In any event, the final decision of death or life belonged to the editor, who signalled his choice with a gesture described by Roman sources as pollice verso meaning “with a turned thumb”; a description too imprecise for reconstruction of the gesture or its symbolism. An outstanding fighter might receive a laurel crown and money from an appreciative crowd but for anyone originally condemned ad ludum the greatest reward was manumission (emancipation), symbolised by the gift of a wooden training sword or staff (rudis) from the editor. The Zliten mosaic in Libya (circa 80–100 AD) shows musicians playing an accompaniment to provincial games (with gladiators, bestiarii, or venatores and prisoners attacked by beasts). Even among the ordinarii, match winners might have to fight a new, well-rested opponent, either a tertiarius (“third choice gladiator”) by prearrangement; or a “substitute” gladiator (suppositicius) who fought at the whim of the editor as an unadvertised, unexpected “extra”. In late Republican munera, between 10 and 13 matches could have been fought on one day; this assumes one match at a time in the course of an afternoon. The gladiators may have held informal warm-up matches, using blunted or dummy weapons—some munera, however, may have used blunted weapons throughout.

• Walls in the 2nd century BC “Agora of the Italians” at Delos were decorated with paintings of gladiators.
• They included a provincial magnate’s five-day munus of thirty pairs, plus beast hunts.
• In the later Imperial era, Servius Maurus Honoratus uses the same disparaging term as Cicero—bustuarius—for gladiators.
• In Roman law, anyone condemned to the arena or the gladiator schools (damnati ad ludum) was a servus poenae (slave of the penalty), and was considered to be under sentence of death unless manumitted.
• When a freedman of Nero was giving a gladiatorial show at Antium, the public porticoes were covered with paintings, so we are told, containing life-like portraits of all the gladiators and assistants.
• Roman writing as a whole demonstrates a deep ambivalence towards the gladiatoria munera.

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Of the 176 days reserved for spectacles of various kinds, 102 were for theatrical shows, 64 for chariot races and just 10 in December for gladiator games and venationes. A single late primary source, the Calendar of Furius Dionysius Philocalus for 354, shows how seldom gladiators featured among a multitude of official festivals. In the early imperial era, munera in Pompeii and neighbouring towns were dispersed from March through November. It is not known how many gladiatoria munera were given throughout the Roman period.

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By the 1st century BC, noxii were being condemned to lanista the beasts (damnati ad bestias) in the arena, with almost no chance of survival, or were made to kill each other. Modern customs and institutions offer few useful parallels to the legal and social context of the gladiatoria munera. Remains of a Pompeian ludus site attest to developments in supply, demand and discipline; in its earliest phase, the building could accommodate 15–20 gladiators. As most ordinarii at games were from the same school, this kept potential opponents separate and safe from each other until the lawful munus. Novices (novicii) trained under teachers of particular fighting styles, probably retired gladiators. The city of Rome itself had four; the Ludus Magnus (the largest and most important, housing up to about 2,000 gladiators), Ludus Dacicus, Ludus Gallicus, and the Ludus Matutinus, which trained bestiarii.

• Novices (novicii) trained under teachers of particular fighting styles, probably retired gladiators.
• A show of gladiators was to be exhibited before the people in the market-place, and most of the magistrates erected scaffolds round about, with an intention of letting them for advantage.
• Some “unfree” gladiators bequeathed money and personal property to wives and children, possibly via a sympathetic owner or familia; some had their own slaves and gave them their freedom.
• The gladiator munus became a morally instructive form of historic enactment in which the only honourable option for the gladiator was to fight well, or else die well.
• Cassius Dio takes pains to point out that when the much admired emperor Titus used female gladiators, they were of acceptably low class.
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• The Christian author Tertullian, commenting on ludi meridiani in Roman Carthage during the peak era of the games, describes a more humiliating method of removal.

This yielded two combats for the cost of three gladiators, rather than four; such contests were prolonged, and in some cases, more bloody. A general melee of several, lower-skilled gladiators was far less costly, but also less popular. Increasingly the munus was the editor’s gift to spectators who had come to expect the best as their due. Gladiators may have been involved in these as executioners, though most of the crowd, and the gladiators themselves, preferred the “dignity” of an even contest.

Victory and defeat

The magistrate editor entered among a retinue who carried the arms and armour to be used; the gladiators presumably came in last. A procession (pompa) entered the arena, led by lictors who bore the fasces that signified the magistrate-editor’s power over life and death. The night before the munus, the gladiators were given a banquet and opportunity to order their personal and private affairs; Futrell notes its similarity to a ritualistic or sacramental “last meal”. Female gladiators probably submitted to the same regulations and training as their male counterparts. Other novelties introduced around this time included gladiators who fought from chariots or carts, or from horseback. In the mid-republican munus, each type seems to have fought against a similar or identical type.

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Even the most complex and sophisticated munera of the Imperial era evoked the ancient, ancestral dii manes of the underworld and were framed by the protective, lawful rites of sacrificium. During the Civil Wars that led to the Principate, Octavian (later Augustus) acquired the personal gladiator troop of his erstwhile opponent, Mark Antony. A career as a volunteer gladiator may have seemed an attractive option for some. Roman military discipline was ferocious; severe enough to provoke mutiny, despite the consequences. The dearth of freemen necessitated a new kind of enlistment; 8,000 sturdy youths from amongst the slaves were armed at the public cost, after they had each been asked whether they were willing to serve or no.
The Christian author Tertullian, commenting on ludi meridiani in Roman Carthage during the peak era of the games, describes a more humiliating method of removal. The body of a gladiator who had died well was placed on a couch of Libitina and removed with dignity to the arena morgue, where the corpse was stripped of armour, and probably had its throat cut as confirmation of death. Even more rarely, perhaps uniquely, one stalemate ended in the killing of one gladiator by the editor himself.

Few gladiators survived more than 10 contests, though one survived an extraordinary 150 bouts; and another died at 90 years of age, presumably long after retirement. A gladiator might expect to fight in two or three munera annually, and an unknown number would have died in their first match. Having no personal responsibility for his own defeat and death, the losing gladiator remains the better man, worth avenging.

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A match was won by the gladiator who overcame his opponent, or killed him outright. Suetonius describes an exceptional munus by Nero, in which no-one was killed, “not even noxii (enemies of the state).” At the opposite level of the profession, a gladiator reluctant to confront his opponent might be whipped, or goaded with hot irons, until he engaged through sheer desperation.