13 ms·

An interesting hypothesis, but I have a hard time buying it. If everyone around them is eating meat, where's the motive for them to abstain? > Plants contain h

by umvi 8y ago

An interesting hypothesis, but I have a hard time buying it. If everyone around them is eating meat, where's the motive for them to abstain? > Plants contain higher levels of strontium than animal tissues. People who consume more plants and less meat will build up measurably higher levels of strontium in their bones. How can we rule out that they weren't just eating tons of strontium-rich meat like seafood and less strontium-deficient meat like chicken? Or that they weren't just eating WAY MORE plant carbs than your average person being warriors and all? Maybe gladiators were like marathon runners and were always carb-loading to pack calories. That would effectively multiply their plant over meat intake by orders of magnitude. But just because marathon runners eat way more grains than meat doesn't mean they are vegetarians.

elif 8y ago
You don't have to subscribe to a 21st century hypothesis, you simply have to believe or disbelieve the credibility of authors at the time describing the gladiator diet. This article is not controversial news, but scientific support for the existing narrative.
will_brown 8y ago
> If everyone around them is eating meat, where's the motive for them to abstain? Presumably as a gladiatorial slave you wouldnt need to worry about abstaining from food choices. I’m a marathon runner and my best runs are in full on ketosis. I’ve experimented with a vegitarian ketosis diet but never did a full marathon while eating like that, but felt pretty good otherwise. There are some UFC fighters who eat vegetarian, paleo, keto, some trying the “warrior diet” (which I think is like paleo with some intermittent fasting...but not entirely sure what those athletes are really doing daily). It’s also worth noting most of the recent studies on gladiators also suggest they were not lean and resembled more of the strongman contest physiques.
- ryanmercer 8y ago
  >Presumably as a gladiatorial slave you wouldnt need to worry about abstaining from food choices. It is worth noting that many gladiators, and Olympic competitors, were in fact not slaves and many were actually quite wealthy. Gladiators would do alright purely off of sexual relationships, rather high-class Roman maids and matrons like Hippia actually walked away from her family to be with a gladiator. There are many rumors from the time that allege various sons of powerful people to be bastard offspring of gladiators. There's even tell of some being 'the care and suffering of women' such as one byt he name of Hermes that Martial wrote of. You can tell how wealthy some were simply by looking at the fines issued to them. If you look at charioteers Theogenes and Porphyrius you can see good examples, Theogenes for example was once fined 2 talents for withdrawing from an event (about 250k dollars). If you look at a 2nd century prize table from Aphrodisias you see 500-3000 drachmas and there were several games referred to as 'the 3000-drachma Games', some would see prizes of 6000 drachma and in at least one instance of 30,000 drachma (about 100 years of a solderier's pay) being paid for a single athlete just to appear. At the Panathenaic games the lowest prize was 100 amphrae of olive oil, about 225k$ worth and winners were often fed by their home city for life if they won. Diocles, another charioteer, would compete for prizes up to 60,000 sesterces at a time which would be worth 2.5-3 million dollars today and if you look at his known life time winnings you get 35.8 million sesterces making him a billionaire and then some in today's dollars.
  - warent 8y ago
    Where did you learn all this? I feel like I could have kept reading this post forever. If you have any books to recommend, that would be amazing.
    - ryanmercer 8y ago
      A book titled "Manthropology: The Science of Why the Modern Male Is Not the Man He Used to Be" by Peter McAllister (bahahaha I just realized that's the same name from Home Alone). Everything in the book should be taken as liberal interpretation of history, however that being said he does cite where he gets facts and figures from so you can do your own research of the subjects. Here's a source of the 30k figure https://books.google.com/books?id=QMgsAwAAQBAJ&pg=PA74&lpg=PA74&dq=30,000+drachma+inscription&source=bl&ots=xAAKo4aegQ&sig=vcQu_BUxGqNpnrBeaUVWG8jxTWA&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwj9q4nPlYTfAhUHvFkKHeB6Cz4Q6AEwBHoECAUQAQ#v=onepage&q=30%2C000%20drachma%20inscription&f=false https://books.google.com/books?id=QMgsAwAAQBAJ&pg=PA74&lpg=P... Here's an article that actually puts Diocles worth 15 billion https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/7942699/Wealth-of-todays-sports-stars-is-no-match-for-the-fortunes-of-Romes-chariot-racers.html https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/794...
  - will_brown 8y ago
    >It is worth noting that many gladiators, and Olympic competitors, were in fact not slaves and many were actually quite wealthy. Hence my qualifier gladiatorial slave. Yes presumably a free gladiator had more choice than a gladiatorial slave. Your use of “many”, doesn’t shed much light on the subject, by all accounts most were slaves, free gladiators were definitely the exception not the rule. But yes some were the superstar athletes of their day and the wealth (women) that goes along with that status.
  - Someone 8y ago
    Wikipedia On Diocles (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaius_Appuleius_Diocles https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaius_Appuleius_Diocles): His winnings reportedly totaled 35,863,120 sesterces, allegedly, over $15 billion in today’s dollars, an amount which could provide a year's supply of grain to the entire city of Rome
forkLding 8y ago
I'm thinking its more to do with the fact that meat was expensive and takes much more effort to cook back then, not that they were willing to just eat grains and vegetables, likely grains and vegetables were cheap and much easier to cook. Farmed meat was a luxury in Roman times and game or wild meat was likely also expensive enough to not be eaten every day. We live in different times. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Roman_cuisine/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Roman_cuisine/ https://www.historyhit.com/what-did-the-romans-eat-food-and-drink-in-ancient-times/ https://www.historyhit.com/what-did-the-romans-eat-food-and-... https://www.quora.com/What-did-soldiers-eat-in-the-Ancient-Roman-Army https://www.quora.com/What-did-soldiers-eat-in-the-Ancient-R... https://www.thoughtco.com/did-roman-soldiers-eat-meat-120634 https://www.thoughtco.com/did-roman-soldiers-eat-meat-120634
- yuy910616 8y ago
  right that's the first thing I thought of as well. If they had access to big mac they'd be eating that all the time
- rmykhajliw 8y ago
  Totally agree. Meat is expensive, so general fighter can't get one. Another issue meat is perishable product, that's why you just can't really on meat in a war time when supply chain may be broken. It's the same idea was used during Civil War when soldiers main ration was griffins (salty flour crackers) - 2000 years and nothing changed.
tracker1 8y ago
Agreed... given the training regimes, they were probably consuming more than twice the amount of total food of people today. Which likely means they are eating a lot of foods from barley, etc. That doesn't preclude the intake of meat. Beyond that, it's 0.8-1.2g of protein are recommended MINIMUM daily intake to avoid diseases originating from protein deficiencies. At 220# that means 80-120g protein as a minimum. That's a fair amount, and far more than you're likely to get from vegetarian sources at the time alone. There's also a minimum amount of essential fatty acids to consider... at the time it's not like they had canola oil. So there was definitely animal products in their diets. Revisionist theories in order to support a vegetarian agenda are pretty annoying to me. A lot of it doesn't even pass a common sense sniff test. IIRC Barley + Lentils can give you a complete protein profile, and it's possible that maybe 1/3-1/2 of their protein intake was from non-meat sources. But I seriously doubt that even a significant minority were abstaining from meat.
- fouc 8y ago
  80 grams of protein is 320 calories. 220lbs male needs to eat at least 2000 calories (basal metabolic rate), likely closer to 3000-4000 after all the exercise. So protein only constitutes 12% or less of their caloric source. Just about all food have some proportion of protein. Cooked oatmeal is 16% protein by calories.
  - tracker1 8y ago
    I've seen a reference in another quote that suggests 78% if diet from carb sources... that leaves 12% from meat. That is emphatically NOT vegetarian by any modern definition. edit: could include fish, depending on the location.
    - will_brown 8y ago
      Your math is off by 10%. And saying 78% carbs in no way implies the rest is meat. The remaining 22% could be non animal sources of fats and protein. I’ve done vegitarian keto where about 70% of my daily intake is non animal fat, 15-20% non animal protein and 10-15% carbs.
simonsarris 8y ago
Yeah this article is a little too glib in its conclusion. Obviously, 'ate plenty of vegetable matter' !== vegetarian. Then without a discussion of logistics and pricing of specific foods at the time, its odd to try and conclude intention vs necessity, etc. > we should expect that gladiators had a high protein diet. However, analysis of their bones has put forward the hypothesis that gladiators were vegetarian athletes Who says that a mostly vegetarian is low-protein? No mention of specific foods that were eaten in ancient Rome, such as lupines ("lupini beans"), which are low carb high protein and easily dehydrated, transported, etc, and would make an obvious staple for soldiers. As you say, what if the roman soldiers ate mostly lupines + dried fish? And perhaps not because they thought it was ideal for a warrior (though it may be), but simply because they were easy to carry?
Someone 8y ago
”If everyone around them is eating meat” Is that likely? Per calorie, meat is more expensive, and people weren’t that rich, on average, at the time. Also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Roman_cuisine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Roman_cuisine states: John E. Stambaugh writes that meat "was scarce except at sacrifices and the dinner parties of the rich." Also, gladiators may have been loading carbs to gain a protective layer of fat. https://archive.archaeology.org/0811/abstracts/gladiator.html https://archive.archaeology.org/0811/abstracts/gladiator.htm...: ”Gladiators, it seems, were fat. Consuming a lot of simple carbohydrates, such as barley, and legumes, like beans, was designed for survival in the arena. Packing in the carbs also packed on the pounds. "Gladiators needed subcutaneous fat," Grossschmidt explains. "A fat cushion protects you from cut wounds and shields nerves and blood vessels in a fight." Not only would a lean gladiator have been dead meat, he would have made for a bad show. Surface wounds "look more spectacular," says Grossschmidt. "If I get wounded but just in the fatty layer, I can fight on," he adds. "It doesn't hurt much, and it looks great for the spectators."”
- SerLava 8y ago
  I'm trying to imagine a gash in my fat gladiator arm that's big enough to see from across the Colosseum and describing it as "doesn't hurt much."
  - kbutler 8y ago
    It's just a flesh wound!
  - Someone 8y ago
    Blood conveniently is an intense red and it can spread over a large area without losing much of its color. A nosebleed, for example, can look quite dramatic. Pain also is highly subjective, and can depend on psychological factors. A gladiator may have thought “that looks as if I fought hard, so they will let me live, and it is survivable”, rather than “that’s half an inch deep, bleeds like , and I will never be able to use that arm again!” Regardless, that gash in your fat arm easily beats an equally sized gash hitting a major artery or cutting into a bone.
1111111111z12 8y ago
> An interesting hypothesis This is not a hypothesis (a speculation to be confirmed or denied), this is a conclusion derived from a series of palaeoethnobotanical and stable isotope analysis studies.

by umvi 8y ago

elif 8y ago

You don't have to subscribe to a 21st century hypothesis, you simply have to believe or disbelieve the credibility of authors at the time describing the gladiator diet. This article is not controversial news, but scientific support for the existing narrative.

will_brown 8y ago

> If everyone around them is eating meat, where's the motive for them to abstain? Presumably as a gladiatorial slave you wouldnt need to worry about abstaining from food choices. I’m a marathon runner and my best runs are in full on ketosis. I’ve experimented with a vegitarian ketosis diet but never did a full marathon while eating like that, but felt pretty good otherwise. There are some UFC fighters who eat vegetarian, paleo, keto, some trying the “warrior diet” (which I think is like paleo with some intermittent fasting...but not entirely sure what those athletes are really doing daily). It’s also worth noting most of the recent studies on gladiators also suggest they were not lean and resembled more of the strongman contest physiques.

ryanmercer 8y ago
>Presumably as a gladiatorial slave you wouldnt need to worry about abstaining from food choices. It is worth noting that many gladiators, and Olympic competitors, were in fact not slaves and many were actually quite wealthy. Gladiators would do alright purely off of sexual relationships, rather high-class Roman maids and matrons like Hippia actually walked away from her family to be with a gladiator. There are many rumors from the time that allege various sons of powerful people to be bastard offspring of gladiators. There's even tell of some being 'the care and suffering of women' such as one byt he name of Hermes that Martial wrote of. You can tell how wealthy some were simply by looking at the fines issued to them. If you look at charioteers Theogenes and Porphyrius you can see good examples, Theogenes for example was once fined 2 talents for withdrawing from an event (about 250k dollars). If you look at a 2nd century prize table from Aphrodisias you see 500-3000 drachmas and there were several games referred to as 'the 3000-drachma Games', some would see prizes of 6000 drachma and in at least one instance of 30,000 drachma (about 100 years of a solderier's pay) being paid for a single athlete just to appear. At the Panathenaic games the lowest prize was 100 amphrae of olive oil, about 225k$ worth and winners were often fed by their home city for life if they won. Diocles, another charioteer, would compete for prizes up to 60,000 sesterces at a time which would be worth 2.5-3 million dollars today and if you look at his known life time winnings you get 35.8 million sesterces making him a billionaire and then some in today's dollars.
- warent 8y ago
  Where did you learn all this? I feel like I could have kept reading this post forever. If you have any books to recommend, that would be amazing.
  - ryanmercer 8y ago
    A book titled "Manthropology: The Science of Why the Modern Male Is Not the Man He Used to Be" by Peter McAllister (bahahaha I just realized that's the same name from Home Alone). Everything in the book should be taken as liberal interpretation of history, however that being said he does cite where he gets facts and figures from so you can do your own research of the subjects. Here's a source of the 30k figure https://books.google.com/books?id=QMgsAwAAQBAJ&pg=PA74&lpg=PA74&dq=30,000+drachma+inscription&source=bl&ots=xAAKo4aegQ&sig=vcQu_BUxGqNpnrBeaUVWG8jxTWA&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwj9q4nPlYTfAhUHvFkKHeB6Cz4Q6AEwBHoECAUQAQ#v=onepage&q=30%2C000%20drachma%20inscription&f=false https://books.google.com/books?id=QMgsAwAAQBAJ&pg=PA74&lpg=P... Here's an article that actually puts Diocles worth 15 billion https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/7942699/Wealth-of-todays-sports-stars-is-no-match-for-the-fortunes-of-Romes-chariot-racers.html https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/794...
- will_brown 8y ago
  >It is worth noting that many gladiators, and Olympic competitors, were in fact not slaves and many were actually quite wealthy. Hence my qualifier gladiatorial slave. Yes presumably a free gladiator had more choice than a gladiatorial slave. Your use of “many”, doesn’t shed much light on the subject, by all accounts most were slaves, free gladiators were definitely the exception not the rule. But yes some were the superstar athletes of their day and the wealth (women) that goes along with that status.
- Someone 8y ago
  Wikipedia On Diocles (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaius_Appuleius_Diocles https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaius_Appuleius_Diocles): His winnings reportedly totaled 35,863,120 sesterces, allegedly, over $15 billion in today’s dollars, an amount which could provide a year's supply of grain to the entire city of Rome

forkLding 8y ago

I'm thinking its more to do with the fact that meat was expensive and takes much more effort to cook back then, not that they were willing to just eat grains and vegetables, likely grains and vegetables were cheap and much easier to cook. Farmed meat was a luxury in Roman times and game or wild meat was likely also expensive enough to not be eaten every day. We live in different times. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Roman_cuisine/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Roman_cuisine/ https://www.historyhit.com/what-did-the-romans-eat-food-and-drink-in-ancient-times/ https://www.historyhit.com/what-did-the-romans-eat-food-and-... https://www.quora.com/What-did-soldiers-eat-in-the-Ancient-Roman-Army https://www.quora.com/What-did-soldiers-eat-in-the-Ancient-R... https://www.thoughtco.com/did-roman-soldiers-eat-meat-120634 https://www.thoughtco.com/did-roman-soldiers-eat-meat-120634

yuy910616 8y ago
right that's the first thing I thought of as well. If they had access to big mac they'd be eating that all the time
rmykhajliw 8y ago
Totally agree. Meat is expensive, so general fighter can't get one. Another issue meat is perishable product, that's why you just can't really on meat in a war time when supply chain may be broken. It's the same idea was used during Civil War when soldiers main ration was griffins (salty flour crackers) - 2000 years and nothing changed.

tracker1 8y ago

Agreed... given the training regimes, they were probably consuming more than twice the amount of total food of people today. Which likely means they are eating a lot of foods from barley, etc. That doesn't preclude the intake of meat. Beyond that, it's 0.8-1.2g of protein are recommended MINIMUM daily intake to avoid diseases originating from protein deficiencies. At 220# that means 80-120g protein as a minimum. That's a fair amount, and far more than you're likely to get from vegetarian sources at the time alone. There's also a minimum amount of essential fatty acids to consider... at the time it's not like they had canola oil. So there was definitely animal products in their diets. Revisionist theories in order to support a vegetarian agenda are pretty annoying to me. A lot of it doesn't even pass a common sense sniff test. IIRC Barley + Lentils can give you a complete protein profile, and it's possible that maybe 1/3-1/2 of their protein intake was from non-meat sources. But I seriously doubt that even a significant minority were abstaining from meat.

fouc 8y ago
80 grams of protein is 320 calories. 220lbs male needs to eat at least 2000 calories (basal metabolic rate), likely closer to 3000-4000 after all the exercise. So protein only constitutes 12% or less of their caloric source. Just about all food have some proportion of protein. Cooked oatmeal is 16% protein by calories.
- tracker1 8y ago
  I've seen a reference in another quote that suggests 78% if diet from carb sources... that leaves 12% from meat. That is emphatically NOT vegetarian by any modern definition. edit: could include fish, depending on the location.
  - will_brown 8y ago
    Your math is off by 10%. And saying 78% carbs in no way implies the rest is meat. The remaining 22% could be non animal sources of fats and protein. I’ve done vegitarian keto where about 70% of my daily intake is non animal fat, 15-20% non animal protein and 10-15% carbs.

simonsarris 8y ago

Yeah this article is a little too glib in its conclusion. Obviously, 'ate plenty of vegetable matter' !== vegetarian. Then without a discussion of logistics and pricing of specific foods at the time, its odd to try and conclude intention vs necessity, etc. > we should expect that gladiators had a high protein diet. However, analysis of their bones has put forward the hypothesis that gladiators were vegetarian athletes Who says that a mostly vegetarian is low-protein? No mention of specific foods that were eaten in ancient Rome, such as lupines ("lupini beans"), which are low carb high protein and easily dehydrated, transported, etc, and would make an obvious staple for soldiers. As you say, what if the roman soldiers ate mostly lupines + dried fish? And perhaps not because they thought it was ideal for a warrior (though it may be), but simply because they were easy to carry?

Someone 8y ago

”If everyone around them is eating meat” Is that likely? Per calorie, meat is more expensive, and people weren’t that rich, on average, at the time. Also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Roman_cuisine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Roman_cuisine states: John E. Stambaugh writes that meat "was scarce except at sacrifices and the dinner parties of the rich." Also, gladiators may have been loading carbs to gain a protective layer of fat. https://archive.archaeology.org/0811/abstracts/gladiator.html https://archive.archaeology.org/0811/abstracts/gladiator.htm...: ”Gladiators, it seems, were fat. Consuming a lot of simple carbohydrates, such as barley, and legumes, like beans, was designed for survival in the arena. Packing in the carbs also packed on the pounds. "Gladiators needed subcutaneous fat," Grossschmidt explains. "A fat cushion protects you from cut wounds and shields nerves and blood vessels in a fight." Not only would a lean gladiator have been dead meat, he would have made for a bad show. Surface wounds "look more spectacular," says Grossschmidt. "If I get wounded but just in the fatty layer, I can fight on," he adds. "It doesn't hurt much, and it looks great for the spectators."”

SerLava 8y ago
I'm trying to imagine a gash in my fat gladiator arm that's big enough to see from across the Colosseum and describing it as "doesn't hurt much."
- kbutler 8y ago
  It's just a flesh wound!
- Someone 8y ago
  Blood conveniently is an intense red and it can spread over a large area without losing much of its color. A nosebleed, for example, can look quite dramatic. Pain also is highly subjective, and can depend on psychological factors. A gladiator may have thought “that looks as if I fought hard, so they will let me live, and it is survivable”, rather than “that’s half an inch deep, bleeds like , and I will never be able to use that arm again!” Regardless, that gash in your fat arm easily beats an equally sized gash hitting a major artery or cutting into a bone.

1111111111z12 8y ago

> An interesting hypothesis This is not a hypothesis (a speculation to be confirmed or denied), this is a conclusion derived from a series of palaeoethnobotanical and stable isotope analysis studies.