At the gladiatorial contests of ancient Rome, what did the Emperor mean when he gave the losing gladiator the thumbs up?

A. He was letting them go free.

B. He was condemning them to death.

C. He was allowing the crowd to decide on life or death.

ANSWER: B!

Today, when we give someone the ‘thumbs up’ we are showing that we approve, or that something is going well. It would be easy to think that, when Roman emperors once did the same, they were sparing the losing gladiator’s life. In fact, the thumbs-up sign in those ancient amphitheatres meant that the gladiator was condemned to die. The verdict was usually greeted with roars of approval from a bloodthirsty audience eager for the spectacle of death.

The lives and battles of gladiators gave us other words in English too, although we may not realize it now. Take ‘arena’, which comes from a Latin word whose literal meaning was ‘sand’. That’s because the middle of the vast amphitheatres, where the fierce combat took place between gladiators (and sometimes wild animals kept in cages underground), was covered with sand in order to soak up the blood spilled during the fight. In later centuries, sand and straw were both used to mop up the gore that followed a beheading!

Today’s sporting champions have gladiators and other Roman athletes as their ancestors. The word ‘champion’ goes back to the Latin campus, which meant a field, especially one used for training for battle. The very first ‘campus’ was in the city of Rome, and was near the Tiber River. Over time, this large plain became ancient Rome’s field and track playground, used by Julius Caesar himself together with young men from all over Rome.

‘Gladiator’, by the way, comes from the Latin for ‘sword’. And if your parents ever talk about a plant called a ‘gladioli’, you can tell them it takes its name from its sword-shaped leaves!

Did you know …

… that a ‘campus’ university is one whose buildings are all in the same grounds, often with wide-open spaces. They too look back to ancient Roman sports grounds and training fields.