Ben Kane

The taking of Carthage in 146, 50,000.

Julius Caesar, I mean it's later than Spartacus, but Julius Caesar, it's accepted, they reckon he took a million slaves in Gaul and killed another million.

The number of Gaulish slaves in Rome was so great after Julius Caesar's campaigns in Gaul that they devalued the price of slaves to that of an amphora of wine.

Yes, so during this period we also had the change, the massive change, as a permanent thing, of gladiator fights being something that happened at the funeral of a famous rich person, like a consul.

The first gladiator fight in Rome being recorded in 264 BC, a celebration of two men fighting, possibly to the death, at his gravesite.

And this was copied from the Campanians, who were a people who lived south of Rome.

And we have evidence from tombs from the 4th century BC, so before that, of gladiator fights taking place, painted on the insides of tombs.

But by the 1st century BC, these had become such a spectacle, people flocking to funerals to see the gladiator fights, that politicians, because you remember, people like Crassus, who defeated Spartacus, or Julius Caesar, they were still politicians at this time.

with private armies, but they were still being elected to office.

And in order to be elected to office, they would hold gladiator fights.

And in a series of ever-growing spectacles, conspicuous consumption, you put on a gladiator fight with however many fighters, so I'm going to put on one with even more fighters.

So you're going to do a bigger one.

And that's the way it went.

Until, of course, then during the time of the Empire, the Emperor took control of gladiator fights because they were such a way of making yourself popular.

He didn't want anybody else to be allowed to do them unless they had his permission or he himself put them on.

Yes.

So they were generally prisoners of war or slaves or criminals.

Very rarely.

Well, it depends on your sources.

Sometimes, I won't say very rarely, sometimes citizens did become gladiators, maybe as a consequence of debt.