Female gladiators

The gladiatrix (plural gladiatrices) is a modern term for the female equivalent of the gladiator of ancient Rome. Like their male counterparts, female gladiators fought each other, or wild animals, to entertain audiences at various games and festivals. Very little is known about them. They were almost certainly considered an exotic rarity by their audiences. Their existence is known only through a few accounts written by members of Rome's elite, and a very small number of inscriptions.

Female gladiators rarely appear in Roman histories. When they do, they are "exotic markers of exceptionally lavish spectacle". In 66 AD, Nero had Ethiopian women, men and children fight at a munus to impress King Tiridates I of Armenia. Romans seem to have found the idea of a female gladiator novel and entertaining, or downright absurd; Juvenal titillates his readers with a woman named "Mevia", a beast-hunter, hunting boars in the arena "with spear in hand and breasts exposed", and Petronius mocks the pretensions of a rich, low-class citizen, whose munus includes a woman fighting from a cart or chariot. A munus circa 89 AD, during Domitian's reign, featured battles between female gladiators, described as "Amazonian".

There is no evidence for the existence or training of female gladiators in any known gladiator school. Vesley suggests that some might have trained under private tutors in Collegia Iuvenum (official "youth organisations"), where young men of over 14 years could learn "manly" skills, including the basic arts of war. He offers three inscriptions as possible evidence; one, from Reate, commemorates Valeria, who died aged seventeen years and nine months and "belonged" to her collegium; the others commemorate females attached to collegia in Numidia and Ficulea. Most modern scholarship describes these as memorials to female servants or slaves of the collegia, not female gladiators. Nevertheless, female gladiators probably followed the same training, discipline and career path as their male counterparts; though under a less strenuous training regime.

As male gladiators were usually pitted against fighters of similar skill and capacity, the same probably applied to female gladiators. A commemorative relief from Halicarnassus shows two near-identical gladiators facing each other. One is identified as Amazon and the other as Achillia; their warlike "stage names" allude to the mythical tribe of warrior-women, and the warrrior-hero Achilles. Each is bareheaded, equipped with a greave, loincloth, belt, rectangular shield, dagger and manica (arm protection). Two rounded objects at their feet probably represent their discarded helmets. An inscription describes their match as missio, meaning that they were released; the relief, and its inscription, might indicate that they fought to an honourable "standing tie" as equals.

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