Original subtitles

NARRATOR: This is the story of a Syrian soldier

who turns his back on the Roman Empire

and pays the price.

Captured. Enslaved.

And forced to fight as a gladiator.

PROF BRENNAN: To be forcibly sent to a gladiatorial school,

well, that was viewed as roughly equivalent as being

sent to work in the mines.

NARRATOR: Sent to Sicily, he is given the name Flamma,

and rises to become one of the greatest gladiators

the Empire has ever seen.

ALEXANDER: It's clear from his stance that Flamma

was a champion gladiator. He was a superstar.

He was born for the arena.

NARRATOR: Over 34 brutal fights,

he earns his reputation,

his scars and the respect of his brothers in arms.

ALEXANDER: Close bonds were formed.

GREENFIELD: You may have had a family outside of the ludus,

but it's also like, who really understands

who's in the trenches with you?

NARRATOR: But glory comes at a cost, and for Flamma,

the ultimate test will be a deadly duel,

not against an enemy, but against a friend.

The second century C.E. In Sicily,

excitement builds as the next gladiator games approach.

Among the fighters is a legend preparing for his 34th battle

his name is Flamma.

ALEXANDER: Interesting thing about Flamma is that

all we have to go by him is epigraphic evidence.

TONER: Flamma's epitaph is pretty short.

It's only a couple of lines, but it gives us a lot

of information about him.

It tells us where he's from, that he's from Syria,

the other side of the world, and yet he'd ended up

in Sicily fighting.

So his name is Flamma, but that's not his real name.

It's a stage name.

CARTER: Most gladiators we know took a stage name,

sort of a nom de guerre that they would fight

under in the arena.

RADFORD: Your stage name would tell the audience something

about you and the quality that you bring to the arena.

TONER: Flamma means the flame,

perhaps because he danced around so lightly,

or perhaps because he burned with a real passion.

He has fought 33 times.

He's won 21 of those fights.

Nine of them have been draws, and three times

he's been reprieved, even though he lost.

When you look at most gladiator tombstones,

they fought 3, 4, 5 times.

So 33 times is a lot for a gladiator.

NARRATOR: Nothing remains of Flamma's story

beyond his tombstone.

Even the exact years he lived are uncertain.

He may have lived at any point in the 2nd century.

Yet these bare details allow a surprising level

of insight into the life he could have led.

From these a story begins to take shape.

It is possible he fought under the rule

of the emperor Septimius Severus.

On the evening before his 34th fight,

Flamma shares a pre-fight meal with his familia gladiatoria.

COLEMAN:The familia gladiatoria would be the household

or the community that was overseen by the owner,

trainer, by the lanista.

ALEXANDER: When you lived within the ludus,

you lived in a confined space.

You trained with these people every day.

You ate with these people.

You lived your life with these people.

Close bonds were formed and they are like brothers in arms.

They put money to the side in a pool

that in case something happens to one of them,

that not only will their families be taken care of,

but also that they will receive a gravestone

to ensure that you are thus remembered.

NARRATOR: Flamma and his fellow gladiators share their meal.

But they aren't alone.

TONER: The public were able to come and watch gladiators have

kind of like the last meal of a condemned man.

GREENFIELD: This is your chance to see the gladiators

before the big event.

What could be better than this?

ALEXANDER: It kind of humanizes them a little bit.

You don't see them with their big helmets, their weapons,

you see the athlete behind it.

But also, if you're a betting man,

it's good to go see what shape are they in?

Does he have a good appetite? Is he eating?

He looks a bit sluggish.

Should I make that bet on him tomorrow?

It's also a way for the fans to meet their heroes,

and that was important because it got the excitement flowing

for what was coming the following morning.

PROF BRENNAN: At the dinner, Flamma rises and toasts

his fellow gladiator, Delicatus. They had been

comrades in the arena,

probably for many years at this point.

WEBB: They both know that each other are very competent,

many, many combats under their belt.

As Flamma and Delicatus eat together,

the crowd watches on, hoping that there will be

a great fight tomorrow.

NARRATOR: Although Flamma and his troupe try to enjoy

their meal, they know that tomorrow they will face

each other in the arena.

ALEXANDER: This is a regular occurrence.

After all, these are the same guys that you're training with,

the guys that you're living with,

the lanista and the trainers know who to pair up

for a good fight.

TONER: Imagine you've fought with these people,

you've trained with these people,

and now you've actually got to put all of that aside

and treat them as an enemy.

PROF BRENNAN: No matter how much wine was being consumed,

it wasn't going to wash away the feeling of apprehension

of what was going to happen the next day.

GREENFIELD: For a gladiator going into any fight,

you'd have to be nervous. You'd be crazy not to be.

There is always the chance that you will lose,

that something will go wrong for you in the arena,

and the decision will be made that you have to die.

It doesn't happen every time, but this is a moment

where you could potentially lose your life.

So if you didn't have some feelings about that,

I'd be extremely worried, although that probably

would make you a great gladiator.

TONER: So when we think of games,

we think of the Colosseum, but here in Sicily,

we're talking much more provincial, small-scale fights.

Gladiatorial fighting has spread all across the Empire

at this point, the person putting on the games

is probably a local magistrate, someone who wants

to benefit citizens who have elected him to office.

We're probably talking a few thousand spectators,

a few dozen pairs of gladiators, perhaps.

So it's nothing like the kind of huge imperial spectacles

that you find in Rome.

NARRATOR: But these games are no ordinary spectacle.

Emperors travelled widely across the empire

and are invited to local games,

so it's possible a very special guest is expected.

CARTER: The Emperor will be in attendance,

since the games are being thrown in his honor.

When you have the most important person

in the whole Roman Empire visiting,

you would want to put on a good show.

NARRATOR: The time has come.

Flamma steps out for his 34th contest.

The exact accounts of Flamma's fights are lost.

But we can only imagine the drama that unfolded

in the arena that day.

ALEXANDER: Flamma steps into the arena, his helmet gleaming.

ADBI: He's pushing almost 30, practically ancient

by the standards of gladiators.

He's fought in many battles, and he wears

the scars of his combats.

GREENFIELD: When we think about how people live in the ancient

world, it's not great in terms of life expectancy.

If you get through childhood, which is incredibly hard,

you have a good chance of getting through

a full adult life.

But there's lots of things that could get in your way.

Being a gladiator, not ideal.

You could get injured and not come back from it.

ALEXANDER: Look at boxers today, MMA fighters,

they tend to retire in their 30s because the body

just gets through that much punishment.

Imagine taking a shield to the helmet.

I mean, that really would have given you

a bad concussion, maybe fracture.

It's the kind of injuries you're not going

to recover from.

TONER: On average, gladiators probably lived for 3 or 4 years

and probably start fighting at the age of 18 or 19.

So to make it to 30, you are pretty old

by gladiator standards.

Flamma was a secutor,

a pursuer, so he fights with a sword

and a shield, and they are usually paired up

with a net fighter, a retiarius.

CARTER: His opponent steps out, a retiarius, he's Delicatus.

ALEXANDER: Trident in one hand, net in the other.

TONER: They're paired together

because they're very contrasting styles.

People like that. They like their gladiators to be

sort of clearly distinct brands,

different personality types in a way.

It's very hard to us to understand what it must

have meant to have to fight one of your family.

They were really close,

comrades in arms who had trained together.

ALEXANDER: When the Emperor gives the signal,

gladiators will then begin to fight.

TONER: Flamma, the secutor is more advancing,

sort of thrusting, trying to sort of

catch you with his heavy sword,

whereas Delicatus is dancing around,

trying to sort of snare you with his net

and then finish you off with his trident.

ALEXANDER: The trident was a formidable weapon.

First of all, it gave you a huge advantage because

of the distance you could keep your opponent at bay,

and that was part of the tactics,

you kept striking with it.

If you're fighting against someone like a secutor

with that heavy shield,

they're going to get tired very quickly.

NARRATOR: Delicatus lands a decisive blow.

His trident pierces Flamma, who is unable to carry on.

It is now the decision of the Emperor

whether he should live or die.

NARRATOR: Flamma's life hangs in the balance.

But how did this veteran of the arena end up here,

wounded and waiting for judgement

in a Sicilian amphitheater?

PROF BRENNAN: Flamma may have grown up his entire childhood

around gladiators and gladiatorial fighting

in his native Syria.

TONER: Gladiators have become a global phenomenon

for everyone in the Roman Empire,

it was a language they could understand.

ADBI: We tend to see amphitheaters turning up

in Manchester, for example, in northern England,

in modern day Morocco, stretching all the way across

Germanic territories,

Bulgaria.

And of course, there were amphitheaters in Syria.

PROF BRENNAN: Gladiatorial fighting in Syria would have

been a bit different than in Rome or in Italy,

the venue was often makeshift or using Greek style theatres,

as opposed to purpose built amphitheaters.

ALEXANDER: What we find is that the games in the provinces

tended to be more heavy on the animals.

The simple reason is that animals were easier

to source than gladiators were.

CARTER: In the morning, camel races could possibly have

dominated entertainment for the people of Syria.

COLEMAN: There are camels in that part of the world,

and so you use the local product.

PROF BRENNAN: In the afternoon, the locals cheer on

as the men battle each other in combat.

However though, the quality of the fighting

was not the same as the fighting in Rome.

The closer that one got to Rome, the higher

the level of expertise.

These games were brutal, but for Flamma looking on,

these would have been the finest athletes one could imagine.

NARRATOR: Flamma lightly grows up in the shadow of the arena,

perhaps watching games staged under the reign

of Emperor Commodus.

When Commodus is assassinated,

power shifts to a new emperor, Septimius Severus.

GREENFIELD: Septimius Severus

is an incredible figure in Roman history,

and is often overlooked to people's detriment,

because he is the first Roman emperor

who comes from North Africa,

and this means that the Roman Empire has changed.

ADBI: He's from Leptis Magna, and this, of course,

is not unusual.

During this time, plenty of wealthy upper-class individuals

from the North African provinces begin entering

into the senatorial order.

WEBB: Severus' reign is an indication of how diverse

the Roman Empire has become. A real indication that Rome

and its empire went through amazing transformations

over time and incorporated all sorts

of people at the highest levels of society.

TONER: He establishes a new dynasty, the Severan dynasty,

that carries on until 235.

MALIK: The Severan dynasty mark the end

of the second century C.E.

and go into the third century C.E.

And they're really marked out by the fact that we get

an emperor who's from North Africa, but also his wife,

who is from Syria.

And then they establish a dynasty that comes

from primarily Syria,

after Septimius Severus and his children,

Caracalla and Geta.

TONER: One thing that Septimius does is

he rehabilitates Commodus.

PROF BRENNAN: Commodus was the first individual in Rome

to try to combine the role of Emperor with professional

gladiator, and that brought in spectators

from all over the empire.

TONER: For Septimius, it was just sheer hypocrisy that the

Senate were kind of all uppity about Commodus and Commodus

being a gladiator, and yet, you know,

they themselves were just as obsessed with gladiators

as everyone else.

PROF BRENNAN: Septimius confronted the Senate,

and he said, did none of you fight in the arena

as a gladiator?

Did none of you buy up Commodus' equipment,

his shield?

NARRATOR: After chastising the senate,

Septimius Severus stages grand spectacles of his own.

But how might someone like Flamma go from watching

in the stands as a young man,

to fighting for his life as a gladiator?

MALIK: One of the things that characterizes the period

of Septimius Severus is a huge amount of military operations.

All the way through the Roman period,

there's been another empire on the border in the east,

the Parthian Empire, and this was an empire

in what's now modern-day Iran and the surrounding areas,

and it was ruled by a succession of the kings.

PROF BRENNAN: This was a people that, for centuries,

posed a existential threat to Roman control of the East.

NARRATOR: To defend against the Parthians,

forts are built across Syria to strengthen Roman Empire's

easternmost border.

ADBI: The ancient province of Syria would these days refer

to the modern nations of Jordan, Lebanon, Israel,

Palestine and parts of modern-day Syria.

TONER: Syria had been under Roman control for over

200 years at this point.

ADBI: The Syrian province at this time is very wealthy,

very cosmopolitan, very diverse.

It's a key engine for driving economic wealth

for the Empire during this region.

WEBB: It was a hub for all sorts of activity and connections.

It had key cities including Antioch and Palmyra.

MALIK: There were major trade routes and people coming

in and out from trade perspectives.

ADBI: It was vitally strategic, important place for the Roman

region. It's not just for the trade routes,

but also because it acts as the bulwark against

the Parthian Empire on the east.

NARRATOR: To secure the frontier,

forts are filled with highly trained Syrian archers,

known for their unmatched skill with a bow and arrow.

ALEXANDER: One of the great successes of the Roman army

was to use soldiers from local parts of the empire

who were excessively good at one particular skill.

Syrian archers were renowned for their precision.

The bow was a weapon that they had long had a history with,

and certainly it was one that the Romans relied on heavily.

ADBI: One of the things the Romans liked to do in the areas

where they conquered was take the specific groups of people

and put them into specific auxiliary units.

You might have had also an auxiliary of archers.

NARRATOR: Men like Flamma are often conscripted into

the Roman military and stationed forts

on the Syrian border.

PROF BRENNAN: Service in the army in Syria

would have been tough.

ADBI: These forts would have housed somewhere

between 60 to 100 soldiers.

NARRATOR: As a young man, Flamma may have grown

disillusioned with army life, attempting to flee

and vanish into the desert.

Desertion is a grave crime punishable by death,

or in some cases, enslavement.

ALEXANDER: There was a massive slave market

at that period of Roman history.

So there was a huge network of supply of slaves

from all parts of the empire.

COLEMAN: If one bought up a lot of prisoners of war and then

sold them into slavery, one could categorize them

as you know this person is a very good reader,

or this person is highly literate,

or that person has just the physique that you would

want for hard labor.

Very often, these enslaved persons were highly skilled,

and they were often performers or theatrical entertainers.

ADBI: To feed the desire for gladiatorial combats,

there was a network of gladiator scouts who would go across

the Empire looking for potential new recruits

that they could train up

into the amphitheaters to fight as gladiators.

PROF BRENNAN: The enslavers would look for a combination

of, obviously strength and the spirit to fight,

but also a certain theatricality and good looks.

NARRATOR: Flamma may have been spotted at a slave market

and forced to join a gladiator school in Sicily.

ADBI: Flamma would have been put on a slave boat

with other enslaved people.

ALEXANDER: And there would have been trade routes in

which these slaves would have been travelled along.

Clearly, travelling the Empire was a very difficult option.

Sometimes it took three months to get from one side

of the other, so it's a very arduous and long journey.

WEBB: What we know about Southern Italy, and Sicily,

from earlier periods, is that these were places

that had heavy levels of exploitation of the enslaved,

and also really quite interesting gladiator

training grounds.

NARRATOR: Flamma, now enslaved, will begin the grueling

regime to become a gladiator.

He may have enjoyed watching the games as a child

in Syria, but now he will learn how to fight,

and possibly die in front of a crowd.

PROF BRENNAN: Flamma is now a gladiator in Sicily,

and he's put to training in the ludus.

NARRATOR: The harsh training inside the ludus didn't

just create fighters, it forged a brotherhood,

and someone like Flamma would form deep bonds

with his fellow gladiators.

WEBB: We know that he was very close with another gladiator,

Delicatus.

Now Delicatus' name means tender one or effeminate one or

charming one, and can have sexual or queer connotations.

So we could speculate that Delicatus might be

more than just a comrade at arms for Flamma.

NARRATOR: The two gladiators likely train together,

learning how to survive in the arena.

The new recruit is finally given his stage name, Flamma.

It is the identity he will carry for the rest

of his career.

ALEXANDER: For a gladiator, like Flamma, to start with,

you're given your basic armor by the ludus.

The ludus owns a certain amount of armor,

we find examples in Pompeii that are stamped with the name

of the school, or sometimes they're stamped

by the person who rents them out.

It was a big business.

CARTER: His initial combat would have been with used helmets,

used shields, used swords that would have been quite

a heavy and hot piece of kit to wear.

It's almost a workout just to carry and fight

with the material.

It's certainly more elaborate than what

most Roman soldiers wear.

NARRATOR: Flamma steps into the arena for the first time,

possibly as part of a group battle of novice fighters.

ALEXANDER: The gregarious was the sort of one for all.

I suppose a modern term for the gregarious would be the Royal

Rumble, a free for all, where wrestlers are just jumping in

the ring, they're jumping out, they're coming into fight,

gladiators are coming backwards and forwards.

It's exciting because it is really organized chaos.

This is done with not so much champion gladiators,

but maybe gladiators who aren't quite as famous.

CARTER: They seem to be junior gladiators.

Maybe their first gladiatorial combat might

be in one of these group fights.

ALEXANDER: It just made the games a little bit more

different from the other games that people had seen,

and maybe a little bit more exciting visually, at least.

CARTER: Flamma stood out from the rest of the gladiators.

He showed himself to be the superior fighter.

He's a man to watch, he's a man on the rise.

ALEXANDER: What we can assume by him is that he was

someone that really knew how to win the crowd.

To give a good show.

People didn't care to see an average fight.

We talk about a period of history where people were

very familiar with violence.

It was present in everyday life,

wars were constantly going on.

The amphitheater had to be that extra.

It had to give you something you didn't see in the battlefield.

So what we can surmise is that Flamma was able to give

them that something, that lightning in a bottle.

ADBI: We see Flamma's fame grow.

He wins fight after fight, after fight.

NARRATOR: With each victory, Flamma's reputation grows.

The years roll by.

After more than 30 fights, he is one

of the most successful gladiators in all of Sicily.

TONER: He's something of a veteran,

he'd been fighting for probably 10 years.

I'm sure he will have acquired a real sort of loyal following

of supporters who really cheered him on.

And I think one of the reasons why he is spared by the giver

of the game four times, even though he loses,

is that the crowd were very much on his side.

PROF BRENNAN: So the question is,

why did a gladiator like Flamma,

who had such a distinguished career,

never finally achieve his freedom?

A gladiator had a wooden sword known as a rudis,

associated with them twice in their professional lifetimes.

One is when entering the arena and first learning how to fight.

The second is when being acquitted from having to

fight after a long and in fact, distinguished career.

CARTER: To be offered the rudis by the person putting

on the show, the editor, means essentially that he and the

people gathered, probably cheering for this or chanting

for this, have decided that they're going to essentially

purchase your freedom.

ALEXANDER: So it's clearly a symbol that's very important

to the gladiator.

It's a symbol of beginning their training.

It's the name of the referee, and it's, of course,

the symbol of their freedom that can be giving them access to

the Roman world, once again, outside of the amphitheater.

TONER: We might imagine that gladiators would be desperate

to escape from the arena, but for some of them,

it was their life.

It was of the thrill of the crowd,

of the possibility of getting rich,

just showing what a good fighter you were.

And for some gladiators, it was just all they knew.

It's like a kind of prize fight boxer, you know,

who's kind of so addicted to the thrills, the glamour,

the glory, the popularity, that they can't give it up.

NARRATOR: It is conceivable that Flamma is offered

the wooden rudis but refuses it, and with it,

his chance for freedom,

unable to abandon the thrill of being a gladiator.

CARTER: Flamma is in his late 20s now,

and that's having survived probably years as a gladiator.

That's a remarkable thing in itself.

Every time he steps into the arena,

whether the weapons are sharp, whether they're not sharp,

they're all probably dirty, any cut has a chance

of being infected.

Death is always a very real possibility,

even if it's accidental.

So the fact that he survived until his late 20s,

is itself remarkable.

PROF BRENNAN: But still the greatest fight

of his life awaits him.

CARTER: Septimius Severus travelled all over the empire.

He docked in Sicily on his way to North Africa.

He would have stayed for a time in town,

and when in town,

they would have put on spectacles, entertainments.

PROF BRENNAN: Finally, after a long career,

Flamma will fight in front of the emperor Septimius himself.

NARRATOR: It is a rare honor for a gladiator far from

the city of Rome to fight in front of the emperor.

Now Flamma must prove why he's still standing

when so many others have fallen.

PROF BRENNAN: In Sicily the officials of the island province

are putting on a celebration to honor Septimius' presence.

An imperial visit is something special,

and so they're certainly going to throw a celebration in his

honor and this is going to involve gladiatorial games.

They put on the finest and fittest gladiators

that they can find for the occasion.

NARRATOR: Over the years Flamma has proved himself

a formidable gladiator.

A man with his record would likely be chosen to display

his skills in front of a visiting emperor.

But in this fight the stakes are especially high

it's against someone he knows all too well.

PROF BRENNAN: Flamma has shown himself a very hard man to beat,

but he's pitted against his best friend, Delicatus.

CARTER: Quite often, part of the gladiatorial show was

to win over the people, to win over the crowd.

I think, not necessarily to murder or to kill their

opponent, but you want to put on a good show.

A cut to the arm or a cut to the leg that can be patched up,

but it would provide a lot of bloodshed,

something for the people to see.

There's a skill in gladiators fighting not to kill

but to defeat an opponent.

NARRATOR: Delicatus lands the winning blow.

Now Flamma's fate hangs in the balance.

TONER: Septimius didn't want to make that decision on his own.

He wanted to see what the crowd thought.

ALEXANDER: The crowd cheers him on, the crowd loves him.

TONER: People would shout out let him go.

RADFORD: It would have been a chaotic scene.

You would have had so much noise around you,

but the Emperor would have had the final decision

about whether Flamma lived or died.

NARRATOR: Although we have no record of what truly happened

at Flamma's final fight,

it is possible that in this moment,

the mighty gladiator met his end.

TONER: But it's quite possible that Flamma

doesn't die in the arena.

His epitaph doesn't mention it.

CARTER: Certainly possible that a gladiator could receive

mission at the end of a fight but still go and die

from his wounds afterwards.

Swords could be sharp, the swords could be filthy,

an infection can set in.

GREENFIELD: There could be any number of ailments that

presumably could take somebody out in the ancient world,

and I feel sorry for them, because they don't

have things like antibiotics.

So anything could happen.

NARRATOR: However Flamma died, he lived longer

than most men in his brutal profession.

GREENFIELD: Flamma living to the age of 30

is actually really impressive.

Chances are that Flamma has been a gladiator

since his late teens, if he's been captured and taken

into slavery from a young age.

Then he's been fighting almost half of his life.

TONER: It's the end of summer, and his comrades in arms

have gathered together to commemorate him.

ALEXANDER: His body would have been laid in state.

It would have been put on show,

which would have given his fans

a chance to come and say goodbye to him, generally,

he would have been surrounded by burning pine cones

to mask the smell.

TONER: They'll probably then put the ashes in some

kind of urn and bury it, and above that,

set up a tombstone to his memory.

GREENFIELD: We know that gladiators formed formal

sort of guilds,

essentially to look after each other so that when it

came time, they were able to purchase an epitaph for you.

So you could have a tombstone, so you could be remembered.

And that is kind of the great dream of Rome as well,

this idea of being remembered after your death.

So your colleagues mean everything in this sense.

You may have had a family outside of the ludus,

but it's also like, who really understands,

who's in the trenches with you?

TONER: And perhaps really the final indication

of how strongly they feel

for him is that final line on the epitaph.

ALEXANDER: The last line of Flamma's grave reads, Delicatus,

a gladiator made this for deserving comrade in arms.

That really speaks to the bond that these men held,

at the end of the day they lived their lives together.

They lived the highs and the lows, grueling training,

the euphoria of the fights, the wins, the losses,

that this was someone who really had a very close

relationship to Flamma.

So much so that he wanted it to go along with Flamma

to the other world.

NARRATOR: But Flamma isn't alone.

Archaeologists have uncovered many more gladiator tombstones,

each opens a new window into this violent chapter

of Roman history.

NARRATOR: In the 2000's a remarkable historic site

was uncovered, a cemetery in Ephesus, Turkey.

COLEMAN: The cemetery was full of skeletal remains that

showed wounds that were so severe that they left marks

on the bone and so at first,

it looked as though this was a military cemetery.

CARTER: Archaeologists and osteologists have done research

on these bones and have identified what almost

certainly are gladiatorial weapons that were used

to kill the gladiators.

COLEMAN: The wounds that they suffered are,

in majority of cases, blade wounds,

but there are a couple of instances where there's been

evident use of a trident, because you can see the holes.

Which made it evident that what we were dealing

with was a gladiatorial cemetery.

GREENFIELD: We see wounds to the head,

which suggests that they had technically died in the arena

and then had been finished off in a ceremonial way

with a blow to the head.

There was a whole person, Charun,

whose job it was to come out and to make sure that

they were dead by hitting them with a really solid object.

ALEXANDER: The other interesting thing

is the imagery we see of the gravestones.

CARTER: The ones from the Greek world often are quite detailed.

They provide a lot of information.

There's one for a gladiator named Diodorus,

who is shown on the tombstone standing victorious

over his defeated opponent,

who lies on the ground with his finger up,

begging for mercy.

It's clear that he's the victor.

But in the inscription, it tells us that Diodorus is dead.

He describes that during the combat,

he says he defeated his opponent,

but then he says that treacherous summa rudis made

us fight again, and was the cause of his death.

GREENFIELD: The epitaphs of gladiators is one of the few

pieces of evidence that we have for gladiators

that is coming from them.

WEBB: They often give the name of the gladiator,

they give the career statistics.

They also may give family members, friends,

comrades at arms, and also fans.

CARTER: They would give us a lot of information about the spread

of the combats, about the nature of the combats,

about the rules of the combats, about what actually

goes on in the day to day life of a gladiator.

ADBI: To be dedicated would be

a demonstration not only of the success of the gladiator

but also the importance of the individual

who made that funerary dedication as well.

The vast majority of gladiators would not have had funerary

dedications made to them, only the most infamous.

COLEMAN: Gladiator's epitaphs tell us explicitly that they

spent a career as a gladiator.

They tell us which style they fought in, they sometimes,

as with Flamma, tell us their track record as a gladiator.

There's nothing that they feel ashamed of about

having been a gladiator.

They're proud of it.

NARRATOR: Following Flamma's death,

the gladiator games began a slow decline

as the Roman Empire entered a period of change

and uncertainty.

MALIK: In 211 C.E.

Septimius Severus is in York in Britain,

and contracts an illness and dies.

And after that, he's succeeded by both of his sons,

Caracalla and Geta.

Now, Geta and Caracalla don't get on very well,

so quite quickly into their reign, Caracalla kills Geta,

and then Caracalla reigns for about a decade or so.

ALEXANDER: But at this stage, the golden age of gladiatorial

combat had long passed.

CARTER: Gladiatorial combats start to wind down

during the chaotic period of the third century C.E.

the Roman Empire, in fact, almost collapses during the

third century.

GREENFIELD: As Rome gets bigger and bigger and we get further

into the imperial period, what we tend to see is a

fragmentation of the political structures that keep Rome

functioning well.

That fracturing means that we've got a dispersal

of wealth, we've got problems on our frontiers,

there's all sorts of things going on that for the Romans

themselves, it's a problem.

Having spectacles is now not your highest priority.

If you can't get the people that you need to be able

to train up to be gladiators, to bring into slavery,

to put into the ludus,

to then maybe kill some of them off.

Well, it's going to be a tricky time to keep this running.

CARTER: Then during the fourth century,

the Empire converts to Christianity.

TONER: We now have an emperor who does not like death

as entertainment.

He sees value in all human beings,

even if they're gladiators.

When you don't have the kind of imperial backing,

when you don't have the huge flow of resource into providing

these hugely expensive entertainments

then it just withered on the vine.

CARTER: Around the beginning of the fifth century,

we just stopped hearing about gladiatorial combats

happening at all.

RADFORD: It's really easy to judge the Romans for enjoying

things like gladiatorial combat, beast hunts and beast fights.

But what we have to remember

is that we watch violent movies,

we still watch violent sport, and we play violent video games,

and so there is still potentially that side of us

as human beings where violence as a spectacle

has some sort of appeal.

ALEXANDER: Often when we look back at the decisions

they made and think, what would I do,

the chances are we make the same decisions.

If I was poor but I was physically imposing,

would I join the amphitheater?

Yes.

If games were on where people beat each other up

for entertainment, would I go and eat and drink?

Yes, we do.

At the end of the day, the history of Rome is our history.

We are Romans.

CARTER: Over the course of more than 500 years,

thousands and thousands of young men, sometimes young women,

fought in the arena.

ADBI: For a great many of them, you don't know who they were,

where they came from, their names, who their families were,

what they wanted from life, whether they chose

willingly or not, to enter into these combats.

CARTER: These were real people.

They fought to exhibit the kind of the qualities,

the bravery, the discipline,

the courage that was expected of Romans,

and they presented the Roman spectators with the kind

of values that they idealized in themselves.

They're a remarkable group of people, I think.

NARRATOR: We will never know how many gladiators fought

over the centuries, perhaps tens of thousands.

Only a handful will ever have their stories told but each

had a name, a life and dreams of their own.

Together they form a group that continues to capture our

imagination more than 2,000 years later,

the gladiators.

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