Successful gladiators were the movie stars of the first century – so famous that free men queued to take their chances in the arena. Bloody, brutal but popular, gladiatorial contests are often ...

Neither Gladiator nor its cinematic sequel is particularly concerned with historical fact. For one thing, the emperor Marcus Aurelius had no intention of restoring the republic. Gladiatorial ...

The first reports of gladiators (the name comes from the type of sword they used: the gladius) appears around 264BCE, 2300 years ago, back when Rome was still a republic and didn’t have an ...

I. Gladiators came from many different backgrounds. They largely came from the lower echelons of Roman society. Some of the earliest were prisoners of war, who fought wearing their own culture's ...

Tales of ancient Rome have long enraptured modern audiences. Many movies and television series have examined the rise and fall of the empire and those who led it. Many comics have explored the ...