Gladiators Essay

Gladiators are one of the most iconic characters in history, influencing a lot of our sports. Gladiators trained hard and long years to fight against each other and most of them didn’t even last a year. There were at least thirty-two different types of gladiators. The most common four were Thracians, Mirmillones, Retiarii, and Secutores. Gladiators were condemned criminals, slaves or free men who were bought and trained for fighting. Even though most of the time the free men were low on the social scale they gained popularity in crowds.
Gladiators lived in cells in a fortresses with one or two people. They could only be free until they won a game. In a National Geographic article titled Gladiator School Discovery Reveals Hard Lives

“Depending on whether they were a criminal or not they were taught to fight either with different weapons or weaponless in an arena.” (The Initial Journey, The Life Of A Gladiator)
Gladiators also had lannista's. Lannista’s were the men who looked after the Gladiators. They would also sell and train them. They gained considerable wealth from renting and selling the Gladiators to small local games.
There were many different types of Gladiators that used a variety of weapons such as: war chain, net, trident, dagger and laso. Also each Gladiator could choose their own weapons, and how they wanted to fight with their armour.
Thracians, Mirmillones, Retiarii, and Secutores were four of the most common types of Gladiators. In Gladiatorial games specific types of Gladiators were chosen to fight against another carefully selected Gladiator. “Matched pairs of gladiators of would ensure that one fighter was hampered by heavy armor whilst the other was lightly armed. One gladiator might have freedom of movement but with little to nothing to protect him, whereas the other gladiator might be more heavily armed and protected but restricted in his movements by his equipment.”(Triumphs and Tribunes, Types of