Junkelmann, Marcus Gladiatoren

Die Wirklichkeit hinter der Legende

Bloodlust or professional pride? Alongside the legionnaire, the gladiator has become one of the most popular icons of Roman antiquity. He was the star of the first mass entertainment culture in history. But do the carnage in the arena, cheered on by an unrestrained audience, and the bleak living conditions of the enslaved fighting machines, as we know them from countless films, correspond to reality? Marcus Junkelmann has been researching gladiators for decades and has come to many new and unexpected conclusions. Gladiatorial combat was a strictly regulated martial art under the supervision of referees. Only a minority of duels ended in the death of one of the opponents. This was because medical care was better than that available to most civilians. The fights were staged like operas and accompanied by rousing music. The weapons and fighting styles of the different types of gladiators and their combinations into pairs of fighters were precisely defined. The author has not only identified them on the basis of sources, but also tested them in practice in reconstructions and experiments and documented them vividly. Many gladiators fought voluntarily and were very proud of their profession. Quite a few of them had wives and children. And the performances were not simply an expression of voyeurism and bloodlust, but fulfilled religious functions in the cult of the dead in early times and later served a heroic state ideology.