Anthropology unlocks clues about Roman gladiators’ eating habits.
Credit: OEAI, Pietsch
Roman gladiators ate a mostly vegetarian diet and drank ashes after training as a tonic. These are the findings of anthropological investigations carried out on bones of warriors found during excavations in the ancient city of Ephesos.
Historic sources report that gladiators had their own diet. This comprised beans and grains. Contemporary reports referred to them as “hordearii” (“barley eaters”).
In a study by the Department of Forensic Medicine at the MedUni Vienna in cooperation with the Department of Anthropology at the Institute of Forensic Medicine at the University of Bern, bones were examined from a gladiator cemetery uncovered in 1993 which dates back to the 2nd or 3rd century BC in the then Roman city of Ephesos (now in modern-day Turkey). At the time, Ephesos was the capital of the Roman province of Asia and had over 200,000 inhabitants.
Using spectroscopy, stable isotope ratios (carbon, nitrogen and sulphur) were investigated in the collagen of […]
Sounds like the Romans were more intelligent than I anticipated if they were replacing lost minerals by using the ashes of plants which contain minerals which those of us in the 21st century use supplements to do the same.