From "Sex, sesterces and status — the perks of being a gladiator/Those Who Are About Die is a myth-slaying history of the world of Roman fighters by the classicist and novelist Harry Sidebottom" (London Times).
August 24, 2025
"Juvenal said that being a gladiator turned an ugly man into an Adonis in women’s eyes. 'It’s the steel they love,' the poet wrote."
"Men were obsessed too. Maecenas, a patron of the arts under the emperor Augustus, discussed the warriors’ form on a carriage ride with the poet Horace; the playwright Terence complained that one of his performances had been ruined by a crowd rushing in thinking that gladiators were fighting. The Romans felt it was good luck to part a bride’s hair with a spear that had been thrust into a gladiator’s body and drank tinctures of their blood to cure epilepsy...."
From "Sex, sesterces and status — the perks of being a gladiator/Those Who Are About Die is a myth-slaying history of the world of Roman fighters by the classicist and novelist Harry Sidebottom" (London Times).
From "Sex, sesterces and status — the perks of being a gladiator/Those Who Are About Die is a myth-slaying history of the world of Roman fighters by the classicist and novelist Harry Sidebottom" (London Times).
Posts
35 comments:
Gay.
This is gay.
Hairy Side Bottom?
Really???
Sidebottom is a position enjoyed by guys who watch gladiator movies.
RR
JSM
I recently read Pax: War and Peace in Rome's Golden Age by Tom Holland.
Holland has an eye for an evocative anecdote. The chapter opening with the penis of a 90-year-old man being inspected in a court of law is a masterpiece.
The modern age repeats cycles from the past in highly imperfect iterations due to social forces and behaviors having some commonality over time. I found Dan Jones' "New History of the Middle Ages" several years ago to be illuminating in this regard. As was Christopher Kelly "The End of Empire: Attila the Hun & the Fall of Rome."
Jones was good at showing how the adjacent empires of Persia and the German tribes and Asian hordes overthrew the interior empire of Rome and later threatened Christendom for a millennia and how Islam and Christendom ground against each other for centuries and that the Mediterranean has been the great arena until the North Atlantic divided Europe into a commercial society looking towards the Atlantic, towards the East, while staying rooted on the northern shore of the Mediterranean -- where it all remains today and continues to be threatened from ancient forces from both south and east. And so on!
Kelly was fascinating because he showed how migratory pressures put the Huns on the northern border of the Roman Empire and then how a very shrewd warrior king could dismantle the empire by alternatingly striking west across the Rhine into Gaul and also southeast through Slovenia into northern Italy while also periodically threatening the eastern empire at Constantinople. The barbarians used concentration of force and mobility on the periphery to divide and conquer the Romans on their once invincible internal lines of communication.
The present book "Pax" looks equally fascinating since it explores the distribution of power between the emperor -- a central executive authority -- and the Senate, a body representing the disparate power centers of a sprawling and complex empire. And then there is the distribution of power between the capital city -- the center of an empire -- and its provinces, often the larger base of imperial power due to its broad productive power. Here, peace is the absence of conflict between contentious power centers. And then the ambition of individual personalities always attempting to incarnate the power latent in the social structure into personalized power is a central saga. The apex of power -- the emperorship -- never fails to attract.
So each literary journey back to the Roman world affords a new look at an old and rewarding masterpiece.
"Do you like Gladiator movies, Jimmy?"
Prof toured us through the greek and roman exhibits at the museum. Nothing but pervey omnisexual images on chalices and earthenware…
Online is now saying that gladius (sword) was never a slang term for penis, but online has to explain why vagina means scabbard.
Randy Newman, A Wedding in Cherokee County
And I will attempt to spend my love within her
Though I try with all my might
She will laugh at my mighty sword
She will laugh at my mighty sword
Why must everybody laugh at my mighty sword?
NFL.
It's a lie! Girls in my high school just laughed when i dressed up as a gladiator.
modern girls say things like:
"all a guy has to say, is: 'i've been in prison'; and my brain tips right over!"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zCjzy03lPZY
of course, then they SAY "oh, this was Just a JOOOKE!"
here's another jooooke"
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/8rAgJPlVaq0
that one is about average women wishing and hoping for a mafia drug dealing Killer, to take her and OWN her..
BUT! of course! it's JUST A JOOOOOKE!
except that it's Not. Women have ALWAYS wanted the lion king.. not the hyena
oh, here's Abbies Perfect man
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lqz8e-izzqk
Teh early Romans spoke of the man who invented cunnilingus… they said the act brought joy to the couples who practiced it… the woman experienced much good humor and the man was glad he …
Terrence seems like the kind of figure who should have a tag, but maybe that's just me. Maybe I think about Rome too often.
Blood from young people has measurable and statistically significant benefits for older people.
Most Roman gladiators were young for obvious reasons so the Romans were not wrong.
They were probably wrong about the required volume though.
Jaq said...
Terrence seems like the kind of figure who should have a tag, but maybe that's just me. Maybe I think about Rome too often.
Old people are already setting up teenage blood puppets for regular infusions. Vampirism or some variation will eventually become a tag.
that was the theme of Gladiator a quarter century ago, whose sequel was unneccessary, and a recent series on Peacock, with the same name,
The chapter opening with the penis of a 90-year-old man being inspected in a court of law is a masterpiece.
Bill Clinton and Michael Jackson know the feeling.
Old “roll of quarters” and “Palomino”…
Roman pugilists were likely to be overweight, covered in cuts and bruises, with bad teeth and worse breath — but they were what passed for sex symbols in those days.
I’ll take Sidney Sweeney any day.
Cancel culture prosecuted with liberal license in the ring, following progressive principles to entertain abortive ideation to relieve "burdens". The GrecoRoman fights were cultural progenitors of planned parenthood, DEIsm, ethnic Springs, , and other wicked solutions of modern progression of ancient history.
"Those Who Are About Die"? Surely not.
well the odds were good,
Holland's Pax is good; all of his books are good.
I'm not familiar with the others but will put them on my list. Goldsworthy is a bit of a plod.
Wince: "Roman pugilists were likely to be overweight....I’ll take Sidney Sweeney any day."
Ironically, before the jeans ad, she was in the news for her Deniro-like transformation into a pugilist for the Christy Martin biopic.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt32323252/
RR
JSM
Step back two cultures. Mary Renault taught me in The King Must Die that the Bull Dancers in Minos were sex symbols. If they lived.
Achilles: "Old people are already setting up teenage blood puppets for regular infusions."
I saw Teenage Blood Puppets when they opened for The Cure at the Boston Garden in '83....
RLTW
JSM
For some reason or other, I can't trust a man named "Harry Sidebottom."
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Ladies always liked the outlaws and bad boys. That went through a lot of changes through history.
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AI tells us, 'The Latin word testis has a dual meaning: "a witness" and "testicle,"' so possibly more penises than just that one have been bared or borne in courtrooms in those days.
»
Homosexuality there was in ancient times. What was and wasn't "gay" (if anything was or anything wasn't) may not have been the same as what is now.
I notice one of the gladiators in the mosaic is labelled "Rodan". Though obviously he's not a giant radioactive pteranodon.
Gladiators were the Chippendales of the day. Entertainment for the wives of men who build the world.
Sometimes you get the feeling that most women would rather get hit on the head with a club and be assaulted by a cave man. But at least 10% of women are smart, tattoo less, and have the ability to delay gratification. I married 2 and am at a 50% success rate.
"Pain Heals. Chicks Dig Scars. Glory Lasts Forever." -- Shane Falco
Tony Soprano
Dave Begley said...
“NFL.”
NBA - no W, though.
Dennis Rodman said he never would have been pulling in as much ‘tang from hotties that he was getting if he had been a manager at McDonalds instead.
The same title was that of a 1958 book by Daniel Mannix, which I used to own a copy of. It noted that the Colosseum is more famous in modern times, while the Circus Maximus was actually the premier venue in Roman times for public games. It was a good reference work on the subject.
Joey, do you like movies about gladiators?
~Captain Clarence Oveur
Idle speculation, I know, but I wonder whether this might be the remnants of an instinct among Neolithic female h. sapiens to select a mate brave enough to put himself and his spear between a hungry Smilodon and his wife and children, with sufficient skills to have a fair chance of surviving.
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