Every time the gladiators went into an arena, they faced death while performing for the benefit of the general public. Smithsonian Magazine estimates that 700,000 gladiators died in the arena. Spectators went to the arena to see blood and gore: someone’s head getting cut off, someone losing a limb, or somebody disemboweled. Today, gladiators are known as the “superstars” or the elite of the Roman Empire, but analysis from the teeth of gladiator skeletons shows that they lived very harsh lives. A lot of teeth had enamel defects, reports Smithsonian, which indicates that they were stressed when their teeth were developing. The defects were found on the teeth of many of the men, and it is a sign of infant malnourishment. But then, evidence shows the men ate unusually well when they were older. All this seems to show that poor men were selected from across the Roman Empire, and then beefed up to make them fit for fighting.
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