Female Roman Gladiator, Southwark, London

In September 2000, the Museum of London announced a spectacular discovery that the grave of a purported gladiator, probably in her twenties, dating to the first century CE, had been unearthed here.

However, it was not the rarity of the find that captured international attention nor even the fact that the grave was supposedly that of a gladiator. To the surprise of all, the broken and burnt remains in this grave proved to be those of a woman.

Gladiators could have been either prisoners of war, slaves or criminals (mainly fugitive slaves) condemned to gladiator schools (ad ludum gladiatorium). There were also a number of volunteer gladiators (auctoratus). By the end of the republic as many as half of the gladiators were auctoratii. These were either sons of prominent men perhaps looking
for a radical change, poor men attracted by the potential for fame or relinquishing themselves from poverty, or even men with a monetary purpose, such as Sisinnes who sought to earn money to buy a friend’s freedom. All gladiators kept the monetary prizes that they won in the arena and Titus is on record for paying a freed slave 1,000 gold aurei to return for a single match. These men came from all different backgrounds but were soon united as they entered the training schools.

Exhibited today in a crowded gallery in the British Museum in London, a weathered marble from Halicarnassus depicts the trim and muscular women with swords drawn and shields hefted, poised for eternal combat. “Amazon and Achillia must have fought well,” observed Ralph Jackson, a curator in the department of prehistory and early Europe at the museum.

Interestingly, female gladiators were not all slaves or women of low social status simply in need of money. Tacitus reported that women of considerable social standing participated in gladiatorial events, evidently for excitement and notoriety, not money, since they were already members of the wealthy class. Although women risked life and limb as gladiators for more than a century, evidence of their activities remains rare.

Hedley Swain is the head of the Museum of London’s early history department, where he is in charge of the pile of ashes and bone fragments dubbed Gladiator Girl by the British press. Unearthed from one of the most ancient addresses in Roman London, this 1,900-year-old woman has yet to reveal many secrets. The circumstances of her life and death are largely unknown. But Swain, for one, thinks it’s possible she was a former slave turned wealthy female gladiator. One of the four picture lamps intended to light the woman’s way to the next world offered a clue. The image engraved on the lamp was a fallen gladiator.

Most female gladiators were between 14 and 17..the London one was around 20.
The grave was outside the walled Roman cemetery, indicating that the deceased was probably an outcast of normal society. This evidence led the scholars at the museum to speculate: Why was such an elaborate and
expensive funeral held for a woman who was buried in an area designated for social outcasts? Their answer was simple. The woman buried in this grave was respected, yet not respectable.