I often hear it said that gladiator fights were rarely to the death, for the reason that gladiators were expensive to train.

This reasoning strikes me as flawed. The games were meant to be ostentatious displays of wealth. The elites who put on the games were not known for pinching pennies. In fact, spending money was kind of the point. During the inaugural games of the Flavian amphitheater, 9000 animals were slaughtered!

In fact if gladiators were known to be expensive, this would make killing them off another display of tremendous wealth, just the sort of thing the games were intended to showcase.

I think although its true that not every fight was to the death, a lot of them were. These were slaves, human chattel. Training them would not be a major expense for a wealthy aristocrat. Gladiators were expendable and they were expended for the entertainment of the crowds.

Was reading some dscussions recently and came across commnet claiming that Kush kingdom in in Nubia defeated the Romans and forced Augustus to accept a humiliating treaty. How did a kingdom in Subsahara africa manage to defeat the superior numbers and technology of Romans in a warfare? What tactics and strategies did they use to win battles? Do we know how Romans society reacted to being humiliated by a Woman opponent?

The diagonal lines from this part of the Colosseum, can’t fine anything about it

Recreations of 2 Roman gladiator types. "A classic pairing: two swordsmen. Yet their equipment reveals distinct differences. The murmillo—with his distinctive helmet, broad sword, and an 8-kilogram shield—was invulnerable to frontal attacks. The armor of his opponent, the thraex, was inspired by the Thracians, former Roman enemies from the East. He differed from the secutor by virtue of his small shield and curved sword, though he, too, was heavily armored. The thraex had to try to draw the murmillo out of his defensive stance or catch him from behind. The murmillo, in turn, had to prevent this by focusing on his defense and launching sword strikes as surprise attacks from a defensive position." Per a special exhibition on gladiators (using google translator) in the Archäologisches Landesmuseum Baden-Württemberg in Konstanz, Germany.

Bite marks found on the skeleton of a Roman gladiator found in York, UK in 2024 are the first archaeological evidence of combat between a human and a lion.

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