What's your gladiator name?

The Ancient Romans: Part 1

Some Ancient Romans came over for drinks last Saturday and we watched Gladiators together. They had a few questions.

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There has been a revival of the 1990s UK game-show in which uber-fit contestants take on professional athletes (playing the role of gladiators) to win points and ultimately the whole competition. In real life the gladiators have normal names such as Kate and William, though in the show they go by intimidating titles like Dynamite and Giant. They have impressive skills, including ‘lifting two cars at once’ and ‘doing a Waitrose shop without spending over £50’.

Supping vino on our three-seater DFS sofa, the Ancient Romans said they preferred the TV gladiators’ leotards to their first century togas, however they didn’t understand why contestants would volunteer for this, as opposed to being selected via “good old-fashioned religious persecution”.

We were quick to insist that that is absolutely not how things are done, but they just helped themselves to more Monster Munch and kept asking where the Christians were.

Now, I consider myself to be a Christian (albeit not a very good one) so at that point I put my foot down and said if there was any more of that dreadful behaviour then no one would be getting any mozzarella sticks. The Ancient Romans looked surprised then a bit sheepish, and agreed to wind their necks in.

‘Gladiators’ continues to cause controversy in our household. There is a silly game at school whereby a student’s gladiator name is decided based upon the first item your parents pick up at the supermarket. This ridiculousness was started by some smart-arse whose mum went straight to the domestic goods aisle for ‘Mr Muscle’. His friends go by the names of ‘Dough Balls’ and ‘The Highlighter’.

Our daughter, however, was distraught to find that her gladiator name was Spring Onion. We said it could have been worse: what if we had started with Unwaxed Lemons? but there was no consoling her.

We then suggested that she just lie about it but she said that wasn’t an option and accused us of being morally reprehensible (as well as unimaginative in the vegetable department).