(11-02-2013, 01:40 PM)Siobhain Wrote: Â From what I know about the Coliseum and the gladiators who fought in it-- You actually got every single piece of gear from your theme that -actual- warriors wore in -actual- combat. The only thing that I think no one used in the arena was the official battle dress of the legion. Otherwise you wore the same amount of armor and such that the cultural warriors whom Rome had faced wore into battle.
That's not to say there wasn't a bit of pageantry in other aspects of the Coliseum besides the gladiatorial games but for the most part you simply filled a niche from whichever style you fit best. If you happened to be a slave or a warrior who'd been taken from that country that was familiar with that style of fighting, bully for you, but otherwise most got trained via lanista to handle their things.
They just didn't wear a ton of armor to begin with during those times. More over, Roman soldiers wore less by the time of Nero than they did at the time of Caesar.
Was actually going into the issue of the Sparticus TV show vs. the reality of coliseum games, but it is known from multiple sources in antiquity that some pretty out of the ordinary things took place in the Coliseum, including gladiators fighting naked (which Roman Soldiers didn't actually do), as well as gladiators "re-enacting" past battles or whatever, complete with really outlandish outfits (and I say that in quotes because it was almost always pushed very far towards the "pagentry" because the entire thing was a spectacle).
![[Image: hFalP38.jpg]](http://i.imgur.com/hFalP38.jpg)
