flame, the rock, whatever the name was, and the guy would come out and the crowd will go wild.
• 51:35
  You know, we still do this today. But the incredible thing is that underneath the sand of the arena,
• 51:41
  there were lifts and lift shafts, and there was trap doors under the sand. So you imagine,
• 51:48
  while the sand is here, and there's the parade going on underneath, they're loading trees
• 51:54
  in a lift shaft on a lift. Because when the game started and the music was playing, they start
• 51:59
  pulling ropes, and trees would pop out of the ground one at a time and transform the arena into
• 52:06
  a jungle. That doesn't look like a real jungle. No, in the same way that movies don't look real,
• 52:12
  they're not meant to, it's entertainment. And you're not going to go to India because you're
• 52:16
  Roman and it's three months of travel, maybe four. And you know, I don't want to do that. I'm just
• 52:20
  going to sit in the colostrum and watch the games. So you're going to be in the
• 52:22
  colostrum and watch the games. So you see trees, and then a trap door would fall. And just like in
• 52:27
  Gladiator, tigers run out, except this time they're not changed. And then another trap
• 52:33
  door would fall and a hunter would run out. And you 2000 years ago, sitting with your friends,
• 52:38
  comfortably, safely, as we are in our couches or in our stadiums, would watch a guy hunting a tiger
• 52:46
  in a jungle with music playing. And when he gets close to the tiger, the music starts building,
• 52:52
  and they're fighting, and the music builds up. And then he stabs the tiger. The crowd goes wild,
• 52:58
  just as we do when we score a goal. And then the trees popped back into the ground.
• 53:07
  And you had sand and it was time for the halftime show. So the halftime show took place between
• 53:13
  the hottest parts of the day, because you can't have athletes out in the heat,
• 53:17
  because the body's the body. And so maybe you go home, maybe you stay. If you stay, fire eaters,
• 53:25
  dancers, acrobats, music, and even better, a raffle. They'll actually go around and throw
• 53:31
  tokens into the dance, keep a hold of them. And later, number 67, oh, that's me. Congratulations,
• 53:37
  you won a horse, you won a villa. What a great guy the emperor is. You know, why do you need
• 53:42
  democracy when you've got a guy who takes care of you and gives you free stuff? And that was the
• 53:47
  point. The games were the emperor's way of buying your attention. And when he had your attention,
• 53:54
  buying your affection and popularity so that he could become emperor. And if you think it's any
• 54:00
  different, none of the big sports organizations, FIFA, the NBA, they don't do everything for the
• 54:07
  love of the sport. They do it for the same exchange. They get your attention. And when they get your
• 54:12
  attention, they use it for monetary purposes because they sell you something. So whether it's
• 54:18
  the emperor selling you the fact that he should be in charge or whether it's a sports organization
• 54:25
  selling you their products so that they can make financial gains out of it, the exchange is the
• 54:31
  same. Once the halftime show is over and you get towards four o'clock, so a more agreeable time,
• 54:37
  that's when you get the gladiators. And exactly like UFC, boxing, you start with the lesser known
• 54:42
  guys and then you build up slowly to the title fight. That's why we're there. Because we're going
• 54:48
  to see a rematch between Tyson and Holyfield. I've got to sound old. Most people might not even know
• 54:57
  who that is anymore. I thought you meant Tyson Fury. Tyson Fury and Usec. Yeah, there you go.
• 55:04
  So that's what we really want to see. Or Tyson Fury against Anthony Joshua. Wow, that's what I...
• 55:10
  But I'll go and watch the other matches and then I build up. And of course, every time these guys
• 55:16
  block the shield, the crowd... And every time the other team's guy got knocked, it's...
• 55:24
  What's wonderful is that the experience is the same experience you will experience in a stadium
• 55:30
  today. And again, that is something you and I share with those who sat in the Coliseum and no
• 55:36
  one else has shared throughout human history in between in a way that's comparable. Two things
• 55:42
  came to mind when I was listening to you there. Number one, you should really probably think about
• 55:45
  becoming a film director yourself because you brought everything to life in such an amazingly
• 55:51
  vivid manner. And number two, did we figure out any aspect of modern sports? It seems like the
• 56:00
  Romans came up with everything. Throwing stuff into the arena, building up to the title match,
• 56:10
  halftime show. I mean, Jesus Christ, it makes me feel like our civilization has
• 56:15
  zero originality to it. Can you reassure me? You know what's interesting though?
• 56:19
  Let me tell you something though. It is original and I'll tell you why. Because it wasn't that
• 56:23
  somebody looked back through history and said, these are great ideas. It happened as it happened
• 56:27
  with the Romans organically and progressed through evolution. My theory has always been that if you
• 56:32
  were to start civilization from scratch, you took a couple of people and you gave them a hut in a
• 56:38
  forest somewhere and they grew as progressed over time into civilization. That when that civilization
• 56:45
  started reaching a peak, they start building stadiums. We didn't start building stadiums
• 56:49
  because in the 1800s someone said, oh, the Coliseum is great. We should have one of these.
• 56:52
  We built them out of a necessity because people were popular, were into a sport. The sport was
• 56:58
  amassing large crowds. You needed a place to house them. When the first games happened,
• 57:03
  the stadiums didn't have toilets. As you know, stadiums in Rome or in ancient Rome didn't have
• 57:10
  toilets. Then inevitably you're like, hey, people are peeing everywhere and going to the toilet
• 57:14
  everywhere because people need to go to the bathroom. Maybe we should build toilets. Then
• 57:19
  you're like, hey, we're not getting a lot of audience. What's happening? Well, it's bloody hot
• 57:23
  and there's no shade. What the Romans do, they get ship sails and they start pulling them over
• 57:28
  and they start inventing a system that you can crank out ship sails because people get hot.
• 57:35
  Our first stadiums didn't have awnings when we started to build them in 1800s. Then they're like,
• 57:39
  hey, people are hot. Every part of it, even the halftime show, even the free stuff, it didn't
• 57:47
  happen because people read history and said, wow, this is a great idea. Let's copy it. It happened
• 57:51
  because these are ideas that come naturally over time and evolved organically. There is an
• 57:57
  originality to it. It's just we're acting the way we're supposed to behave because we...
• 58:04
  I don't believe the phrase history repeats itself. I think it's stupid. My version is people repeat
• 58:09
  themselves. It's more understandable that history is cyclical and aspects of history are
• 58:17
  cyclical because we are people. We aren't any different from people 2000 years ago, 500,
• 58:23
  in that we reason the same way. We want to be famous. We love the idea of being appreciated.
• 58:30
  Some of us do, some of us don't. We want to be loved. We don't mind being hated. All these very
• 58:35
  natural feelings and emotions are the same ones that people throughout history have experienced.
• 58:41
  Why does somebody step into a UFC fight when they know they might lose an eye,
• 58:45
  break a nose, break an arm, get a concussion, die? Well, some do it because when they walk out,
• 58:51
  people cheer their name. Some do it because they make a ton of money. Some do it because you get
• 58:56
  all the ladies and the lifestyle. And then you say, why did someone go into a gladiator fight
• 59:03
  when they knew they might get cut? They knew they might die from injury. They knew they might
• 59:07
  not wait, make it out. Well, some did it because when you went out, 85,000 people cheered your name
• 59:13
  and some did it because you made a ton of money and some because you got ladies of all the empire
• 59:18
  desiring you. How natural, how human. If we go back to originality, I was maybe thinking that it
• 59:26
  happened because everything sounded so familiar when you were describing it, that it kind of
• 59:31
  happened like with the construction techniques that you were also mentioning earlier, that maybe
• 59:36
  during the Renaissance or later on, we kind of rediscovered all of these contents of Roman
• 59:43
  sports events and simply integrated them because they work. But you think that it just came
• 59:48
  organically up with them? No, it came organically. And the Renaissance really was a rediscovery of
• 59:53
  Roman philosophy and art and ideals. But sport really, I don't think, took off as much. I think
• 1:00:02
  the problem is that there wasn't, you know, let's be honest, the thing about sports that you need a
• 1:00:07
  certain amount of peace and prosperity to make it happen. And I don't think that the Renaissance
• 1:00:11
  quite had that in the same way. But likewise, they rediscovered Roman building techniques. So
• 1:00:19
  actually, again, when you look at sort of a timeline of human history, the Romans are building
• 1:00:24
  things the size of the Colosseum and bigger, right? And then after the Romans, you see along the
• 1:00:29
  timeline, there's nobody doing anything like that till the 1500s. And that's when we start to build
• 1:00:34
  like them again. If we hadn't, if there'd been no interrupted line between us and the Romans, the
• 1:00:40
  world would have been probably covered in construction. But we took a pause of about
• 1:00:45
  1100 years. And then we started building up. And now if you look at how much cities have, you know,
• 1:00:51
  how much civilization has covered the planet. But it took us about 300 years from the Renaissance
• 1:01:02
  to get to that point where we're like, at the Victorian level, let's build again on the scale
• 1:01:08
  the Romans were building. Why is the Victorian era start to construct so much? Because it's an empire.
• 1:01:15
  So it starts going part different parts of the world and starts building up. This is what Rome
• 1:01:19
  was doing. Rome was building. Rome didn't build Rome. Rome built the world. They built Rome
• 1:01:24
  everywhere you went. France, Germany, Spain, North Africa, Scotland, they were building a world,
• 1:01:31
  they weren't building a city. Anyway, sorry, you're saying go back to gladiators. You said when you
• 1:01:36
  were describing the typical day at the Coliseum, the typical day of the gladiator games, and when
• 1:01:42
  they were presenting fighters coming on, you said, here's I don't know, what you call it shadow or
• 1:01:49
  whatever, he has 16 wins, two losses, two draws or whatever. It made me think so. Did gladiators die
• 1:01:58
  while fighting at all? So was the actual aim of gladiatorial combat ever to kill or was it always
• 1:02:05
  just to entertain? And they tried to keep these guys alive at all costs.
• 1:02:12
  So actually, when you came in, there was even a board which had your stats on it. So you would
• 1:02:16
  have the stats that said, you know, how many wins, how many draws, how many losses. You know, of
• 1:02:23
  course, death did happen. I tend to think that deaths happen more frequently because of injury.
• 1:02:29
  Because of course, it was a danger. There was a possibility that you might get a cut or get a
• 1:02:34
  cut or get an injury that would kill you. We know she is quite fascinating. Actually, modern medicine
• 1:02:42
  has a great deal of gratitude to a guy called Galen of Pergamum. He was the doctor of Marcus
• 1:02:47
  Aurelius. And he made his experience through working at a gladiator school. So, you know,
• 1:02:55
  history tells us there's a guy, a doctor at a gladiator school and you're like,
• 1:02:59
  why is a gladiator at a doctor's school? I thought they were supposed to die. So, and what he's
• 1:03:05
  telling you is he starts working out how to suture, how to fix tendons and injuries. But he also
• 1:03:12
  realizes things like the Greeks believed that the heart was the point of reasoning. And he tells you
• 1:03:19
  of a gladiator that's been actually injured in the heart who is lucid until he dies. But they're
• 1:03:26
  trying to save his life. So, what we know is here's a guy who's been stabbed in the arena,
• 1:03:31
  but hasn't been murdered in the arena, hasn't been executed. He's been taken out and he's been given
• 1:03:37
  medical care. So, there are times, yes, of course, again, we're talking about a sport that's 700 years
• 1:03:44
  old. As the sport progressed and the money went out of it, I think it got less regulated. And there
• 1:03:50
  were probably more chances of a gladiator dying or fighting. But the most people who fight to
• 1:03:56
  the death are noxii, are criminals or prisoners of war. But that is a far cry from the gladiators
• 1:04:04
  that we see in the movies or TV. They're just being killed left and right as soon as they set
• 1:04:08
  their foot in the amphitheater. Right. Well, but that makes great TV though, doesn't it? That makes
• 1:04:13
  great TV. It does. You watch even those about to die. I don't want to give it away, but there's a
• 1:04:17
  scene where the guy just starts hacking people and you're like, well, if life is so worthless
• 1:04:22
  and death is so present, then it makes it even more exciting. You're like, man, my favorite
• 1:04:26
  character could die at any moment. There's danger. But that's just the construct to create an
• 1:04:33
  entertaining narrative. If you take away the element that the gladiators probably didn't die
• 1:04:40
  and you watch the TV show, you're not going to be as taken by it. Death has to be present.
• 1:04:47
  Death has to be there because remember, we're not there. If you're in the arena, it's one thing,
• 1:04:53
  but we're not. We're sitting on our couches watching. So there has to be the idea of death
• 1:05:00
  because it scares us. So you said there were referees actually there. What counted as a win
• 1:05:08
  or a loss then for that matter? Funny again, a similarity between modern sports. There was two,
• 1:05:12
  the rudis and the sumerudis. So there's one in the middle and there's one in the sidelines.
• 1:05:18
  So you've got the guy in the middle. He's the one who's there. He's in the middle of the fight.
• 1:05:22
  He stops the fight, stops the rounds. You know, it probably went to disarmament, to point systems.
• 1:05:31
  The only distinct difference is that the judge is somebody else. We don't have judges. The judge
• 1:05:37
  is either the emperor or the spectators because ultimately the emperor doesn't really care who
• 1:05:43
  wins or loses. He cares what the audience wants because he wants their affection. So he's the one
• 1:05:50
  who let you decide, which is problematic because if the World Cup final went to the audience to
• 1:05:57
  decide if that was a goal or not, it's going to go to who's got the bigger voice, right? Who's got
• 1:06:02
  the more fans? You would never do that unless of course FIFA wants a bigger group of people to be
• 1:06:12
  happier with them, then they'll let you decide. But we're not there. We don't live in a dictatorship.
• 1:06:17
  So, you know, it's a bit fair, I'd say maybe. Is there a reason to believe that comedy is
• 1:06:25
  is there a reason to believe that combat was at least sometimes maybe simulated like WWE style
• 1:06:32
  in order to protect maybe the gladiators and the investment of the owners that they represent?
• 1:06:39
  Well, the armor is there. The armor is theatrical. It's more theatrical than it is functional.
• 1:06:46
  I mean, you know, you've got these big helmets, great, it protects the entire athlete's head,
• 1:06:50
  but you've got little eye holes and you can't breathe very well. So they're restrictive. They
• 1:06:55
  don't give you great peripheral vision. Some have like a brim that comes about to here.
• 1:07:00
  So you know, the actual armor itself is telling you a lot about the sport. It's not a functional
• 1:07:09
  bit of armor. It's quite theatrical. So there's a great sense of theatrics to the armor. You would
• 1:07:13
  expect there'd be theatrics to the fighting. There'd probably be moves that you would never
• 1:07:19
  use in a battlefield. You know, battlefield fighting in antiquity is not glamorous. You
• 1:07:25
  know, the Romans techniques was basically to build a wall with shields, have a sword pointing up
• 1:07:30
  between the wall and stabbing continuously to the neck, to the eyes, to the face, to the organs.
• 1:07:36
  You're just basically stabbing. You're hacking people like they're meat.
• 1:07:41
  Nobody wants to see that, not in the arena. What you want to see is the big shield, the sword,
• 1:07:47
  the helmet. And I feel that there would have been certainly a level of over the top, maybe even
• 1:07:55
  choreography to get the fight looking the way it does. Because if the fights are quick and boring,
• 1:08:01
  no one's going to be excited. We need to get people back into the fight.
• 1:08:05
  Right. But the fights still weren't scripted. That's what I was kind of aiming at.
• 1:08:10
  I mean, not as far as we know. We can hypothesize the fights are scripted. Why not?
• 1:08:14
  The fights not get scripted today. Do you know what's a couple of fights and you go,
• 1:08:18
  I don't know if I, you know, that's a bit suspicious. I mean, we see that today with,
• 1:08:26
  you know, I don't know how many names you want to look at Jake Paul, right? Look at the controversy
• 1:08:30
  that surrounds Jake Paul in the boxing and people like, oh, that's fake. Oh, they're putting it on.
• 1:08:36
  Oh, that's scripted. You know, it's entertainment, right? It's not real combat in the sense that
• 1:08:42
  it's all hype and build up and, oh, I'm going to fight Mike Tyson, even though he's 60 and, you know,
• 1:08:49
  that isn't pure fighting. It isn't like I'm a great boxer. I'm going to beat the crap out of anybody
• 1:08:54
  I meet. If that was the case, then you wouldn't have the press events and the bit where you guys,
• 1:09:03
  you know, the guys stand in front of each other. What's the point of that? So there's a lot of
• 1:09:07
  theatrics to our sports. Gladiatorial combat would have had the same, of course. They would have
• 1:09:11
  been moments where, yeah, I'm sure that they would have scripted it. Maybe not quite to the level of
• 1:09:19
  American wrestling, but you know, American wrestling shares with Gladiatorial Combat one thing.
• 1:09:25
  Why do American wrestlers not fight? They could fight. They're big nasty guys. And the truth is
• 1:09:32
  because they are under contract. And if they fight and they actually fight, they would fight
• 1:09:37
  one to three fights a year because they would hurt each other. The reason it's fake is because
• 1:09:44
  you're taking away the threat of injury to your athletes so your athlete can keep fighting.
• 1:09:51
  Because otherwise the Rock could fight. He's an enormous guy. He's a big muscle guy. I bet he
• 1:09:55
  could pummel a few, but if he actually fought, he might rip his shoulder. He might hurt himself.
• 1:10:01
  And, you know, he's got guest appearances to make. He's got movies to make. Gladiators are
• 1:10:04
  the same. Gladiators have to fight, but then they've got to make the appearances at the
• 1:10:08
  political events, at the private parties. They've got to fight again at the big games of the Emperor
• 1:10:13
  next week. So if you eliminate the threat of injury, then you've got more longevity to your athlete.
• 1:10:20
  I wonder the following. Like in modern combat sports from Japan to the US, from Pride to
• 1:10:27
  famously boxing, organized crime usually has a bit of a hand stuck in somehow. I wondered,
• 1:10:33
  was that the case in ancient Rome as well? Now you said that it was a monopoly of the Emperor,
• 1:10:40
  but I'm sure because it was such a big industry that some sort of a gray, maybe economy or fixing
• 1:10:46
  matches or whatever could have occurred. Do we know anything about that aspect?
• 1:10:52
  The fight game is a nefarious and seedy underworld. You know, it's not what we see. Behind it,
• 1:10:58
  there's a lot of unhandly behavior. Because you know what? Because ultimately, again,
• 1:11:07
  money's involved. And when money's involved and you're talking huge quantities of money
• 1:11:11
  and you're talking people, that is a combination. That's two ingredients that are bound to make
• 1:11:19
  bad decisions. Why would we think any less of the Romans to do the same? We do them and we're so
• 1:11:26
  modern and we're so evolved and we have dirty betting and constant athletes getting caught
• 1:11:32
  doing illegal things, betting against their own teams and fixing it. Yeah, of course there was,
• 1:11:38
  100%. How much money would these guys make if they were at the top of their game?
• 1:11:43
  Fortunes. Like you get a signing up bonus is 2000 Cisterci and that's 900 Cisterci is an annual
• 1:11:50
  wage for a soldier. So you're making two times the annual salary of Rome. And was that considered
• 1:11:53
  good pay? Like 900 Cisterci in ancient Rome, was that considered a good pay? I mean, it's a soldier's
• 1:11:59
  wage. So I would say it's probably your standard average, your basic wage. Yeah, I mean, it's good
• 1:12:08
  enough. And obviously you get bonuses and so on. But you're making two times the annual salary of
• 1:12:14
  a Roman as a signing up bonus. We know that the Emperor Marcus Aurelius, who's the guy actually
• 1:12:20
  kind of starts the beginning of the end of gladiatoric vomit, kind of takes the money out of it.
• 1:12:24
  He passes laws of how much you can spend on gladiators. And we're talking up to 150,000 Cisterci.
• 1:12:32
  You know, you're getting guys making 17 times the annual salary of a Roman in one fight. It becomes
• 1:12:37
  very evident why people are becoming gladiators because the money there is lucrative. And if
• 1:12:42
  that's what the gladiators are making, think what everyone else is making. You know, the thing is
• 1:12:47
  the gladiator world was an industry. There was people who lived off of it. We know of guys who
• 1:12:53
  write posters, who make money by making gladiator posters. So they're basically, they're the guys
• 1:12:58
  who go around Pompeii and they make the posters that say, the games are going to be on this day
• 1:13:03
  held by this guy, this many fighters. You've got the guys making the souvenirs. You've got the agents.
• 1:13:09
  You've got the trainers. You've got the scouts. You've got the event organizers. It is a massive
• 1:13:15
  industry. That's why I say that gladiatorial combat and gladiators are the first sports
• 1:13:20
  superstars, the first modern sports superstars, because the business that is surrounded them
• 1:13:27
  isn't the business that exists in the Olympics. It's the business that exists today around athletes.
• 1:13:31
  And who knows where it's going to go? Because that's what happened is there was too much money
• 1:13:35
  involved and it became unsustainable. And I think that that's where we're going with our sports.
• 1:13:39
  Look in the last 50 years, the difference you like NBA of what a player earns and you store.
• 1:13:48
  Where the heck is that going to go? Football stars, American football. LeBron James is a billionaire.
• 1:13:54
  Right. But then if that's because they make the money, if they don't make that money,
• 1:14:00
  it's going to get to a point where the teams are going to go, sorry, there's going to be a cap
• 1:14:04
  because now there's money and people are buying strips and they're going to the stadiums and
• 1:14:10
  they're buying subscriptions. It's not a sustainable model. It's going this way,
• 1:14:16
  but sooner or later it's going to plateau and that's where you're going to see the same changes that
• 1:14:21
  happen to gladiatorial combat. And then the sport's going to go down. Of course it will. It's human.
• 1:14:27
  You said that Marcus Aurelius started taking money out of the sport. Why was he doing that?
• 1:14:34
  Did he deem it sort of immoral? Well, he wasn't a big fan of it. He actually loved wrestling.
• 1:14:42
  He didn't really care much about gladiatorial combat, wasn't big into the sport. I mean, he had
• 1:14:47
  to go to the games because he was kind of obliged to make an appearance. But when he was there,
• 1:14:51
  he would do politics. He would read philosophy. He practiced speeches. Why he did it was because
• 1:14:59
  the whole thing about monopolizing came to bite the emperor in the ass, basically.
• 1:15:06
  Because they had to spend so much money. Right. And so you have a thing called the
• 1:15:11
  imperial cult, which is a religion that basically promotes the image of the emperor. So the emperor
• 1:15:18
  around the empire would put on games for you. The emperor doesn't make his way all the way to Egypt,
• 1:15:24
  but it doesn't matter because the high priest of the imperial cult is going to put on games.
• 1:15:30
  The thing is that this was a position that you basically applied for, but it was of your money
• 1:15:39
  that you had to put on these games. You got a bit of budget, but you also had to finance it.
• 1:15:44
  And these guys were becoming bankrupt trying to put on the games. So he does it to help them out
• 1:15:49
  in a way. But he also, because the treasury was involved with gladiatorial combat and he thought
• 1:15:55
  that it shouldn't be. And it's called the fiscis. And he says, what need does the fiscis have of the
• 1:16:00
  arena? So before he was making taxes on the games, they're making, they actually, it double helps
• 1:16:06
  him because it improves his image, but he's also making money from it. He thinks it should have
• 1:16:10
  nothing to do with it. So he separates them and he puts caps on how much games can cost, how much
• 1:16:16
  you can pay for gladiators. He basically regulates it because there's too much money involved. And
• 1:16:21
  by the way, this is going to happen again to our sports sooner or later, because FIFA, right,
• 1:16:27
  FIFA or the NBA, they're the only ones who can put on these events, right? So what happens when it
• 1:16:33
  costs them 15 billion to make and they only make 14 billion? It's not going to last. They're going
• 1:16:40
  to start saying, well, players can only get this much, teams can only spend this much. Same thing.
• 1:16:46
  So his, right, right. So his reasoning had more to do with the empire's wallet and less
• 1:16:54
  with ideological reasons. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, I don't think it helped that he didn't
• 1:16:58
  really care much for the games, but yes, it was essentially, it's all about economy.
• 1:17:04
  And also they've gone through a crisis. They've gone through a crisis. They had basically a
• 1:17:09
  financial crisis because they had an epidemic, pandemic actually, but they had a plague or the
• 1:17:17
  Antonine plague. They had various wars. So the treasury was in bad state. And then it's like,
• 1:17:23
  hey, the world cup's coming up and we've got to fork out, you know, high rebellions. They're like, no,
• 1:17:28
  I don't think so. I think maybe we'll. Still slightly ironic that Marcus Aurelius wanted to
• 1:17:34
  put Gladiator, the shows out of business. And then his son Commodus was like, sorry, pops,
• 1:17:40
  I'm going to be a Gladiator myself. Yeah. And pay himself a million Cisterci for appearances.
• 1:17:46
  Oh really? Oh, that's a nice reward. Out of the treasury. Yeah. Yeah. It's funny, isn't it,
• 1:17:51
  that he's the first guy to break his father's laws, his own son, but you know, can we not forgive him?
• 1:17:58
  I mean, at the end of the day, I don't think Marcus Aurelius didn't know his son wasn't fit to be
• 1:18:03
  emperor, but he's a father and he loved his son. And unfortunately it costs, it costs the world and
• 1:18:11
  society a great deal in the Roman empire. But you know, we, we idolize Marcus because he's so wise
• 1:18:18
  and so philosophical, but he's also so human. He loved his son and he did what he could for his son.
• 1:18:25
  And who can't understand that? You know, it's very understandable. How does that line go in the
• 1:18:31
  Gladiator? Your failures as a son are my failures as a father. Yeah. Yeah. Very true. Very true.
• 1:18:40
  Yeah. Yeah. You never said that, but it's a sentiment. Yeah. Yeah. You said that the
• 1:18:48
  Gladiators were kind of like the most desired men in the empire, a bunch of sexy lads. Do we have
• 1:18:54
  any sort of lusty or slanderous graffiti preserved about them in that respect?
• 1:19:02
  Tons. We have Gladiators themselves telling you there's Calatus the Thracian who calls himself
• 1:19:07
  Suspirium Puelem. He's the heartthrob of the ladies. Then you have the Trident, the Retiarius,
• 1:19:18
  who's the net catcher of ladies at night. But you also have inscriptions of, of guys writing about
• 1:19:25
  noble woman who rent, who rent Primae Rationis. So they are the high end Gladiators who she rents
• 1:19:33
  them out. But Gladiators are present not just in graffiti, but they're present in a Rosic Array.
• 1:19:37
  They're present in a lot of other erotic art. There's tons of sort of images of, there's a
• 1:19:46
  wind chime that I have actually, I have a cast of where the Gladiator is, he's got a sword in one
• 1:19:53
  hand and his underwear in the other, and his phallus is a raging dog fighting him. So there's
• 1:19:58
  like this obscene art. But of course they were, they were, you know, they're the most exciting
• 1:20:04
  5,000 people admire. They're the guys who fight for a living. They're muscular, they're handsome.
• 1:20:10
  They don't even have to be handsome. We have an inscription of a, we have a story of a lady called
• 1:20:15
  Epia who was married to a Senator of Rome, very wealthy, grew up in wealth. She falls in love with
• 1:20:22
  Sergius, who's described as having his nose is kind of rubbed his ears. He's actually a retired
• 1:20:29
  Gladiator because he's injured his shoulder. And she gives up her life to follow him and live in
• 1:20:34
  the Lutus because he's a Gladiator. And juvenile rights, they love the steel. I love that line. I
• 1:20:46
  think it's so good. It's the steel they love. So of course, you know, and who are the most sexually
• 1:20:52
  desired, you know, men of our society? They're sports stars. They're athletes because they are
• 1:21:01
  the embodiment of virtues. They are mental and physical agility, endurance and perfection.
• 1:21:07
  They're, you know, they're not humans. They're more than humans. They're heroes, superheroes, Hercules.
• 1:21:14
  They love the steel. I see what he did there. They love the steel. Yeah.
• 1:21:23
  Here's an interesting one. Did female Gladiators exist?
• 1:21:27
  Oh, this always gets me in trouble. No. I mean, no, in a sense, let's get you in some trouble.
• 1:21:32
  Yeah, they didn't exist professionally. No, they didn't. In the same way that, you know,
• 1:21:41
  they, first of all, women did, they did exhibit women fighting. They weren't professional
• 1:21:47
  Gladiators. And it's made very clear they're not given training. The discussion for the
• 1:21:55
  existence of female Gladiators is based on four bits of archaeological evidence of which
• 1:22:02
  they're all arguable. All the bits of evidence, there's nothing that's like a smoking gun.
• 1:22:07
  You're like, it's never been found yet. I mean, out of all the finds of the Roman Empire, four
• 1:22:11
  bits, and one is like a tomb, and they found some stuff that had to do with Gladiators. And they're
• 1:22:15
  like, well, it must have been a Gladiator. It could have been a Gladiator's wife. It could have
• 1:22:19
  been a fan of the Gladiators. It could be a hundred things, but we're like, yeah, it must have been
• 1:22:22
  a female Gladiator. There's no evidence for it. The second one is a piece of like an amulet
• 1:22:29
  that mentions a Ludia. And Ludia, in fact, the word Gladiator, by the way, doesn't exist in
• 1:22:35
  classical Latin. It's not a Roman term. So the Romans never used that word. It's found in a
• 1:22:41
  commentary on the satires written by Juvenal. It's not a classical Latin word the Romans didn't have.
• 1:22:49
  They had Ludia, which can mean somebody who has to do with the games, who works maybe at the games
• 1:22:56
  or is involved in some reason. We do have laws being passed where women are banned from being
• 1:23:02
  involved in the games. We have examples of women fighting, but it's a novelty. It's not something
• 1:23:08
  that's done frequently, and there certainly wasn't an industry behind it. I mean, it comes down to
• 1:23:14
  money, and when you take a sport like gladiatorial combat, it was made for male consumption.
• 1:23:21
  I mean, whether it's ancient Greece, whether it's Persia, whether it's Egypt, the point of combat
• 1:23:27
  sports was to encourage men to be tough, to inspire them to be physically more prepared.
• 1:23:37
  We have a great quote that says, it does the war of people good to see the carnage. It hardens them
• 1:23:45
  to battle. So that was the point of it, because men ultimately were going to go to war.
• 1:23:50
  It's the same with combat sports today. It's made for male consumption.
• 1:23:56
  If you look at ticket sales of the UFC, male to female, what are they going to be? I think I read
• 1:24:02
  it was 10% to 90%. I would say that's exactly the same interest that they had in gladiatorial combat.
• 1:24:08
  And yes, we do have female UFC fighters. We have female UFC boxers, but they don't quite
• 1:24:16
  reach the level of male ones, because the point of the sport is the level of violence.
• 1:24:21
  If you see two heavyweights, you want to see the guy knock the guy out. You want to see the
• 1:24:26
  brutality of it. And it's obvious that the female version of the sport isn't going to have that
• 1:24:32
  intensity. And so you take it to gladiatorial combat, it's the same. And plus, there was
• 1:24:38
  attitudes in the society towards women fighting or women displaying themselves. But on a whole,
• 1:24:46
  female professional gladiators do not exist. I think it's more,
• 1:24:51
  it's more wishful thinking on behalf of modern society. We like the idea, but it has no roots
• 1:24:58
  in history. Alexander, we're nearing the end of the conversation. So I do have to ask which film
• 1:25:04
  or TV portrayal of gladiators is your favorite and why not the one you had most fun at while filming,
• 1:25:12
  but actually your favorite when you watch it?
• 1:25:15
  Oh, you can't ask me that. I would say that there's different. I'm afraid I will insist.
• 1:25:24
  There's different shows and different films for different reasons. I think that Gods of the Arena,
• 1:25:29
  the Gladiator series is the best for showing you the life of the gladiator. Oh, I haven't seen
• 1:25:33
  a really great job. Oh, have you not? Spartacus. Yes. I think that's the best.
• 1:25:39
  Oh, I haven't seen that. Spartacus. Yes. Great. Oh, yeah. Blood and Sand. It's great. Really great
• 1:25:48
  show. Because it really gave you the life of the Lutus and you don't get to see that in films.
• 1:25:55
  The life of the Lutus was these guys training, but also the admiration that went into it,
• 1:26:02
  like the sex, because that was a huge draw of it. I mean, sex is a huge draw for all parts of society,
• 1:26:08
  but why would it be different to the gladiators? And these guys were over-sexualized,
• 1:26:13
  hypersexual, hypermasculine. But it was just great to see the Lutus come to life. And that's why
• 1:26:20
  the fight and gladiator and the Coliseum, man, that's a great, great example, because
• 1:26:24
  when else did you see the Coliseum come to life before gladiator? Before gladiator, the Coliseum
• 1:26:30
  was that 20% of structure that we see today is all it is. It's 20%. It's a couple of bricks.
• 1:26:36
  But to see it come to life, wow. You see two gladiators fighting in the middle with the crowd
• 1:26:42
  going wild with the audience, with the awnings over the top. But I haven't seen all of those
• 1:26:51
  about to die yet, I have to admit. So I'm open to, but so far, yes, the series Spartacus for the
• 1:26:59
  Lutus and the movie gladiator for the fight between him and Tigris.
• 1:27:03
  I do love the HBO's Rome. That was such a fantastic show. Not a lot of gladiator combat there,
• 1:27:11
  but the show itself was special. I have a secret to tell you. Please do. I'm in the show.
• 1:27:20
  No way. Which season? Season two. Are you part of the criminal underbelly?
• 1:27:30
  No, no. So I have a little secret, which is whenever I work in these shows, I always end up
• 1:27:33
  somehow in them. Mostly because productions are cheap and directors will say, I want someone else
• 1:27:41
  in here. We don't have anybody on set and they'll be like, there's usually somebody doing nothing.
• 1:27:46
  That's usually me. So they'll be like, that guy, get that guy, get him dressed. I am with Mark
• 1:27:54
  Anthony at the Battle of Philippi. So I did a lot of the fights. I'm actually in the fighting.
• 1:28:05
  But I also have one line, which is advance. So when you see it, I think Mark Anthony says,
• 1:28:13
  this is how history is made or something. And then he does a sign and I give advance. A very
• 1:28:19
  young me without a beard. I'm also in those about to die, by the way. Oh, wow. But the best part of
• 1:28:27
  HBO's Rome was Mark Anthony to me. I mean, the actor was just fantastic. James Perfoy was a
• 1:28:33
  brilliant, brilliant, brilliant guy. And I actually, I purposely went to see the scenes he was in
• 1:28:41
  because actually, I think I'm in another scene. Yeah, no, I'm in the scene where they cut up the
• 1:28:48
  empire and I went to the map because they just wanted the map. Yes. Yeah. He grabs my sword at
• 1:28:56
  one point to cut the map. So I volunteered to be in that one because they only had one guy to be a
• 1:29:02
  garden. I said, I'll do it because I wanted to watch the scene. So I was there watching the scene
• 1:29:08
  and at one point I was watching Lefidus, Augustus and Mark Anthony cut up the empire. And I was like,
• 1:29:15
  suspend reality. This is what it was like. Imagine I travel back through time. That show, honestly,
• 1:29:21
  the work on that show helped me immensely in formulating. When you say I describe things
• 1:29:27
  vividly, it's because I've got to see them. It's part of imagination, but majority of the,
• 1:29:35
  it's visual memory that I've gained from working on these shows. Yeah, I still remember that scene.
• 1:29:41
  It's a really cool scene because Mark Anthony comes in with a headache and he's all cranky
• 1:29:45
  and he's like, what do you guys want? And then he just cuts up the map. It was Poska's wedding,
• 1:29:49
  I think, wasn't it? Poska's wedding. Yeah. If you watch it, he comes and he grabs my sword
• 1:29:56
  because I'm standing there and he grabs my sword out and uses it to cut the empire.
• 1:30:02
  Yeah, it's a great show. It's a pity they didn't do more of it. And sadly, we lost Titus Puller
• 1:30:07
  last year. Ray Stevenson passed away. The actor played Titus Puller. I forgot his name,
• 1:30:14
  but yeah, they were great. Pullo and what was the other one again?
• 1:30:19
  Verinus. Verinus, that's right. They're actually kind of, they're mentioned in Caesar's Chronicles,
• 1:30:26
  aren't they? These two soldiers. They are. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
• 1:30:32
  The Melogatacos. Yeah. Yeah. They are mentioned. Yeah. Anyway, the trailer for Gladiator 2 just
• 1:30:39
  dropped. You must have seen it. Yes. What do you think of it so far? Yes. Yeah, good. I mean,
• 1:30:47
  again, these things are very important. I have the largest collection of items in the world of
• 1:30:57
  props and pieces from films that depict Rome. So I have the largest collection of items in
• 1:31:02
  the world from the movie Gladiator. I have the original helmets. I have the Tigers helmet. I have
• 1:31:07
  some Russell Crowe's pieces. I put them on display from time to time. But the Tigers helmet,
• 1:31:16
  for example, is a piece of history in the history of gladiators because in this period of history
• 1:31:23
  that we're living in, what has perpetuated the myth of gladiators, what has kept the interest
• 1:31:28
  in the history of gladiators alive are these films, these films and TV shows. The Coliseum was free
• 1:31:36
  to get into until Gladiator came out. Gladiator 1 was such a success that that's the first time
• 1:31:42
  they started charging money to get into the Coliseum because they didn't before. When I was a boy,
• 1:31:46
  my brother and I used to play in the Coliseum. Nobody cared. There were no gates. There were no
• 1:31:50
  entrances or fees. So it's wonderful because whatever the film does, the one thing it's going
• 1:31:57
  to do is going to get people interested in history. And that's the point of it. I don't care about
• 1:32:03
  the historical accuracy because I can watch a documentary or I can pick up a history book
• 1:32:09
  if I want historical accuracy. I want the same thing that Roman wanted when he walked through
• 1:32:15
  the arch of the Coliseum. I want to forget my life for a couple of hours. And that's what we do.
• 1:32:21
  We walk into the cinema to see these films in the same way that our ancestors walked into the
• 1:32:25
  Coliseum marches because for a couple of hours, I want to be Lucius or I want to be the emperor
• 1:32:34
  or I want to be someone else. And I want to live this exceptionally exciting experience
• 1:32:39
  sitting on a couch comfortably. And then when I walk out of the cinema in the same way that
• 1:32:45
  the spectators walked out of the arena of the Coliseum, I go back to my normal life.
• 1:32:50
  Alexander, what an absolute treat. Thank you so much for taking the time.
• 1:32:54
  This was an epic conversation. I really, really enjoyed it.
• 1:32:57
  Where can people follow your work? Do you have social media?
• 1:33:01
  Yes, of course. Yeah. You can find me on Instagram and Twitter and all the socials
• 1:33:07
  as the gladiator historian or the gladiator guide or just by searching my name. But yeah,
• 1:33:14
  I have a buddy of work that's coming out. I've got a couple of documentaries being released soon.
• 1:33:19
  I have one called Coliseum, which is on the History Channel and one on BBC called Pompeii,
• 1:33:25
  the New Dig. But yeah, I've got a couple of lecture series and things that I'll be releasing soon.
• 1:33:31
  So yeah, absolutely. Very easy to find. Awesome. I hope we get to do this again.
• 1:33:37
  Maybe I also wanted to talk about Spartacus, but it's such a big subject that I think it deserves
• 1:33:42
  maybe a separate one. We can do a separate one. Yeah. You know what? Seeing as there's a new season
• 1:33:48
  of Spartacus coming out next year, we can definitely pick up on the story of Spartacus.
• 1:33:54
  Fantastic. I'll take your word for it. And I'm not just saying that I'm from Eastern Europe.
• 1:33:59
  We go for it. You know what I mean? Perfect. Perfect. All right. Thanks again.
• 1:34:06
  Thank you for listening. I really, really appreciate it. This podcast has no sponsors,
• 1:34:10
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• 1:34:15
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• 1:34:19
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• 1:34:25
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• 1:34:30
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• 1:34:37
  producers of this show. As always, without you comrades, this show wouldn't exist. You better
• 1:34:43
  believe it. So massive thanks to Marin Ferrara, Aljas, Strole, Aida, Mancian, Micha Medved, Medinjo,
• 1:34:51
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• 1:35:00
  again.