AWA395 - Gladiators and the Roman Army
Ancient Warfare Podcast
The History Network
4.3 • 645 Ratings
🗓️ 6 February 2026
⏱️ 9 minutes
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Summary
Alexis asks about the connection between the Roman military and gladiators. Why did the army build and use its own amphitheatres, like the one at Carnuntum, with others recently identified at Megiddo and possibly Carthage and Puteoli Another puzzle is why the army engaged with gladiators at all when civilian amphitheatres already existed.
Murray looks at what military amphitheatres were for in day to day army life. Were they training grounds, places of discipline, entertainment or demonstrations of Roman power He explores how common gladiator involvement with the army actually was, how units may have used them for morale or control, and what archaeology can tell us about life inside the frontier camps.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hi everyone and welcome to another episode of ancient warfare answers with me Murray, |
| 0:10.1 | your weekly fix of ancient warfare related ranting and raving, where I attempt to answer a question |
| 0:15.4 | from a viewer, listener or reader, try and keep myself to 10 minutes. |
| 0:19.3 | I have a little clock and I keep an eye on it. Sometimes I |
| 0:21.8 | blow past 10 minutes quite easily. Other times I get to my 10 minute mark and stop. Other times |
| 0:29.0 | I've said everything I have to say. Generally those are the rarest where I've said everything I have |
| 0:33.3 | to say in less than 10 minutes. Today's question is from Alexis. We'll get to that in a minute. |
| 0:40.2 | You, of course, can ask us a question. You can comment on a previous podcast or video. You can send |
| 0:44.9 | us an email, a postcard, shout in the street, track me down. I'm pretty recognizable. |
| 0:50.3 | In fact, I had someone who said that they saw my doppelganger on a holiday to Germany, and I asked them to take a photo, but apparently that freaked them out as being far too rude. |
| 0:59.1 | But apparently there's someone who looks exactly like me walking around Germany today. |
| 1:02.9 | Once upon a time, I looked exactly like the Welsh opera singer Bryn Turfell, but I digress. |
| 1:07.7 | Today's question from Alexis is a question for AWA. Can you discuss the relationship |
| 1:12.6 | between the military and gladiators? I'm thinking especially about the military amphitheaters such |
| 1:18.0 | as the one at Carnuntum and the recent discovery of one at Maggeto and those possible at Carthagin |
| 1:22.8 | Putele. What was the need for military amphitheaters when there were other amphitheaters at sites like Carnunton? |
| 1:30.3 | A follow-up would be about why and how the army used gladiators periodically. |
| 1:36.0 | Okay. |
| 1:37.5 | So amphitheaters and for, you know, we think of amphitheaters as for gladiatorial contests, |
| 1:44.1 | and indeed they are built for gladiatorial contests, but not gladiatorial contests solely. They are built for other kinds of contests too. So you have beast fights, you have the execution of prisoners, you have gladiatorial combat and some other, you know, as we saw in the Gladiator 2, flood the arena, which of course most of them can't have happening. |
| 2:07.8 | So it's not just for those kinds of things. |
| 2:12.2 | Probably in these cases where you have amphitheaters attached to military sites, Chester as well as another one that comes to mind, and Kierlion in Wales has an amphitheater as well. |
... |
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