The evidence can almost be counted on the fingers of two hands, but it exists. Several remains attest that women could be gladiators during the time of the Roman Empire, although they were considerably fewer in number than their male counterparts. This evidence, compiled by Live Science, is limited to a dozen archives and inscriptions, and an even smaller number of artifacts.
Among these documents are laws passed by the Senate in AD 11 and 19. These laws prohibited upper-class women as well as free women under the age of 20 from fighting as gladiators. In another text dating from the year 200, the emperor Septimius Severus puts an end to female fighters’ duels because of jokes about the ferocity of the fairer sex having “targeted high-ranking women”.
Statuettes and engravings of gladiators also confirm their existence. One is a bas-relief found in Halicarnassus, in present-day Türkiye, which represents two adversaries with the mythological names of Amazon and Achillia. They hold a shield typical of the outfit of the “provocators”, these gladiators who adopted the outfit of the Roman legionnaires, notes Stephen Brunet, professor of classics at the University of New Hampshire. Like gladiators, these gladiators fight topless. Registration “released while they were still standing” shows that neither was killed.
Another statuette is newly interpreted as depicting a gladiator. We see a woman holding a sica, a short and curved dagger characteristic of so-called “Thracian” gladiators. As in the bas-relief, she does not wear a helmet. According to Alfonso Mañas, a researcher at the University of California at Berkeley, female gladiators were probably asked to show their faces to spectators.
Slaves objectified for glamor
Physical appearance indeed played a big role in the selection of gladiators. Alfonso Mañas uses as proof one of the first sources to mention these fighters: Nicholas of Damascus. According to this Greek historian, who lived between 64 BC and 4 AD, the chosen duelists were more “the most beautiful” than the strongest or most talented.
In addition to fighting bareheaded and breastless, gladiators were surely forbidden from fighting to the death. Alfonso Mañas actually notes that no source speaks of a woman dying in combat. No gladiator tomb has been found, although more than 1,000 gladiator tombstones have been documented. The Romans perhaps adapted the rules, even the weapons, to reduce the lethal risk. Which tends to demonstrate the show’s focus on punishment.
Gladiators were mainly criminals, deadbeats or prisoners of war reduced to slavery. The same was probably true for gladiators. With a lesser probability, all the same, since women were kept away from politics and the army – they did, however, enjoy some freedoms, such as the right to run their own business, to be a doctor or owner.
“I think gladiators were basically slaves who committed crimes”Anna Miączewska, a researcher at Marie Curie-Skłodowska University in Poland and a specialist on the subject, tells LiveScience. Some others may have been free women heavily in debt and forced to buy their freedom through a gladiator school. Only very rare gladiators came from wealthier social classes. Perhaps for entertainment or to send a message, like Emperor Commodus, who took to the arena to gain political capital.
