RE-AIR: Conversations: Beware of the Splash Zone! Gladiators in the Greek World w/ Alexandra Sills
01:45:15 Share

You know you've got a comeback in you. When you take the next step, you're going to make it count for your career, for your family, for your life. You can earn a degree you're proud of with Purdue Global.

Purdue Global is backed by Purdue University, one of the nation's most respected and innovative public universities. This is your chance. This is your opportunity. This is your comeback. Purdue Global, Purdue's online university for working adults. Start your comeback today at purdueglobal.edu. Please welcome aboard the Johnson family. The whole fam's here for the Disney Cruise, so you know we came to play. And listen, the adults are going to have a ball.

First, we're chilling in the infinity pool. On to massages at Sense's spa. Then gliding into Star Wars Hyperspace Lounge for a toast. We're even going to kick back with Mickey on Disney's private island. That's how we get down. Because Disney Cruise Line is where we came to play. ABC Wednesday. Tim Allen and Kat Dennings star in the new family comedy, Shifting Gears. Dad, I'm broke and I need a place to stay until I figure out what the rest of my life looks like. So, a couple of days. Hello!

When his daughter moves back in. The last time you walked out that door, you looked back at me and gave me a double bird. I was 18. The double bird roller conversation. The wheels come off. Can we try to talk to each other like rational adults? Have you watched the news lately? That's not a thing anymore. Series premiere Wednesday, 8, 7 central on ABC and stream on Hulu. Oh my gods. Nerds. Gladiators.

This is Let's Talk About Myths, baby! And I am your host, Liv, who doesn't normally care about Roman things all that much. But guess what? This is Greeks doing the Roman things. So it's awesome.

Today I am joined by Alexandra Sills, who is an expert not just in gladiators, but gladiators in Greece very specifically. And by Greece right now, I just mean the Greek world. So deep into the East, the whole section, you know, Turkey, the lot of it back then, the ancient Greek world. But as ruled by Romans, I'm rambling now.

That's right, today is all about the many ways that the Greek world used and adapted gladiatorial games and made them into something pretty damn special. Plus how they regularly adapted Greek theaters, physical theaters, to perform those games. And yes, I am entirely obsessed with that idea, particularly how it would almost certainly result in a splash zone.

Disgusting. I know. I love it. And we even talked about the idea of women as gladiators. The idea that goes around every once in a while. Little bits of virality over so-called female gladiators. We'll see. No spoilers yet on the details there.

Also, today's episode is seriously long because there was so much to say about this topic and I couldn't bring myself to cut it down because it's so interesting. And Alexandra and I had so much fun. So I'm keeping this intro short and sweet. Just know that this will not be the last you hear from Alexandra as we also recorded a bonus conversation all about gladiators on the screen from, well, gladiator to star Spartacus, which I love pretty deeply. So stay tuned for that too.

conversations beware of the splash zone gladiators in the greek world with alexandra sills yeah so we'll just dive right in like i i mean you and i've been twitter mutuals for a really long time um but i also realize i like barely knew your name because i just know your handle and then you're like

little like image and I'm like oh right like you're the person behind I don't even is it oasis beloved of oasis how do you pronounce it uh beloved of oasis as far as I know so gladiators I don't even like I know that you have studied a lot of gladiator everything um but I just I just want to hear everything I know we were talking you know before the recording about like

gladiators in Greece because they fascinate me like in like the Roman period of Greece and like what what specifically the Greeks did with that Roman practice and I just want to hear everything basically but I can find real questions that I will ask you also yeah so I think there's this this thing with Greek archaeology is that there aren't a lot of amphitheaters in the east

We have got literally hundreds in the west of the empire. But in the east, there's hardly any. In fact, I think, if I'm right in saying, Britain has more amphitheaters than Greece and Turkey combined. Wow. So these tiny little rain-soaked islands have got more amphitheaters than this huge, already quite culturally significant area. Yeah. And I think there's been a tendency to kind of assume that

oh, okay, well, that must mean that the Greeks just weren't interested. But it could not be more wrong. It could not be more wrong. Because when you look into the other evidence, it turns out that the Greeks were crazy for gladiators. They really, really loved gladiators. And when you spoke to Dan Stewart about Roman Greece, he spoke briefly about this. So I'm just going to recap what he said. Yeah. First, can I just, I want to,

Point of clarification for the listeners on like, so by, by like few amphitheaters, you mean more of like that specific, like, like the Coliseum versus like the Greek traditional theater. Right. Great. Greek theaters are semicircles.

And an amphitheater, amphitheater is all around. So it's essentially two theatres stuck together to make an oval. Is that what the word comes from? Because I didn't register that. So when you see someone calling a theatre an amphitheater, it's wrong because an amphitheater, it means goes all the way around without a break. So yeah, it's essentially two theatres back to back.

Great. I'm learning so much already. And it's literally the bare minimum part of this conversation. So when you've got Greece and Turkey, there are a couple. So you've got one at Pergamon. You've got the first one actually was in Corinth. And that was built by Julius Caesar. It's really basic kind of rock cut thing.

And that's only a couple of decades after the first stone amphitheatre in Pompeii. That was 70 BCE. So Julius Caesar is not long after that. Yeah. So the first one in the east is actually pretty soon after permanent structures were being made in the west as well. So I find it interesting that no one seems to correlate the two, starting with permanent buildings. Yeah. So closely together.

So yeah, you've got the one at Pogmon, you've got Mastora, which is currently being excavated as well. Is that in Turkey? Yeah, yeah. Okay. And it's huge. And there's a lot of work being done right now. There's one at Anasavos, there's a couple, there's one on Cyprus, there's one in Syzykus. So there are amphitheaters there, they're just not...

They're not everywhere like they are everywhere else. Yeah, and not like Greek theatres. Exactly. Greek theatres, there's something like over 700 of them. But amphitheatres over there are really, really rare. If you go to somewhere like Spain or the south of France, you are tripping over amphitheatres every single place that you go. But in Greece and Turkey, they are so rare. And

there's the kind of assumption has been made oh well they didn't bother making them because they they just didn't want to see it what's interesting and dan stewart mentioned this is what they did instead is they adapted existing buildings yeah so this blew my mind like it just sounds so messy but it's just it's so messy that's like all i can think about

you've got these buildings already, why not use them? So they chose theatres and a stadium. If you had a stadium, why not make that multi-purpose by having gladiator shows there as well? So there were a few changes that you needed to make to make it safe. So you could either put a net up around the orchestra or around the stadium itself to prevent animals and gladiators getting into the crowds. You could build a small wall

Quite often what they would do is take out the first kind of three to ten rows of seats. And then what you've got is the first row of seats is all of a sudden higher, is above the ground where the gladiators are. Just like at the Colosseum. If you were at the Colosseum, you would be looking down on the gladiators if you were in the front row. Whereas if in a theatre, if you were in the front row, you're at the same level as the actor.

That doesn't work if the actor's wielding an axe at you. So you raise up the level of the audience by taking out those front kinds of seats. And that's been done at over 100 venues in Turkey and Greece. So what my research has found, if you map all of these adapted theatres and stadiums,

as well as the amphitheatres in the East, all of a sudden the East is the area with the third densest spread of spectacle venues. And it comes second only to Italy and the area which is now Tunisia. So again, thinking of the South of France and Spain and Britain with all of our amphitheatres that we have, all of a sudden,

It's the Greeks that are going really, really bananas for Roman spectacle. Yeah. And I used to think, I mean, initially you think, why is this? Is it just recycling? Are they lazy? Because they're not a poor area at all. I mean, compared to some of the provinces, they're loaded. And I've worked out, I don't think it is because of cost. I think it's because of a cultural thing. And again, going back to what Dan Stewart was saying,

The Greek cities were kind of keen to live up to their ancient reputation in the Roman period, to keep their Greekness. And I think that that's connected. I think what they're doing is they're taking this Roman thing, but they're Greekifying it. They're viewing it from a Greek perspective. So why not put it in traditionally Greek venues, such as sports venues like stadiums and theatres?

And it is, they are making it so Greek. So the important thing with gladiators is across the entire empire, they all look the same.

So it's the same sets of armour. And you get different types. You get the heavyweights and the lightweights. And you've got ones with big swords and little swords. And ones with tridents and different levels of shield size. But they're all pretty standard across the entire area. But it's the way that they're spoken about and the way they speak about themselves that changes. And there's this huge east-west divide. And in the west...

You've got things like their tombstones and they will have a name, how many fights, and then their age when they died on their tombstone. It's really boring. And their names are kind of staccato names, short and snappy. But in Greece, it's completely different. They're choosing stage names differently.

from myth. Oh, I'm excited. Yeah, I knew you would be. So you've got, and we've got dozens of examples of gravestones over there. You've got Achilles, you've got Iax, you've got Alexandros, you've got Ataocles, you've got Heracles, Hermes, Jason, Odysseus,

You've got Perseus. You've got all of these names that they've chosen straight from Greek myth. Yeah. And from epic. And if you think about it, you've got all of these Greeks that for centuries have been brought up on a diet of the epic cycle. And they've spent, you know, years as school children learning all of these stories and reading about all these epic one-to-one battles. Yeah.

And now they've finally got a chance. Yeah, you remember that fight? Now come see it live. Yeah. Though I have to say, I want to talk to the guy who chose the name Hermes. Because, like, does that make you seem that intense? Like, of all possible characters. But, what was Hermes' job with the underworld? Okay, okay.

Yeah, that gets subtle. I like that. That's like, you're going deep. That's like, I'm the psychopomp Hermes. I'm going to take you down to the underworld. That all of a sudden becomes the most metal gladiator name you can think of. Yeah, yeah, that's, I like that. It's got layers. Yeah, and they're not even just, they're not even calling themselves names from Greek myth. They're constantly talking about the gods. So you'll hear them say that I am...

a warrior of Ares or I'm fighting in the stadium of Ares and they're constantly talking about being taken down to Hades and I have looked through literally dozens of these gravestones and they're really cool because not only are they more biographically detailed but they're also metrical some of them are in the same meter as epic and over half of them mention the fates

So I die here because the fates decided that it was time to cut the cord. And it's amazing how deeply embedded they've managed to place themselves in Greek tradition, doing this utterly, utterly Roman thing of killing each other for fun, for the entertainment of others. I should have known that like, I mean, and this is just going to go with my continual, um,

sort of running I want to call it a joke but it's totally honest but like like I just should have known that the Greeks would take something that is so distinctly Roman and then make it so much more fun and interesting even than the Romans did like like of course they would of course they would take this thing and be like we're gonna make it nerdy because like I mean I they're they're the reason all of these things are the reason why I prefer Greece to Rome like I just think it's so much more interesting mostly mythologically but like it

It really says something about their relationship with the gods that's so different from the Roman relationship with the gods, too. Like, the Greeks are so much more willing to, like, to interact with the gods. To, like, they actually kind of want them around in a way where the Romans seem to have this more, like, fear of the gods mentality versus, like, a desire to interact with them. Yeah. Yeah. I love that.

I mean, the gladiators in the West certainly really took on the Eastern goddess of Nemesis. Interesting. They loved Nemesis. And in a lot of amphitheaters, you'll find little shrines to her just off of the arena. And we've got things like curse tablets to Nemesis.

that have been written and you get little dedications and you can't help but imagine about this gladiator who's making one last little votive before he goes in. But in the West, they go nuts. And it's really, really interesting to me because I kind of think about it's almost like it's Homeric cosplay. Yes, absolutely.

And if you go through the Homeric stories, the gods are so woven into those stories that when you bring it into Roman spectacle in the Greek East, they're still there weaving them in hundreds of years after these epics were first come up with. And, you know, it's the Greek thing of they loved competitions, right? Yeah. The whole Argonne. There's...

There's competitions and contests in everything they do. So of course they're going to love gladiatorial combat. It's another competition and the stakes are immeasurably high. The thing is, and this is what annoys me personally, is that this is all a bit hush-hush in the academic world. So for instance, all of these tombstones that I've mentioned, very, very few of them have been published in English. Hmm.

um they were mostly brought together in the 1940s by this french guy called louis ribert and even though he's collecting all of them he is of the opinion that gladiatorial combat is dreadful and he calls it a gangrene that infected the creek world and i think um

I'm not going to name any names, but archaeologists of Greek theatres and stadiums are usually very, very reluctant to mention any of these architectural changes that have been made for gladiators. So you can enter an archaeological library and you can look through dozens of site reports and there might be a sentence, there was a wall built for gladiators and

And they're so reluctant to talk about it. So none of these sites have yet, yet, I hope to, been collated all in one place to be published. Because everyone seems to be desperate to kind of hide the fact that they're pure theatre where, you know, the great tragedies were performed. No one wants to admit that there was bloodshed there. And that's something that,

I think some current archaeologists share with some of the ancients because, of course, gladiators, we think about it as a strange thing now. And we love to say, oh, the Romans...

universally loved gladiators but there were people that criticized it and that's true in the greek east as well but like so much with greek history a lot of it's focused purely on athens so i was going to ask if we know if athens took part in this so oh clearly you're about to tell me so athens not only had

won the theatre of Dionysus that was adapted but they adapted the stadium as well the Panathenaic Stadium was adapted oh shit

yeah because they loved it so much they wanted it twice baby yes and it wasn't without criticism so you've got he's so Apollonius was supposed to address the locals in the theatre of Dionysus and he refused because he said I'm surprised that Athena hasn't vacated the Parthenon and the Acropolis if this is the kind of blood that you're going to offer her as sacrifice I'm surprised that she's not left

So, like, what's the time period then? Because that feels really early if it's Apollonius. Yeah, it is so early. Yeah, that's pre-Rome, isn't it? Like, that's Hellenistic period, so Greece is still kind of... Greaker? This is me loving the Classical period and knowing very little after the Classical period. Can you tell? No.

So here is the coolest part of it, is that the Romans were not the ones to introduce Roman spectacle to the East. That's what it sounds like. Amazing. You've got Antiochus IV, okay, from Antioch. And he was, I believe, a hostage of Rome for a little while. So he was over in Rome seeing all of this happen. And this is only a couple of decades after Antiochus.

the Romans were fighting Hannibal, that kind of thing, I believe. Okay. So it's all still, you know, early days for Roman spectacle as a, you know, the Colosseum is still centuries from being built. He goes back to Antioch and in 166 BC, he decides to put on his own show to show the East what the Romans do, what he's learned.

And we've got this from Polybius. Polybius says there were 240 pairs of gladiators in his show. That's a lot. That's a lot. And it's more than any show that had so far been shown at Rome. Okay, that was going to be my question. That sounds like an enormous number of people. Yeah. So what you've got is a Hellenistic king saying, here's this Roman stuff, but I'm going to make it bigger. Yeah. Yeah.

And he absolutely does. That's an enormous amount. And he calls them Monomachoi, so it's one-on-one fighters. Yeah. So he doesn't call them gladiators. And Monomachoi is a word that comes up again and again. So he puts on this enormous show, and it's almost like he's trying to out-Roman the Romans. I think he knows they're coming. He knows they're coming. I mean, I feel like it wouldn't have been that hard to tell. LAUGHTER

So yeah, that's 166 BCE. Wow. And then you get more when Caesar goes over. So he builds the amphitheatres in Corinth and he builds an amphitheatre in Antioch. Now it's really important, when he goes over, he's not building them for Greeks. He's building them for Romans. He's founding colonies there.

mainly for his veterans so when you think about Corinth you have to understand that Corinth had been razed to the ground beforehand he's rebuilding it essentially so his amphitheater is quite a little plain one if I'm honest very little archaeological work has been done on it so far unfortunately I'll be the first one there with a trowel when it does um

So he's building that for his veterans, their families, and for any Romans who are choosing to relocate or, you know, just passing through. A little bit of home now that you're moving out to the provinces. Same thing in Antioch. But it doesn't take very long at all for them to start moving it elsewhere. And this is exactly the same as what was happening in Rome and in the West because Colosseum

Really expensive. You need a massive space to put it in. Yeah. Amphitheatres are enormous. They cost a lot. So even in Rome, they didn't have a permanent... Rome had one semi-permanent amphitheatre, but it burned down. But it took until 80 CE for that to open. So, I mean, there's permanent amphitheatres in the West now,

from Pompeii, which was 70 BCE, Colosseum 80 CE. But the East has already got them way before the Colosseum. Before the Colosseum in Rome, what you would do, gladiators started off in the Forum and you'd just put up some bleachers temporarily. Oh my God!

Yeah. Again, messy. Like, I don't know why that the first thing I think of with all of this stuff is like a splash zone SeaWorld style, you know, like I just, it's all I can think about every time you're like a Greek theater, but with gladiators, I'm like, everyone would get so bloody. And I just am fascinated by that. It's so gross and wonderful.

You know, the best thing that I've seen so far to kind of describe what I mean by it is HBO's Rome, where Titus Pullo has to go. And you see it and you think, oh, he's going to go into this massive amphitheater. And it's not. It's a tiny area. It's quite small with a wooden seating. And it looks like it's been built this morning.

And that's because it probably was. So it's estimated by very clever people that you could build a wooden amphitheater in about a week. So you could knock that up, have your show and then take it down when you need to. Or you could have benches around an open area like the Forum area.

And we've got evidence of that happening in the East as well. So the Holy Island of Delos. What? Yeah, Delos. Not only has it got some gladiatorial graffiti, which is great, but there's evidence that in the Forum of the Italians, that there were balconies that were put up specifically for this kind of event. So that you could have benches on the ground and then you could have another level of people looking down as well.

So really, you don't need anywhere to have gladiatorial shows apart from an open space where you can stick a couple of benches. But that's what I find so interesting. They've made the decision to move this Roman thing into Greek spaces to kind of make it as Greek as possible. Yeah. Yeah.

They've kept the armor, they've kept the fighting style, they've kept the rules as far as we can tell. We don't know a lot of the rules, to be honest. We have to piece together what we can. Do we think there was a lot of rules? To me it feels like it's one of those, like, there are no rules kind of thing. Wow. This is what I find interesting, because if you look at Greek sports...

That's the ones that don't have many rules at all. So Pankration, I think the only two rules are no eye gouging and no biting, if I remember off the top of my head. Seems like a fun time. But you've got stories of Pankration. I think there was one guy who won by, he didn't punch with a closed fist. So he went forward with his fingers extended and ended up actually puncturing into someone's torso and pulling out the intestines.

Okay. Yeah, that sounds like there are no rules. So Greek combat sports, they're utterly brutal. So, I mean, there's a bit of a precedent for violent entertainment there. But actually, from what we can tell from gladiatorial combat is there are a lot of rules. So the first thing is, is that there are usually designated pairings.

So you've got the net man, the Retiarius, for instance. He has got a trident and a net. And he is usually up against a secutor, who has got a very plain helmet. So it does get snagged in the net. And a large shield and a sword. And they are usually together. Or you'll usually see a myrmillo and myrmillo against each other. So there are usual pairings. Mm-hmm.

it gives you something to expect as an audience member. But also that's what they're training for. These men are training, right, this is my type. This is who I'm fighting. This is how my training is going to go and how I'm going to organize my techniques. You can't just throw in two random types and expect it to work because these guys are really honed to attack and defend from a certain type of

So there's that. We also know that there are referees. And this is one thing that gets me because the two things that you never ever see in Hollywood gladiators, you never ever see shields. Where are the shields? And you never ever see referees. Yeah. Referees seem foreign as hell. I'm trying to think of Spartacus, which is really like I've seen gladiator, but not for a long time and not as often. So I'm trying to think of Spartacus is all I know. And like,

They have shields in Spartacus, do they not? Yeah, the Starz series, I have to say, uses shields some of the time. Not all of the time. I'm not completely happy with it. No, but they exist, at least. But they exist, and they use them when they use them well, because it's not just a defensive thing. It's absolutely an offensive weapon. It's got that massive metal boss on the front. You can whack people, you can...

bring it down onto their toes. You can hit them in the head. You can do a load of things with a shield. Yeah. It's there. And also, the thing is with gladiators is they don't have a lot of body armour on. So there's no chest piece. There's no torso. If you watch Gladiator, Russell Crowe's got this massive leather thing on. He would have been bare-chested. Now, I don't know what they were doing there. There's theories about, you know...

modern audiences not liking nipples and things like that but there would have been so many nipples on display so many nipples

Can I, I mean, who is criticizing? Have like, okay, maybe I'm just projecting here, but like, that's the best part of Spartacus. And I'm always talking about stars, I should say. But like, that's the best part. Like, I can't tell you the number. So I watch, I was introduced to Star Spartacus by my friends in Ancient History Fangirl, Jen and Jenny. And so we watched a lot together. And I

I can't tell you the number of times that we have sent gifts back and forth of either Spartacus or Gannicus, like only the first Spartacus. But like the, okay, I could go too far. We're going to, we're going to talk about Spartacus later, but like, that's the best part. I'm just saying that's wild to me.

I'm giving myself away. I used to think it was the best part and then I got really nerdy about gladiating and ruined it for myself. Now I think the best part is the fact that they use shields and they've got helmets on.

Oh, I also have to say, when you talk about... How sad is that? I mean, no, it's great. I mean, as soon as you said it, I was like, I'm pretty sure Starr Spartacus also has shields, so, like, they can't all be wrong. But also, when you said the net man, that made me very happy because I, from day one of watching that show, I started calling him Mr. Nets, which is...

It's a reference to a random podcast episode of a completely, completely non-remotely historical topic. But I just love it. And now I've turned it into all of us, when we watch this show together, just call them all Mr. Nets and have a real affinity for Mr. Nets. I feel like he's an underdog and he just does great work. So yeah, just big fan of Mr. Nets. You're not wrong. The net men were seen as underdogs.

They were seen as the lowest form. There was the least amount of pride if you were an It man. That's one of the reasons they had their helmets off. They had nowhere to hide their shame. Of course. Because they had to show their face. Well, I love them.

Just so I can call them Mr. Nets. They are so cool. If you watch these shows that do the gladiatorial combat to a higher level, like Spartacus, or the reenactment groups that are going around and around, some of these guys, it proves how fascinating it is to watch. And I love the net men. They are my favorite. It would have been really interesting watching them wield a net like that. Yeah, I think they're very fun. Yeah.

Yeah, they are. Sorry, I can go off topic real easily. Where were we? Oh, referees. Yes. So, yeah. So the referees in a gladiatorial match, they're usually gladiatorial veterans that have been given their freedom. And most of them have chosen, obviously, to stay in the culture and the profession that they know. They're moving up to another level. They are now the referees.

So it seems, from what we can tell from artwork, that there would be at least one referee at a time. He would have a long stick, which he could put in between the fighters to stop them at any point. So from what we can tell, there is a kind of, you hit him here, we're going to pause. You know, his shield's fallen down, we're going to pause. So it does seem like it would have been quite stop, start, stop, start.

And because you've got the shield thing as well, and this is why I'm so, so... I can't stress enough how important shields are. Because they've got the bare chests, a lot of them have only got armour on one arm. It's a toss-up whether you... It depends on your type, whether you've got metal on one or both legs. But your shield, when it's up in the defensive position, should come about one inch above the bottom of your helmet.

an inch or so below the bottom of your leg guard. So when you are facing up against your opponent, you've got your defensive leg back. That's the one that's usually bare. You can just see metal and shield. And that's why the shields are so important.

It's never this kind of wild hacking that you tend to see in Hollywood fights. And you would never put your shield so far out in front and, you know, you see them with their arms raised high. All I'm thinking is you are letting your flank be so exposed right now. Yeah. You've got the whole of your side exposed. It's so...

Yeah. So there are rules. It would have been quite stop-start, and I think it would have been a lot more maybe defensive than modern depictions suggest. Mm-hmm. So don't get me wrong. It makes sense. Yeah. Hyper-violent. But...

A little bit different from what you've seen on screen. Yeah, more strategic, it sounds like. Much more actually thought out about the best way of doing this. More fair, even, it sounds like. Because there have been attempts to recreate with reenactors. You've got groups that have got accurate armor, all of this kind of stuff, and they fight and they work out, well, this works, this technique does not work.

We've worked out that a gladiator fight on average would have probably been about 10 to 15 minutes long. If you go in there hacking and slashing, you're going to tire yourself out and you will be dead very quickly. Yeah. So yeah, it's interesting to think that it is definitely more strategic and probably a bit slower than people might suspect. Yeah.

But that's not to say that the Greeks weren't interested in that kind of thing, because they really preferred thinking actually all Romans across the entire empire, Greek, Roman, whatever. They really loved thinking about technique and tactics. If it was a bloodbath, then that's where they start to lose a bit of interest. It's all about skill.

She's seen Encanto more times than she can count. And she can count to ten. She mentioned Mirabel in every conversation. But the moment she actually met Mirabel, she was speechless. That's pura magia. Find yours at Walt Disney World Resort. Five years, ten months, and two days. That's how long it took to grow the 38 inches to ride on Cali River Rapids. But the moment the wait finally ended, that was pura magia. Discover it at Walt Disney World Resort.

Did you know that parents rank financial literacy as the number one most difficult life skill to teach? Meet Greenlight, the debit card and money app for families. With Greenlight, you can send money to kids quickly, set up chores, automate allowance, and keep an

This is it.

Your moment. This is your time to make your comeback with Purdue Global. When you come back with a Purdue Global degree, you create opportunity for yourself, your family, and your future. It's a degree you can be proud of, a degree that employers will trust and respect. Purdue Global offers working adults like you over 175 flexible degree programs to meet your specific career goals.

goals. These include associate, bachelor's, master's, and doctoral degrees and certificates. Purdue Global degree programs range from nursing to business to communication and more. Whatever your interests, we have the degree that will move you forward.

You have the knowledge. You have the experience. Now it's time to get credit for the work you've done and earn the recognition you deserve with Purdue Global, Purdue's online university for working adults. You know you're worth it. We do too. So don't wait another second to get the degree that will take your career to the next level. Start your comeback today at purdueglobal.edu. And that's one of the things that they are talking about in their Eastern program

is how skilled they are. And I love their gravestones. They're so fascinating. And, you know, occasionally they're quite cute, which might seem the wrong word to use. So we were talking about netmen, weren't we? The Retiarius. There was a Retiarius called Melanippos. He was born in Tarsus, but I think he died somewhere else. He died in Alexandria Troas. And his...

Greystone says that they say Hercules completed 12 labours. Well, I did exactly the same because I won 12 matches, but I died on my 13th. And you just think, wow, I love that. I love that for him that he's a modern day Hercules. I think that's wonderful. What a way to boast.

It almost sounds, doesn't it, that he doesn't even mind that it was the 13th, as long as he beat Hercules' record. Yeah, he accomplished, I mean, it was a Herculean feat, and he did it. Yeah, absolutely. So, yeah, I find it fascinating. And, as I say, it's

I think that there was a little bit of criticism in the ancient world about it coming from a certain type of person. And I think that the kind of reason that it's not more widely known now is because the same kind of person in the modern world is, you know, not so keen to advertise it either. Yeah. I think it's great.

Yeah, I mean, like, I was gonna guess the same thing. Like, it just sounds like it's so it's so predictable. This, the fact that it isn't talked about a lot, and the fact that there would have been Greeks criticizing it, because it doesn't fit with the narrative that particularly that like Athens wanted to portray, right? Like,

It doesn't fit the narrative of the super like hyper intellectual Greeks who were all about, you know, it reminds me almost like

of like some Euripidean plays versus the other two of like, he doesn't always fit what, what this, like this mentality wanted to be when it comes to Greece. Like this idea that they're all just like these brilliant, brilliant men making works of art and they would never stoop so low as, as violence, you know, like,

Yeah, it's not remotely surprising. And you can kind of exactly track where it's all coming from. But at the same time, it's like... I mean, it's like why I love ancient Greece, but also like talking about specifically this kind of stuff, like pushing back against this narrative that they were these like hyper intellectual like...

flawless you know just brilliant minds because that's far less interesting than the truth which is that yeah they had people who were super intellectual and who wrote down brilliant things and they had you know works of art that were all of that and then they also were fucked up and writing dark shit and like making things weird and like

you know Euripides was willing to write Medea because he fucking wanted to and and you know like I think it's so much more interesting to see them as much more of like these real people who were doing everything because I mean I much prefer it and I love to know that they were doing violent shit with gladiators too yeah because I mean when you think about it what is more violent than reading the Iliad

Yeah. I mean, you've got spears being thrown that cut off tongues at the base. The description in the Iliad of some of those moments. Yeah. Like cutting tongues off. There's like those there's lines where it's like the spear went in and ripped out every inch of his entrails. Like, yeah, we get that.

such visceral literally descriptions of what happens in battle and what can result from these weapons that they're using so yeah like it absolutely fits that this would like carry forward so much more fun there's this whole kind of myth that the Greeks were all about philosophy and drama when actually

You read the epics and you read, for instance, Thucydides. No, they really liked fighting. Yeah. So why wouldn't they enjoy watching it? And you think about modern... I mean, how many things have we already mentioned? We've mentioned Stiles Spartacus. We've mentioned the movie Gladiator. There are dozens of gladiators in modern media. So really...

And, you know, not even just gladiators, it's just violence in general. Well, yeah, you think of, I mean, like, I don't want to use 300 as any kind of, like, positive example, but it's still a great example of that, like, hyper-violent featuring the ancient world and Troy, too, like, not quite the same, but, I mean, I think better done, if that's what you can say about Troy, but comparatively. But, yeah, like, we love that. Humans, like, why wouldn't it be the same for the Greeks? But, like...

It all comes back to that, you know, quote unquote Western civilization narrative, right? That like they had in order for them to be like the origins of all of these things that we think are better than everyone else. Like you also have to have them be above the violence and above the bloodshed. And it's like, no. And it's, yeah. I mean, yeah. You can link it to so many different problematic ideas, but also just like the pure and simple, like, no, it's far more interesting now.

that they contained these multitudes, they were intelligent, and also they liked to watch people stab each other. So when you think about some of these Greek sites, particularly ones that a lot of tourists might visit, you'll never, well, I won't say never because I've seen one or two, but you will very, very rarely see any reference to gladiatorial combat, despite the fact that the remnants of the adaptations made are still very visible.

So I've already mentioned the Theatre of Dionysus in Athens. That blows my mind. There is a wall. Yeah. So you'll see a wall about a metre high, roughly, going around the entire of the orchestra. That's Roman. That was so that gladiators didn't trip and fall and stab the people in the front row. Huh. The Panathenaic Stadium, that's been heavily restored now. Yeah. But when they were excavating it, they found that at the U-shaped end...

There had been an attempt to kind of cordon off that U-shaped end to make a mini amphitheatre, which is something that's happened in other stadiums in the East as well. It could be temporary or it could be permanent.

To give them less space so that they're, you know, because obviously the Pan-Ethnic stadium is enormously long. So was it cordoned off to give more like a specialized area for the fighting itself? Exactly. To give that same oval shaped section. Less room to run, I guess, too. And that's also happened at Aphrodisias and Petras and Nacopolis. So you've got that

in Athens, Ephesus. Ephesus is a hugely popular tourist spot. I don't think they particularly advertise the fact that it's one of only two places in the entire Roman Empire where we have found a gladiatorial cemetery. I went there like 12 years ago, so I'm sure I wouldn't, even if I'd seen something like that, I wouldn't have remembered. But like, that's so cool. I mean, the people that know, they really know. Yeah.

I mean, I don't think the general public really, really know that much about it. So Corinth as well, the amphitheatre is not open to the public, but the theatre, this is really cool because as we've said, the amphitheatre in Corinth was built by Caesar, Julius Caesar for Romans.

But a couple of centuries later, they've got their massive, massive theatre. They've decided, no, we don't want to use that hokey little amphitheatre. It's too provincial. We're going to change our massive theatre. So they took out 10 rows of seats. I think it's the biggest conversion of that kind in any theatre in the East. So that's about two centuries after Julius Caesar's amphitheatre came.

And you can see that theatre today and there's nothing on it to tell you why that change had been made. Right. You've got the theatre at Miscellany, for instance, doesn't look like a Greek theatre anymore because the front seats are so much higher on top of a wall than the orchestra. Yeah.

And, you know, why? Who knows? It's a mystery. It's not a mystery. So many sites, though. So many of these amazing sites. And there's just... They want to hide it. Yeah. Well, okay. And that reminds me of one of the things that was so interesting when Dan Stewart was like... Well, he just told me. I didn't have any idea that any of this had happened. And so that started my own knowledge of this. But also the idea that...

Amidst all these changes and amidst using these Greek theaters for these kinds of gladiatorial fighting, like, they were also then still performing the plays. And I find that so interesting to think about, too. Like, this idea that you could go from some, like, horrifically violent, bloodshed-filled moment, like, straight into, like...

you know, Oedipus Tyrannos or something like that is kind of fascinating in itself. And like, I think it adds so much to the theater too. Like it adds a lot to the performance of these plays to think about them coming like back to back with something so violent. So this can actually tie up with who is it who's putting on these shows and why it's not the Romans. The Romans are not putting on these shows for the Greeks.

And they don't care if the Greeks go or not. They could not give a toss. Yeah. What it is, is the priests of the imperial cult who are putting on these shows. Huh. And it's part of the obligation of their role is to provide munera or gifts to the locals in honour of the emperor, blah, blah, blah, blah.

So it's usually priests of the imperial cult and they will rent out a gladiatorial family. Some places like Pergamon, the priests had their own family of gladiators on retainer and the next priest along would inherit that family of gladiators. Or there were roving groups that you could hire as they were passing through.

But gladiatorial combat wasn't one of the only things that you could provide as part of this obligation. You could put on a dramatic festival. You could put on an athletic festival. You could build something. So, for instance, in the city of Aphrodisias, they changed their stadium into an amphistadium for gladiators.

So Aphrodisias, they've changed their stadium for gladiators. And we've actually got a letter between... We've got correspondence between them and the Emperor Hadrian. And they're saying...

we've got this budget and we're wondering we really really want to spend it on gladiators but we kind of need an aqueduct so what do you think we should do and hadrian is saying are you crazy build the aqueduct it's going to be more useful in the long run it's more pragmatic build the aqueduct you idiots why are you wasting money on all of these gladiators

So the Roman emperors are absolutely not pushing for the spread of spectacle. So there's this whole myth about a rather outdated term now, Romanization, which is this idea that the Romans were forcing their culture on everyone. The Romans did not give a shit about gladiators in the East.

It sounds more like the Greeks were Hellenizing the gladiators more than the Romans were Romanizing anything. If anything, I think they were too enthusiastic to the point where a couple of people were thinking, oh, okay. Yeah. I mean, Hadrian wasn't averse to gladiators, but he's absolutely saying, no, do not waste your money on one show. Build something that's going to actually help people, you idiots. Yeah.

poncho or an aqueduct which one is smarter so you you've got these priests and their their role is to provide something it doesn't have to be gladiatorial combat but as we know now from all of these adapted venues it very very frequently was so i think just the fact that

They were trying to impress the local populace as much as possible. To gain popularity and prestige for them, the fact that they are choosing to put on spectacle as well as or instead of these other forms of entertainment or monumentalisation is very, very telling. The Greeks weren't being forced to watch anything. The Greeks were begging for more shows to be put on. Yeah.

Just in a very Greek setting with Greek stage names. It's brilliant to me. I love it. Do they do like any full-blown cosplay, like dressing up like the gods and stuff? Not so much. So there is a little bit of dressing up involved, but it's not actually the gladiators and it's across the whole empire. And it goes back to the idea of the psychopomp.

Okay. So you'd have someone dressed as Charon. That's so dark. I love it. If you had a gladiator who you thought might be faking death to try and sneak out or maybe was on the brink and you really knew that the doctors weren't going to be able to save him, you'd send on Charon with a massive hammer. Whack them in the head. What?

to make sure that the job was finished, to send them to the underworld. And actually, when you look at the skeletons in Ephesus, a lot of them have massive cranial wounds. So there was a bit of dress up, but it wasn't the gladiators doing it. I'm so glad I asked, though. Yeah. I mean, there is an element of dress up in the fact that from the foundations of it,

The different types of gladiator are kind of supposed to be, quite a few of them are dressed as traditional Roman adversaries and enemies. But that really only is important when you're looking at spectacle in Rome itself. Right. And when you're looking at spectacle in Rome, it's important to figure out what its job was.

Because there's this whole thing about, oh, well, it's because the Romans were really bloodthirsty. But it's so much more than that. It's about considering your own mortality. So the gladiators were taught to die without flinching. Jesus. And to accept death with courage. That's a great lesson that we can all learn. But also for the audience in Rome, it's a lesson in imperialism.

and when to grant mercy and when to be more pragmatic. A lot of those messages about how to be an imperialist power don't really work in the provinces. So I think in the Greek East, it is more about the one-on-one. The Greeks loved the macho,

the male body. What better way? Did they? I mean, I've heard rumors. You can watch them run around in the nude. Yeah, that's fine. They never did that. Why not give each other pointy metal sticks? And you know, you think about it, it's the perfect amalgamation of so many Greek loves. You've got the athleticism, the competition, the

You've got the myths and epic in the stage names and in the epitaphs. And I think it shows... Phallic messaging everywhere. I mean, this isn't from Greece. It's from England. But I have to mention there is a terracotta lamp with a fornicating couple on it. And they're both dressed as gladiators. And the girl's on top. And she's, you know, she's winning. She's...

He's sheathing his sword, but she's winning. It's such a cool episode. That sounds amazing. Also just like,

For all I like to... I've made it like a joke to insult Rome compared to Greece, but like I do have to say the variations in dick lamps that Rome had. Like just true art. I forget who... I feel like I've become like an utterly absurd friend to most everyone I know because in real life I really don't have many friends who have any interest in the ancient world except for whatever I force upon them. And like...

I don't remember who I was telling, but like, I, I just started talking about like the penis lamps of Pompeii. And like, I just can sometimes watch people's brains just be like, right. I'm friends with you. Okay. Like, yeah. Tell me more about the penis lamps and pump. And I'm like, well, some of them have wings and some of them have wings and more penis parts attached so that there's like 10 all in one. And it's like, let me tell you,

Can I tell you about one of my favourite things? Yes. I can't remember if it's from Pompeii or Herculaneum, but it's from one of them. It is a metal little statuette of a gladiator who's fighting his own penis, which also happens to be a panther. Oh my god.

That makes me so happy and I have to see it. It is in Naples Archaeological Museum. You know the little cupboards that they've got of all the naughty things that women weren't allowed in until like a couple of decades ago. It's in there. It is the strangest piece of Roman art I think I've ever seen. I love it so much. I really wish they'd make a museum repro for the gift shop because I would buy 10 and have them in a room. Yeah.

She's seen Encanto more times than she can count. And she can count to ten. She mentioned Mirabel in every conversation. But the moment she actually met Mirabel, she was speechless. That's pura magia. Find yours at Walt Disney World Resort. Five years, ten months, and two days. That's how long it took to grow the 38 inches to ride on Cali River Rapids. But the moment the wait finally ended, that was pura magia. Discover it at Walt Disney World Resort. This is it.

Your moment. This is your time to make your comeback with Purdue Global. When you come back with a Purdue Global degree, you create opportunity for yourself, your family, and your future. It's a degree you can be proud of, a degree that employers will trust and respect. Purdue Global offers working adults like you over 175 flexible degree programs to meet your specific career goals.

goals. These include associate, bachelor's, master's, and doctoral degrees and certificates. Purdue Global degree programs range from nursing to business to communication and more. Whatever your interest, we have the degree that will move you forward.

You have the knowledge. You have the experience. Now it's time to get credit for the work you've done and earn the recognition you deserve with Purdue Global, Purdue's online university for working adults. You know you're worth it. We do too. So don't wait another second to get the degree that will take your career to the next level. Start your comeback today at purdueglobal.edu.

This new year, I want to spend more time with my family, get healthier, and make sure my finances are in order. That includes finally securing life insurance. My friend recommended SelectQuote. They've helped more than 2 million people find coverage in the last 40 years. In 15 minutes, a licensed insurance agent found me a $500,000 policy for only $16 a month. And my husband got a $500,000 policy for only $18 a month. Plus, we qualified for same-day life insurance.

No medical exam required, and we recovered by the time we hung up. With SelectQuote, even if you have a health concern, be it high blood pressure, diabetes, even heart disease, their experienced agents can find you the right life insurance policy at the lowest price. Make life insurance the first resolution you check off your list this year. Go to SelectQuote.com for your free quote. That's SelectQuote.com. SelectQuote.com. Details on example right at SelectQuote.com.

I mean, we can always divert into dicks, but I was just before you get back in because I want to hear everything, but just the way you were talking about, you know, the, the, the way Greece kind of took on all of this stuff. Like, I really just think it also fits so beautifully. Like, I just kept thinking when you were talking about all of this, like the way it, it manages to like still kind of connect with or like,

I can't think of the right word, but it just makes me think of the procession for the Great Dionysia and the Dixon's Dicks, as I like to call them. They had fell like literally everything in Greece. And it really, it all still pulls together. Oh, I think we were talking specifically about how the Greeks like a naked form. It really makes sense to just kind of

transform what was like this you know like people want to think of theater greek theater you know as we were talking about like as this hyper intellectual brilliant works of art but like the whole damn thing started with a procession of enormous phalluses throughout the city like it was never what the the western world wants it to be it was always weird and sexual and like

And so it just, it fits so perfectly to then have them take on gladiators and make them their own and like kind of connect them almost with Dionysus and with like their theatrical roots. Because like they're so tied, like one might have real bloodshed, but like they're not so far apart, theater and these kinds of competitions. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, you think of some of the deaths that you see

I mean, I know you didn't see them in the plays mentioned by The Messenger, but there is so much violence in these stories. Yeah. It's almost like the next logical step is to just show a bit of it. Absolutely. And I think as well, because you've got the drama of it all, the athleticism of it all, the aesthetics of it all,

The way that these Greek gladiators are talking about themselves, how they're spoken about, is so different to how they were considered in the West. And there's this thing called infamia, which is where we get the word infamy. I was willing to bet. It's a Roman kind of social class, and it's the outcasts.

So that's where you get executioners, undertakers, sex workers, pimps, actors, dancers, quite a few musicians and gladiators. They're all in this social class of outcasts. They didn't have the same rights. I don't think they had many rights at all. It's difficult to talk about this because...

I don't think there's enough work been done on it, really, because the Roman Empire was centuries long and it was this huge geographical span. And it's pretty difficult to say that there's this one level of outcastness that was put on in every single province, in every single century, on every single one of those categories. But it is fair to say that they were treated differently from people with respectable professions. Mm-hmm.

But in the East, you can sense the pride when they talk about themselves and their tombstones, about their achievements and their fame and their skill. You can sense the pride. And there's no point putting that in your epitaph unless that's the kind of thing that's generally accepted and that other people also think the same kind of thing. And I believe, and I will go to bat saying this,

I believe that gladiators in the East were treated better with more respect than gladiators in the West. I think that would be fair saying that. I mean, I was going to say that sounds right, but all I know is what you've told me. But that leads directly to a question which I was wondering about. My ability to phrase words today is not going well. Me too.

You sound brilliant. I'm curious about like, and I don't know enough about this historically, let alone, you know, when it gets to Greece, but like the gladiators and whether they're always enslaved, whether some of them are choosing this life, like what is the deal there? And was it different in the East? That's really difficult to say with the information that we have. Okay. Um,

There's different schools of thought amongst the academics anyway. It does seem that in the earlier days of spectacle in the West, the majority were slaves and prisoners of war. And then because gladiators kept some of their winnings and could achieve freedom, you could absolutely, as a free man, if you needed the cash, you could take the risk. So...

There was definitely an upward tick in free people signing up and they were called auktorati. They would sign up for a set amount of time, certain amount of years or a certain amount of fights and say, this is how long you've got me for. I'm going to try and not die with a bit of money. And that seems to be absolutely what Greeks are doing. So there is a split between the unfree and

and the temporarily unfree. Right. On the other hand, we do also see, as in the West, that they absolutely could earn their freedom, and a lot of them did. We've got quite a few gravestones mentioning that they've won their freedom and that they can go on to do all kinds of other jobs. We know, for instance, one of the jobs that they could do is as a referee. There's one epitaph that I love, and it's of a gladiator complaining.

that he, as far as he concerned, he'd won the match because he had his opponent pinned down. But the referee, for whatever reason, decided that actually, no, he hadn't. And that was the only reason I'm dead is because of that referee. I mean, holding that much of a grudge that you write it in stone. Yes. But yeah, it seems to be that

There was the possibility of making a lot of money if you were good. A lot of it, I think, we can't overestimate the appeal of having a set place where you knew that you were going to have a bed, possibly not a comfortable bed, and food. Not the best food in the world, but not bad either, because you were an expensive commodity as a gladiator. You were...

you were expensive to maintain. They had a reason to keep you in fighting fit form. So for a lot of these men, I think a guaranteed roof over their head and food in their bellies would have been a pretty good reason to sign up. Yeah. Yeah. Which is sad on many levels. Yeah.

But I don't think we should feel too sad for some of them because the way that they talk about themselves, they are so proud of what they achieved. Yeah, that's what it sounds like. Yeah, they are. Please, they are so proud of themselves to be able to call themselves warriors of Ares and to fight among heroes. That's how they talk about each other. And I think it's a real shame then.

When you've got these ancient critics, modern critics that like to pretend that the Greeks were just sat drinking wine and talking about philosophy all day. I think that's really sad that they're the loudest voice when actually these guys, some of them were, but not all of them were victims. Yeah. They would hate it to be seen as victims. They're heroes.

And I think it is difficult when you're talking about Roman spectacle, not to come across as bloodthirsty yourself. But I think going too far in the other direction and too sanitized and pretending that you're devastated at the thought of these deaths thousands of years ago. I think that's also just as disingenuous. I think we've got to look at it from a measured perspective, somewhere in the middle,

We recognise humanity's propensity to enjoy violence for violence's sake. We're fascinated by it. We can find it a bit fun. I think by demonising or sympathising with these people too much, it does them a disservice because every time I read what they've written, they're just so proud to be gladiators. So yeah, I kind of just want to talk about them to make sure that their voices are still being heard.

Yeah. Yeah. When it sounds like, I mean, the level of pride involved in some of those tombstones, like it's lovely. It's really, it's yeah. It's really nice. And like,

I mean, I just, I love those moments of like real people, you know, because I think as exactly exemplified by everything we've been talking about, like this idea of the Greeks as this one thing, these people who drink wine and talk about philosophy, like sure that applied to some of them, but by and large it did not. And, and like, it's so much more interesting to look at what an,

an everyday person, whether they're a gladiator or not, like, you know, actually felt about their life. And yeah, I mean, I love that. I love hearing that they were proud of what they were doing. And like, I love the Ares connection too, because like he's, to me, he's a really fascinating figure in myth in Greek mythology, because like,

he's really not mentioned that much for somebody who was a god of something so important. Like, Athena really gets all the credit for being the goddess of war. I think particularly because, you know, so much of our record comes from Athens. But like, yeah, it's so it's lovely to have these connections to Aries. Like, I have a real thing for Aries and I can't totally explain and I really like it. Yeah.

I mean, ever since playing Immortals Fenyx Rising, I've got a bit of a thing for Ares myself. I've considered that game before, but you've convinced me a little bit more. Yeah, you have to play it. Seriously, you're going to get so many episodes out of that thing. Yeah.

I mean, yeah, as long as I can finally tear myself away from Odyssey for once, but we'll see. I love Ares. To pull it back to a part that I cut out, listeners, you'll never know. Yeah, okay, I don't know where I interrupted you, so stop me if...

there's relevancy before I bring up Odyssey because you told me to bring up Odyssey and now I'm fascinated by it for the listeners ooh okay yeah so that's the only other game I've played so to the listeners I do mean Assassin's Creed Odyssey because I always mean Assassin's Creed Odyssey so please tell me everything but that's all to say like I know enough of Origins too so there are gladiators in Origins and Odyssey and your character can be one

And this is kind of, can I make sure, can I make sure that I'm guessing right? Because I feel like I need to test my knowledge of Odyssey. Like, do you mean like everything that happens on Crete, like in the thing? Yeah. I feel like it's just like, they've got their kind of makeshift amphitheater, haven't they? Yeah. And that's, that's kind of, I mean, it's way too early.

but that's what I kind of mean is it's the makeshift ability of just building it wherever you want. Yeah. That's entirely right. Way too early. Centuries too early, but you know, nevermind. But origins wouldn't be if they've got something like I haven't gotten to whatever it would be in origins, but that would be time period wise. Correct. Cause we know that there definitely were gladiators in Egypt. We've got,

evidence uh literary evidence we've got archaeological evidence there's a wonderful glass with gladiators painted on it that came out of egypt it's beautiful uh so we do know that they were there again it's a bit early so julius caesar's in origins and he's yeah you know he's just introducing gladiatorial combat to greece itself he's probably not too worried about

Egypt at that point. They've put an amphitheater in Cyrene, which is... I mean, there wasn't one. But this is where it gets really interesting, because what they have done in Origins is they've provided the theatre in how the Romans adapted it. So... I've got to keep playing Origins, I guess. I've gone very far. Cyrene's theatre started off like any other theatre on the side of a hill.

And then what the Romans did to it was different to how they changed other theatres. And Origins gets it half right. So what the Romans did is they took away the stage building and then they carried on the front couple of rows of seats behind where the stage building would have been to make that circular, semi-circular kind of area for the gladiators to be in. So they've got some of it in and they've got the fact that they...

raised the front rows of seats up they've got that right but also this is what I find really interesting it's more in Odyssey than it is in Origins because archaeologists are so loathe to talk about these adaptations in detail it's very easy for someone to go to a theatre now look at it and think this is what a theatre was like in the Greek period

Which is why, if you go to several theatres in the Odyssey game, you will see Roman adaptations for gladiatorial combat in theatres a couple of centuries before they were actually changed. Because I'm guessing the researchers went over there, took loads of photos. Oh yeah, that theatre's got a wall. We'd better stick a wall in it. And it's not. It's Roman. Right. Yeah.

That's so interesting. Yeah, and they've got different ones as well. Some of it, they've raised the front seats by taking away the front rows and making the fourth row the front seat. Some of them they've put in the wall.

Do you know examples of where in the game? Because yes, I'd want to go directly into the game. Because I'm thinking like the theater of Dionysus, they have the old one, which was smart. Like it's all wooden. It's not the later marble. But so I'm curious about where they are. I can't now. I think it's one of the ones on the Peloponnese. It's definitely got one. Okay. I think maybe Delphi.

has got a wall or it's got the seats. And actually, I mean, Delphi was adapted by the Romans for gladiatorial combat. So again, this hugely significant religious plays, two adaptations, the theater was slightly changed and the stadium that was built. Stadium too, shit. Yeah. And it's all for gladiators because if you think about it,

Greek stadiums, if they had seating at all, which was pretty rare, the people at the front were pretty much on the level of the running track. Right. You don't need, as the person in the front row, to be higher looking down unless there's something that's going to hit you. Yeah. And you'll hear all the archaeologists say, oh, well, they did the beast hunts.

They did the beast hunts, but they didn't kill humans here. They just killed the beast hunts. And I'm looking at these tiny walls thinking, yeah, mate. That's going to stop a lion. That's not going to stop much, really. So yeah, Delphi, the stadium, not only has it got higher seats, but it's got everything that you need.

To have gladiatorial combat in the Holy of Holies. Yeah. So Delos and Delphi. Yeah. That's wild. That's amazing. Yeah. And you won't ever hear it in the guidebooks. No, no. You'll hear it in a guidebook that I eventually write. But so far, you won't hear it in any guidebooks.

Wow. Yeah, it's all there. Yeah. That's what I find so interesting that a game that was so dedicated to historical accuracy has accidentally put in these Roman changes because they were there, but no one bothered explaining why. Yeah. So I guess, I don't know, maybe they just thought, well, it's there.

must have been for a reason yeah it makes sense because you know if if it is something that is so kind of like you know not necessarily explicitly hidden away but like ostensibly kind of hidden away like that's probably the wrong word to use but like you know if it's something that's not talked about a lot and like yes they had historians working on that game but like

I mean, yeah, if it's just one of those things where it just kind of gets like brushed under the rug, this idea of why they would have been changed, it makes perfect sense that it kind of ends up in there. And I mean, there's so many little things that they clearly just were like, you know, this needs to be because it needs to be in the game because we don't know, you know, what else would be there kind of thing. You know, I think about all the like, um,

minoan slash mycenaean ruins that are kind of everywhere and they all have yeah it's like they're meant to be mycenaean but for the most part they i guess if they're on the islands they all have the like um the sacred horns kind of thing so they're all like also minoan anyway it's just interesting like those little things that that are you can see where they pulled it from part of history and then they were like but we got to put it here because we have to put something here yeah exactly

So yeah, I mean, it's interesting because they did get the Theatre of Dionysus right, the fact that it was wooden to start off with. But on other theatres, it looks exactly like it would have done in the Roman period for 500 years later. I was going around it as I was doing this research, playing the game and just thinking, oh wow, they're everywhere. Interesting. I'm going to go find a bunch of theatres now.

And it truly is. It's well over a hundred real life examples of these buildings being ever so slightly altered. Yeah. I love it. Okay. You also brought up the beast hunt, which reminds me that I desperately want to hear about this woman who is often called a gladiator, but she wasn't a gladiator, but she was like all that we know about women involved in this. So tell me everything. So, um,

People love talking about female gladiators because it's an extraordinary profession and they are the most extraordinary of the extraordinary, right? I am so sorry to tell you that we have hardly any information at all. Which, I know, I complete Debbie Downer. Sometimes it's just the truth. So, sorry to...

upset anyone that still considers the History Channel to be a viable source of historical information. There's recently a documentary called, I think, Colosseum, eight episodes long, and one of them was about a female gladiator called Mavia. Here's the thing. Mavia wasn't a gladiator. She was a beast hunter. So you've got kind of...

two levels of beast hunter. You've got the bestiaries, they're kind of thrown in and told to do their best. And you've got highly, highly trained beast hunters, the Venator. And she's one of those. So no offer from a passage in Juvenile. There is two sentences. She hunts with bared breasts and that's pretty much it. Priorities.

The other thing to note with her specifically, because they've named her in this documentary and they've given her this huge autobiography, it's all bollocks. Because she's in two lines of Juvenile, which is a satire, so it's possible that she's not even real. She's like Atlantis, I guess. She's not at all. She's not at all. I want to make that clear. I mean, it's not to say that there weren't female gladiators completely.

But we have to be really conservative with how we talk about them. So, for instance, there's mention of some upper class ladies being forced to fight by Nero at the games that he put on for his mother after he murdered her.

Okay, I just have to point out the way you phrased that. Because as someone who doesn't know enough Roman history, like saying the games he put on for his mother before then adding after he killed her is magnificent. Yeah, I mean, it was a... This is how gladiatorial games really took off, right? It's a funeral thing. It happened at funerals to honour the dead.

At some point, someone said, not enough posh people are dying to have these big funerals. Should we just have gladiatorial fights whenever we want for funsies? And everyone went, yeah, that's a great idea. But it was still, you know, the thing to do when someone dies is to put on games. And Julius Caesar put on games, I think it was for his sister, I think, or...

Maybe his dad. But it was decades after the person had died. Right, so just like an excuse. It was absolutely an excuse. With this one, I suppose he was trying to look innocent. Oh, my poor mom. I better, you know, have some people try and kill each other. She was such an amazing mom. I'm going to make all of her friends fight in the arena. So they're upper class women.

I think it's safe to say that they weren't there by choice and they weren't professionally trained so I'm not going to call them gladiators Tacitus also mentions that there are a couple of aristocratic ladies that might be seen in the Colosseum but again if they're forced to be there and they've never trained I don't count them yeah that just sounds like it's an execution made into a show when the Colosseum is opened in 80 CE Marshall mentions

Lots and lots of things about the opening games, the inaugural games, because he's bigging up the Flathians who built it. He mentions a couple of women. He actually says, it's so wonderful, Emperor, that even Venus serves you, meaning that there were females in the performers. But there were so many performers in the Colosseum. There were dancers, musicians, beast hunters,

He doesn't actually call any of them gladiators, so I'm not counting those either. He does mention a woman who killed a lion just like Hercules, but she's not a gladiator.

But also, like, that would be really cool. Like, if she did it, like, actually strangling a lion, like, I want to meet her. I mean, that would be kind of cool, wouldn't it? It really would. I would love to see those opening games. Yes, like, fine. Not a gladiator. Totally fine. I want to see it. I want to know how that is going down. And, you know, we get lots of names of female beast hunters. That seems to be, you know, a great job for a woman in the arena. That's so cool. But...

We really only have... Suetonius mentions some female gladiators fighting by torchlight under Domitian. He seems to suggest that they have had some training. So I'm counting those. We've got a poem that says that there were some brave women who fought like Amazons, but they were untrained. Not counting those. So actually, we've got one passage of Suetonius and we've got one...

uh inscription from ostia about women and swords and we've got one piece of artwork with female gladiators and it comes from turkey see i told you the greeks took gladiatorial combat and they ran with it all of the fun stuff it's happening over in the east yeah so do we think that they actually had some over there then

So here's the thing. Yes, please. Tell me the thing. It's a relief. And it's currently in the British Museum. And it's been there since the 1800s. And with so many other things in the British Museum from the 1800s, there's not a lot of detail about where it comes from. All we know is Halicarnassus. So where in Halicarnassus? From the necropolis? From the theatre? Who knows? The theatre in Halicarnassus was adapted.

So we know it was used. Don't know whether it was used by these women, but it was used for gladiators. So we don't know where the stone is from, which makes it really difficult. Give me another reason to be mad at the British Museum. Oh, as if we need another one. Right? So there's two reasons to carve reliefs of gladiators in the East. One is if you're a gladiator and it's your tombstone.

You want to put yourself on it. And they did that way more than gladiators did in the West. They love putting themselves full figure on their tombstones. They are showing off and flexing even in death. I love it. The other reason to have gladiators in relief is if you are one of those imperial priests or a local politician who's put on a games and

The way that you make sure that no one forgets that you put on the most amazing games in the world is by making giant stone postcards of them for everyone to walk by. And we've got these from all over Turkey and Greece. And some of them, they're so cool. Some of them are like four pictures in a row, like a comic strip. So you can see the fights beginning, middle and end. I love it. So I'm going to make a slightly educated guess that this stone is

comes from one of those groups. It doesn't have any words on it apart from their names, which are Achillea. But they have names! Yeah. Achillea and Amazonia. Oh, fuck off. That's so cool. How cool is that? That makes me so happy. So cool. Um...

Also, like, you're in Turkey. Like, you're... I mean, Troy is right there, like, choosing to have two and name them that. Just... That's wonderful. Makes me very happy. It's pretty fucking cool, I have to say. So I think that this is what it is. It's a stone. It's probably part of another set of here's a games that ran for X amount of days. I'm going to put the top...

three fights from it in art so that everyone can see I'm the cool dude who put on the women fighting each other in Halicarnassus. I'm the only one that's done it so far. This is my name, which now they don't have. Vote for me. Yeah. And I think because of

that context, we can pretty much say there was a fight between two women in Halicarnassus and they were called Achillea and Amazonia. That's so fun. Which is really fucking cool. But it's the only, apart from that Suetonius thing, it's the only evidence of a documented fight between women that we have for the whole Roman Empire for its entire length.

Wow. We can guess that there were more, but we've got one fight that we know about that we can say pretty much happened. From their stance, they were trained. They're in perfect fighting stance. Apart from that, I think we have to imagine tens of thousands of gladiators across the empire throughout the centuries, maybe less than 0.5% would have been women.

Yeah. That's me being really, really generous. Yeah. The majority of people in the Roman Empire would have lived their entire lives without seeing a single woman fight. Now, going back to this documentary, I mean, that's just not scandalous and salacious enough for them. So they've made it up. We have got no evidence, literary, artistic, nothing, nada,

for a woman fighting in the Colosseum itself. And because their documentary was Rome-centric, they've had to take someone doing a different job and give them another job. But, I mean, this was a documentary that had a beast hunter cry when he killed his best friend, who's also a lion, and then hug the corpse. So I don't know what to tell you. It's just... I mean... There's one scene where him and the lion, the night before the fight, they hug while looking at the moon together. I can't...

I'm saying words into the microphone so that the listeners understand because my face there. That is absurd on like a level that, I mean, I want to say that it surprises me even for History Channel. It obviously doesn't because they make that show about aliens. So they're dumbasses. But still, that is bananas. Yeah.

I mean, I would love to see a documentary about that fight, possibly in the context of spectacle in the East itself. Because a lot of the fruity stuff in gladiatorial combat is happening in the East instead of the West. So some of the odder things like there was a gladiator type called a Lucarius who had a lasso instead of a net. Adorable.

That appears apparently only in Greece. There was an Arbalast type who had kind of like, this is really hard to describe without a picture, but a semicircular blade on the end of like a solid glove. Oh my God. I was going to be like, oh, like a scythe or something, but until you said glove. Yeah. So like Freddy Krueger, but one glove.

Yeah, kind of. More circular. And they could have either one and a shield or one on each hand. They only happen in the Greek East, from what we can tell. So a lot of the weird stuff. If you're looking for exotic gladiators, you're going to go there. And I think that's probably why this is the only place where we've got a definite source for female gladiators. I really hate to burst everyone's bubble about this because...

I mean, the movie Gladiator had those archers that get chopped in half by the chariots. Sorry, spoiler alert, 23 years later. And a lot of reenactment groups have female gladiators and I love to see them. I think they're fantastic. What I really would stress is we know about one fight. One. And nowhere near Rome.

nowhere near Rome I mean Suetonius mentions he doesn't mention how many but it's one instance in Rome he doesn't say where exactly is it clear that he's at least talking about Rome or could that even be up for debate no not really yeah probably somewhere within the vicinity but right yeah again Rome had more than one venue

There were gladiators in the Circus Maximus. There were... Nero built an amphitheater that burnt down, I think. So there's more than one venue. Yeah. Sorry, I have to pull what little Roman history I know when I need it. Yeah, it's so interesting. It's so, like... I mean, not to harp on the documentary, but it just...

I'm just, like, perpetually in awe that we can't get a documentary that's accurate. And it always seems to be because they want it to be more salacious and more, like, dramatic. But it's like, I just want to scream because all I...

All I want to say to that is like, just pick one of the topics that is that because like real history can be that dramatic. Like you're saying, like if they if we just there's a documentary about, you know, gladiatorial fights in the East, like it would be just as incredibly fascinating. And you could feature all of these weird things and then also maybe talk about how.

there was this fight between women and like i don't know i have a lot of i have a lot of thoughts and feelings on the complete lack of like really historically accurate documentaries made by popular i mean i've written about seven in my head i just need someone to give me a lot of money to make them i mean okay like yes yeah that's the thing there's so there's so many possibilities out there

Yeah, I mean, it's so interesting because I love that people want these women to be involved in these things that are so heavily masculine. You want there to be women gladiators. That'd be so cool. But it's like, you can't force it. It's not there. You want to see these women kick ass in the male sphere. Yeah. Which is what most feminists want now. Unfortunately. I mean...

They clearly did at least once, but not a lot. Sorry. No, no. And that's why I love that the reenactors are just, because most of them will say this is incredibly rare. I saw one in France and they actually called themselves Amazonia and Achillea to reenact that fight. That's cool. That was pretty, that was really, really awesome.

um but yeah it's it's rare amazing but really really really really really rare and if that's one thing that everyone takes away from this episode it's that they're really rare yeah yeah but we can still talk about Achillea and and Amazonia like that's great at least their names you know like we have them that's so cool

Yeah, we have so many names and it's so great. You think of Polonices and the Tithes from the plays and then after the play's finished, the next day you can go and see it being reenacted.

fuck okay that by people that's calling themselves yes so that's what i was thinking about when i like you know mentioned the whole like them still using the theaters as theaters in addition to using them for these things so like would they ever have i mean obviously this would be really difficult for us to know unless somebody wrote it down but like would they have a kind of back-to-back situation like would they be able to transform it quickly enough like i don't know do we know anything about that

So some of the transformations were temporary. For instance, at Argos, if you visit Argos at the edge of the orchestra in a series of post holes and they just stick up a big old fence with nets around it, that could be taken up within minutes. The other changes were permanent and they were just there. From then on, that's how it was. I would be very surprised if it happened back to back simply because if you're having a drama festival,

I think it would be a spectacle as its own event. It's like a whole thing. It just happened to be in the same place. That said, I mean, when it was Antiochus bringing in gladiators to the East for the first time in 166, there were loads of things happening at that event. I think he had chariot racing, all kinds of things. So it's not unheard of for it to be an event within a wider program. Yeah.

But from what I can tell, it would still be its own standalone thing, just in a venue that happens to now be a hybrid venue. Yeah. Oh, the idea of having two named Ateakleys and Polyneices, though, is like so fun. Like that would be dramatic, you know, like, oh my God, doing it in Thebes too, like...

Yes, can you imagine? Now, I can't... I don't think there's any evidence for a change in thieves. I don't think that's one of the places that they changed. We can dream. It's fine. How cool would that be? It would be amazing. It would be phenomenal. Then you get like five other guys coming in to... I don't know. I'm just trying to make it seven. Like, oh, it's just...

That's fun. I like these mythological connections. Surprise, surprise. All of it really reinforces the Greekness of it. There was some kind of magic in existing Greek culture that you add Roman spectacle and all of a sudden you get this glorious mishmash

I mean, to me, it just makes perfect sense. It's almost like, and like a little bit of a stretch, but it's like taking the pancration and taking theater and smushing them together. You know, it's like...

It's that sort of like hand to hand combat violence of the Pankration. But then with the theatrics of theater, with the bloodshed, like obviously there isn't any, like we're talking about, it's all in the messenger speech, but the concept is there. It's just like making the Pankration more theatrical, more violent, more bloody, but like, yeah, it's preexisting less naked. That's too bad, you know? But like,

they're taking something that's there yeah I do want to point out that on the art that we have they are still wearing their loincloths

I mean, makes sense. Oh, can you imagine? It would be very Greek. You would not want a cut in the wrong place there, would you? No! Thank you so much for doing this. This has clearly been so much fun. I am just, I mean, fuck, I would love to hear anything about the ancient world ever, but the fact that you basically turned an episode on gladiators into why the Greeks are still cooler, and maybe you wouldn't say it that way, but I'm

I'm going to uh so I really appreciate how much Greek love was in this oh it was a pleasure oh my god I'm so glad this is seriously so much fun um we already mentioned Bad Ancient but I'm I don't even know actually if it will make it into the recording because of what else we were talking about but do you want to tell my listeners like where they can read more Bad Ancient being one of them but also just find anything more about you follow you places whatever you would like to share

So yeah, I am a contributor on badancient.com, either proving or disproving various common misconceptions about the ancient world. I'm a regular contributor for Working Classicists as well. You can find both on Twitter and you can find me on Twitter at BelovedAvoisice.

And that's also the same on Blue Sky and pretty much every other platform available. Just in case Twitter just, you know, implodes. As we all try to figure out where we're going to go afterwards. Yeah. Nerds, nerds, nerds.

Don't we love a theatrically violent show from the ancient Greeks? I mean, I am just obsessed with all of this. Like Roman gladiators, eh, fine. You know, bloody fights that were probably pretty cool and definitely dark and fucked up. But the Greeks? Man, they just made it nerdy and weird and mythological and splashy. I love it. Huge thank you to Alexandra for joining me for this episode.

She reached out to me after hearing my episode with Dan Stewart from earlier this year, who talked about adapting those theaters for these games. And I am just so glad that she did, uh,

Because I didn't know it, but I was absolutely dying to learn all of this. It's just so fucking cool. I've linked to Alexandra's articles for Bad Ancient too, a site that you might remember as I've referenced them a few times now. They are pretty awesome. As well as Working Classicists, which is another amazing resource. They are lovely. You can find those links in the episode description, as always.

Anyway, this was so long. So now I will leave you all just to think long and hard about just how cool the Greeks are and just how nerdy they made something as hardcore as gladiatorial games. Because of course they did. They are the best.

Let's Talk About Myths, baby, is written and produced by me, Liv Albert. Michaela Smith is the Hermes to my Olympians. She is my assistant producer. The podcast is hosted and monetized by iHeartMedia. Listen on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. Help me continue bringing you the world of Greek mythology and the ancient Mediterranean

by becoming a patron where you'll get bonus episodes and more visit patreon.com slash myths baby or click the link in this episode's description i am live and i love this shit so much like it's so weird and gory and gross and nerdy and amazing i'm never getting over this

Please.

Welcome aboard the Johnson family. The whole fam's here for the Disney Cruise, so you know we came to play. And listen, the adults are going to have a ball. First, we're chilling in the infinity pool, on to massages at Sense's Spa, then gliding into Star Wars Hyperspace Lounge for a toast. We're even going to kick back with Mickey on Disney's private island. That's how we get down, because Disney Cruise Line is where we came to play.

Now on BET, Wednesdays at 10, 9 Central, BET Plus Original Series, Diara from Detroit.

From executive producer Kenya Barris and BET Studios comes what Variety calls a P.I. drama with flair. Meet Diara Brickland, a public school teacher turned amateur private eye after the disappearance of a very hot date. With the help of her friends and even her ex-husband, Diara's on a mission to find her missing lover. Diara from Detroit is now on BET Wednesdays at 10, 9 Central. ♪♪♪