Rome's combat athletes were professionals in every modern sense: recruited, contracted, trained in specialist schools with doctors and dieticians, ranked, and paid — a survivor could win fame, fortune and eventually the wooden sword of freedom. First recorded at a funeral in 264 BCE, the games ended after Christian emperors turned against them; Honorius closed the gladiator schools in 399, and combats faded from Rome in the early 400s.
Gladiator no longer exists as a living trade. Here is what erased it, and which profession took on the work.
776 BCE – 393 CE
The ancient professionals
Greek athletes trained full-time under paid coaches, followed prize circuits between the Olympic, Pythian, Isthmian and Nemean games, and were rewarded by their cities with money, pensions and statues. Rome industrialized the model: charioteers rode for organized factions — the Blues and Greens commanded fan loyalty as fierce as any modern club's — and the best, like Diocles, amassed fortunes. The era closed when Theodosius I suppressed the pagan festivals around 393 CE, ending a thousand-year Olympic tradition.
What else was happening then
c. 146 CE
Rome's richest athlete retires
Charioteer Gaius Appuleius Diocles retired at 42 after 24 years and 1,462 race victories, his monument recording career winnings of nearly 36 million sesterces. Classicist Peter Struck argued in 2010 that, measured against the economy of his day, Diocles was plausibly the best-paid athlete in human history — evidence of how professional ancient sport truly was.
Where that work lives now
The body as a career: from Olympia's crowned victors to today's global stars, a short, brutal, winner-take-most profession watched by billions.
🏅 Athlete →