Ancient Gladiators Diet - The ancient gladiators from Ephesos followed a strict diet based mainly on vegetables both in their food and their drink, an archeological finding has stated.
There was a study conducted by the Department of Forensic Medicine at MedUni Vienna together with the Department of Antropology at the Institute of Forensic Medicine at the University of Bern.
Bones from different individuals where examined. The bones were taken from a gladiator cemetery that was uncovered in 1993 and that dates back to 2nd and 3rd century BC.
The ancient gladiators where from Ephesos, which is now a day, Turkey. Back at the time, Ephesos used to be the capital of Asian Rome and around 200,000 lived there.
Regarding the diet of the ancient gladiators, it was found that they followed a vegetarian diet, which included a great amount of grain, which was also of a lower quality than the one of the normal population.
This was due to the fact that the diet that these ancient gladiators followed was not one made especially for them, but was probably the only chance they had of having anything to eat at all.
If there is one thing that "Gladiator" (2000) was right about, was the fact that these men were treated poorly. They were basically prisoners.
Back in February this year, a Gladiator School was found in Austria and a lot about the quality of life that these men had was discovered. They were cramped up in small spaces, and were part of a business.
The ancient gladiators were extremely valuable and as a matter of fact, they weren't killed often, they were "too valuable" for that to happen. The ones who did die were others who were not trained to be gladiators.
"They weren't a team. Each one was on his own, training to fight, and learning who they would combat," Neubauer, an Archeologist shared with National Geographic. This shows a difference that can be found with the idea transmitted in the movie about the ancient gladiators.
They basically had a lot of training, a lot of fighting and there was bloodshed. To be kept alive and continue being part of the business, the ancient gladiators had to follow a strict diet because they needed to have calcium and proteins at the lowest rate.
