1st century C.E. Roman relief portraying gladiators and lions fighting. Roman gladiators’ fights to the death have inspired morbid fascination for millennia. But for something seemingly so ...

As much as Hollywood characters love to yearn for the halcyon days of the Roman Republic, everyone in “Gladiator” is, in some way, connected to the Imperial Family of the Roman Empire. At the ...

Marcus Tullius Cicero used gladiators’ physiques not to celebrate the republic’s valiant heroes, but to deride their bloated muscles as the embodiment of amoral tyranny. But I’m most interested in how ...

Bite marks found on a skeleton discovered in a Roman cemetery in York have revealed the first archaeological evidence of gladiatorial combat between a human and a lion. Bite marks found on a skeleton ...

Selfie-stick-waving influencers may feel like they are breaking new ground, but did Roman gladiators beat them to it by more than 2,000 years? Making it big on Instagram and TikTok promises income, ...

This tiny Roman gladiator figurine used to be the handle on a folding knife. English Heritage Divers have discovered a 2,000-year-old copper knife handle, carved in the shape of a tiny gladiator, in ...

One day, someone will make a gladiator film that treats it more like wrestling than an epic battle for the soul of a declining empire. Until then, Ridley Scott has been pretty great at epics, and ...