Gladiator sweat was a hot item in Ancient Rome

🌎 Weird Things in History: Gladiators & their Dolls

Part 1: The Fact

The ancient Romans were masters of architecture, engineering, and warfare. They were also masters of making the ideal celebrity in the form of a gladiator. The ancient Romans loved gladiators. You might say they loved them to death. Gladiators were pretty much the celebrities of their time. These men, who engaged in death-defying battles at the Colosseum, were seen as fearsome warriors and as celebrities with their very own product endorsements.

Part 2: The Story

Imagine watching your favorite hero fight to the death and then leaving the battlegrounds in an excited frenzy. You look up to see a billboard of your hero, casting a giant smile while holding a bottle of olive oil in his oily hand. You’re definitely buying that olive oil. You just have to ignore the fact that your favorite gladiator is now dead and gone forever, but there’s always another gladiator to gush over! That was what it was like in ancient Rome. Gladiators appeared on frescoes and mosaics, advertising anything and everything from wine to bathhouses.

Brand endorsements weren’t limited to only gladiators. Even the charioteers, who competed in races with horse-drawn chariots, gave their names to products and services. It was reported that Scorpus, a well-known charioteer who won over 2,000 victories, promoted a certain brand of lentils. Who wouldn’t want to purchase lentils from a man who could drive a chariot like a pro?

You could even buy action figures of your favorite gladiators. These figurines were made out of clay and were super popular with kids. These toys even included miniature armor and weapons based on the actual gladiators.

Adults had their own kind of gladiator toys. Next to the toy stands selling their action figures were people selling vials of the gladiators’ sweat. Wealthy women could buy the sweat and dirt scraped from the skin of a famous gladiator. The position of running behind gladiators and collecting their sweat must have had a high turnover. These scrapers even had their own scraping tool just for doing this called a strigil, which was a long, curved blade.

Women incorporated their sweaty purchases into their skincare routines. It was believed a gladiator’s sweat was an aphrodisiac; the more successful a gladiator was in the arena, the more powerful their sweat was. The smellier it was too, don’t forget that.

Part 3: The Breakdown

The weird beliefs and circumstance surrounding these impressive gladiators is a reminder that even the most advanced civilizations can have some really peculiar customs. It’s simple to look back on ancient Rome and the gladiatorial battles in the Colosseum and think, “Wow, those people were harsh,” but we should be cautious not to judge them too quickly. Who knows what future generations will think of our practices?

It’s incredible that this piece of history found its way into our world now. There are, of course, tons of gladiator toys out there, from action figures and plastic armor to video games. Thankfully, though, we don’t see any bottles of sweat in stores.

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