The Gladiatrix

The Ancients

History Hit

History

4.7 • 3.5K Ratings

🗓️ 3 August 2021

⏱️ 24 minutes

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Summary

Mention the word gladiator and you would be forgiven for instantly thinking of the 2000 namesake epic movie. Of spectators watching on as men battled each other with a variety of weapons, sometimes to the death, for the entertainment of the crowd. But did women also fight as gladiators? Was the gladiatrix a thing? The references are rare and vague and much debate still surrounds this topic. To talk through the literary and archaeological evidence that survives, Tristan chatted to Alisa Vanlint at the Chalke Valley History Festival. A member of Legio II Augusta, Alisa is an actor and gladiatorial combat specialist.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	It's the Ancient's on History Hit. I'm Tristan Hughes, your host. And in today's podcast,
0:07.3	I was fortunate to get on the show recently when at the Chalk Valley History Festival,
0:11.6	a few members of the Roman Reenactments Group, Legio II or Gusta. In this episode, I chat to
0:18.4	Alyssa VanLindt, all about female gladiators. What do we know and what is still very much
0:25.6	open to debate? Alyssa is a legendary figure. She's taken part in many Roman Reenactments. She's
0:32.0	helped organize gladiatorial combats in the 21st century with her fellow members in Legio II or
0:39.2	Gusta, as you're about to hear. It was a joy to chat to her at the Chalk Valley History Festival.
0:44.7	And without further ado, here's Alyssa.
0:47.3	Alyssa, thank you so much for taking the time to join me on the podcast again. You're all welcome.
0:57.8	Now, we are here at the Chalk Valley History Festival. We had your colleague David on yesterday
1:02.8	to talk about Roman Reenactment Reenegionary Reppenery, but female gladiators. This is an incredible
1:10.1	topic because I don't know about you, but I initially think of Russell Crowe gladiator 2000s,
1:16.8	going into the arena, fighting against all these other gladiator types. But we have references
1:24.0	in our sources that do seem to say that women did fight as gladiators during the Roman period.
1:30.4	We certainly do. They're very vague. There's very few of them. There is one reference from Nero's
1:35.6	reign of possibly women fighting. We don't have an exact date to that. The only vague date we can
1:42.1	go on is the writer, Juveel, who basically wrote a poem about a female who was training.
1:48.8	We reckon this was probably the late first early second century AD. And yes, that's probably the
1:57.1	only reference we actually have of females fighting apart from obviously the Stone Relief that's
2:02.3	in the British Museum. We'll get to that stone relief very shortly, but does this really seem to
2:06.7	emphasize then that if you're almost going to ask you about the rise of the female gladiator,
2:11.1	when do we think we start seeing them in Roman arenas, then we can't really put any exact date.
	...

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