We Who Are About to Eat Salute You
The latest Archaeology has a story sure to horrify the WHO, CDC, MeMe Roth, and food nannies everywhere. Roman gladiators, it turns out, were not the lean, mean Djimon Hounsous of cinema but rather tubby tubby two-by-fours:
Gladiators, it seems, were fat. Consuming a lot of simple carbohydrates, such as barley, and legumes, like beans, was designed for survival in the arena. Packing in the carbs also packed on the pounds. “Gladiators needed subcutaneous fat,” Grossschmidt explains. “A fat cushion protects you from cut wounds and shields nerves and blood vessels in a fight.”
Grossschmidt and Kanz’s isotopic analysis underscores what archaeologists and classicists have suspected for a while: spectacle and theatricality in the arena were emphasized over martial prowess. Gladiators’ carb-loading and minimal animal-protein intake suggests they lived to fight another day through bulk and endurance over technical strength and speed. Audiences, according to contemporary reports, would turn angry if fights ended too quickly, and attempts to recruit gladiators into the military were disastrous because of their incompetence in actual battles.
I recently wrote an article for Dig on the gladiators’ graveyard at Ephesus and how the various head wounds suffered by its residents correlate to historical records.
