Students To Live Like Ancient Roman Gladiators 30
Twenty students from the University of Regensburg plan to live and train like Roman gladiators as part of a scientific research project this summer. The students will give up their usual fast food fare for the more traditional gladiator diet of berries and white beans. They'll also learn how to fight while wearing bronze armor, and showers, clean clothes or visits from a girlfriend won't be allowed during the project. From the article: "'We know hardly anything about the gladiators,' historian Josef Löffl said. 'There are a lot of myths and clichés attached.' Löffl and his colleagues plan to find out this August whether they can make modern young men into authentic gladiators following the Roman example."
Re:Boring (Score:3, Informative)
Each time a gladiator stepped into The Colosseum (or other gladiatorial arena), they had a 50/50 chance of never seeing the next day.
What utter rubbish. Learn some history. Gladiators were a very expensive commodity - especially the ones that made it to Rome. The whole "always fight to the death" concept is horribly wrong. A bought in the arena where a gladiator died was actually somewhat rare for the most part, short of a few incidents when emperors really wanted to wow the crowd. Did people get hurt and injured? Yes, did those injuries lead to death? Sometimes. Did gladiators actually kill one another on the arena floor? Rarely.