Gladiators

[DuncanONeil]

Some were, but not very many!

I watched a program about the first finding of a grave with gladiators, and about all the deductions from this find.

Thinking about a talk on what civilization is: can the Romans, who watched this, be said to be civilized?
They had their circuses all over their empire, it was a big thing.

The people in the program seemed to think that the gladiators were there voluntarily. As far as I know this is nonsense, but say that they were: could the gladiators then be said to be civilized?

[thir]

Some were, but not very many!

I have always been taught that gladiators were slaves, which made sense to me. I do not really understand where they got this new idea from, it wasn't mentioned in the program.