comments:
This is a good reference: The World of the Gladiator by Susanna Shadrake. The Roman Gladiator Free men also volunteered to be gladiators (auctorati) and, by the end of the Republic, comprised half the number who fought. Often, they were social outcasts, freed slaves, discharged soldiers, or former gladiators who had been liberated on retirement but chose to return for a period of service. They signed on for a fee and swore a fearful oath of absolute submission to the lanista to be burned, flogged, beaten, or killed if so ordered (Petronius, Satyricon, CXVII; Seneca, Moral Epistles, XXXVII.1). In spite of the opprobrium, Roman citizens, even nobility, sometimes assumed the career of a gladiator—as did women (Amazones). Often, they were compelled but sometimes prompted, as "a number of Italian towns vied with one another in holding out financial inducements to undesirables among the younger generation" (Tacitus, Histories, II.62).