Roman Gladiators

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Empire. The continuous Roman conquest resulted in many surrendered soldiers being turned to slaves and gladiators. Those who were not accepted into gladiator training were used as noxii, while the best of the gladiators however, were sent to Rome.
Gladiators could be anywhere from slaves, to prisoners of war, and Romans stripped of their citizenship and sentenced to the arena for a crime such as arson, treason, or refusing to pay taxes. The worst offenders were the noxii, men condemned to fight with their hands against wild animals or other men in the arena. Those convicted less harshly would be sentenced to fight wild animals of men but are armed appropriately and had a chance of survival; some even reached the height of gladiators.
A number of emperors such as Caligula, Titus, Hadrian, Lucius Verus, Caracalla, Geta and Didius Julianus preformed in the arena. However, they limited the risk to themselves greatly my fighting unfairly against other men and animals. Most times ...

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were more often than not subject to the harsh crowd’s mercy. There are many theories of how the crowd indicated to a victor whether to spare or finish off his opponent. The most common is that of the thumbs-up/thumbs-down, which some say the thumbs down meant to put down the weapon and others that it represented the motion of stabbing the chest, and that the thumbs up meant to help the loser on his feet and others to finish off the battle. Either way the popular crowd was not the final judge of a battle, but either the emperor when present or the sponsor, both of which found it very wise to abide by the crowd’s desire. When the two gladiators fought bravely or both were well recognized ...

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