Article by David Black Mastro In the November/December ’08 issue
of Archeology magazine, author Andrew Currey covered the recent
findings by paleo-pathologist Karl Grossschmidt of Vienna,
concerning the diet of ancient Roman gladiators. Grossschmidt
and his colleague, Fabian Kanz, examined the bones of gladiators
from a site in Western Turkey. Currey wrote: But the biggest
revelation to come out of the Ephesus cemetery is what kept the
gladiators alive–a vegetarian diet rich in carbohydrates, with
the occasional calcium supplement. Contemporary accounts of
gladiator life sometimes refer to the warriors as
hordearii–literally, “barley men.” Grossschmidt and collaborator
Fabian Kanz subjected bits of the bone to isotopic analysis, a
technique that measures trace chemical elements such as calcium,
strontium, and zinc, to see if they could find out why. They
turned up some surprising results. Compared to the average
inhabitant of Ephesus, gladiators ate more plants and very
little animal protein. This in itself i