• Email Us: [email protected]
  • Contact Us: +1 718 874 1545
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Medical Market Report

  • Home
  • All Reports
  • About Us
  • Contact Us

Did The Romans Really Use Gladiator Sweat As An Aphrodisiac?

July 17, 2024 by Deborah Bloomfield

The new trailer for Gladiator II is an absolute riot of glistening flesh and spilled bodily fluids, and while the movie itself may be historically dubious, it’s certainly true that the combatants of the Colosseum would have spent much of their lives coated in blood and sweat. Exactly what the ancient Romans did with all this carnal discharge, however, is not entirely clear, although a quick internet search will tell you that gladiator perspiration was used as both an aphrodisiac and a medical panacea.

Advertisement

According to numerous unverified reports, competitors were coated in olive oil before being sent into the arena, later to be scraped down using an implement known as a strigil (assuming they survived their mortal contest). Supposedly, the resultant gladiator gunk – which would have consisted of sweat, blood, exfoliated skin, general dirt, and excess oil – was then sold in vials to punters, who applied it to their own bodies and faces in the hopes of attaining a range of physical benefits.

It is sometimes claimed, for instance, that this repulsive ooze was mixed with perfume or used as a facial cream by wealthy Roman women. Other statements suggest that both men and women employed the excretions to inject some gladiatorial vitality into their sex lives or to cure a range of ailments from joint pain to inflammation.

Like many aspects of Ridley Scott’s new blockbuster, however, there’s no evidence to suggest that this practice actually existed. On the contrary, esteemed Roman author Pliny the Elder was absolutely repulsed by the idea of wallowing in the filth of another, and scorned the ancient Greeks for doing just that in his famous text Naturalis Historia.

Describing the habits of the Greeks, Pliny wrote that “the scrapings from the bodies of the athletes are looked upon as possessed of certain properties of an emollient, calorific, resolvent, and expletive nature, resulting from the compound of human sweat and oil.” Readers can almost hear his stomach turning as he goes on to explain that “these scrapings are used, in the form of a pessary, for inflammations and contractions of the uterus.”

According to Pliny, the Greeks saw no limits to the medical properties of athletes’ sweat – known as gloios – and made use of it to cure everything from genital warts to “inflammations of the rectum”.

Advertisement

Given the many inaccuracies found in Naturalis Historia, it’s difficult to know how truthful Pliny’s descriptions of Greek hygiene and medicine really were, although you can really feel his revulsion when he writes that “they have even gone so far, too, as to scrape the very filth from off the walls of the gymnasia.” Supposedly, these residues could be sold for a handsome price and were sought after as “a resolvent for inflamed tumours,” amongst other things.

In reality, then, it seems that the Romans did not use gladiator sweat to boost sexual performance – or, indeed, for any other purpose. Rather, it was the Greeks who may have exalted the benefits of gloios, much to the disgust of Pliny and his compatriots.

Deborah Bloomfield
Deborah Bloomfield

Related posts:

  1. Bolivian president calls for global debt relief for poor countries
  2. Five Seasons Ventures pulls in €180M fund to tackle human health and climate via FoodTech
  3. Humanity’s Journey To A Metal-Rich Asteroid Launches Today. Here’s How To Watch
  4. Ancient DNA Reveals People Caught Leprosy From Adorable Woodland Critters In Medieval England

Source Link: Did The Romans Really Use Gladiator Sweat As An Aphrodisiac?

Filed Under: News

Primary Sidebar

  • A Spinning Island Lake In Argentina Looms Out Of The Swamps Like An Eyeball
  • Mammals Have Evolved Into Ant Eaters 12 Times Since The Dinosaurs Went Extinct
  • Thieving Pulsar Spinning 592 Times A Second Reveals New Understanding Of Where Its X-Rays Come From
  • The Rise And Fall (And Lamentable Rise) Of The “Alpha Male” Myth
  • IFLScience The Big Questions: How Do Black Holes Shape The Universe?
  • North America’s Smallest Turtle Is The Cutest Thing You’ll Find In A Bog
  • “Unambiguous Signal” To Curb Emissions Now: Long-Lost Aerial Photos Reveal Evolution Of Antarctic Ice Shelf Collapse
  • 8 Children Have Been Born With 3 Biological Parents Each After Mitochondrial Transfer
  • First Known Observations Of Matter-Antimatter Asymmetry In Special Particle Decay
  • In 1973, NASA Sent Two Spiders Into Space To See If They Can Spin Webs – And They Learnt A Lot
  • Meet The Many Species Of Freaky Looking “Assassin Spiders” That Only Eat Other Spiders
  • Your Dog’s TV Preferences Might Reveal Their Personality
  • Some Human Gut Bacteria Can Absorb Harmful Toxic “Forever Chemicals” So They Can Be Pooped Out
  • You Could Float Through 10 Countries Before The World’s Most International River Spat You Out
  • Enormous Coronal Hole And Beast-Like Crawling Prominences Dazzle On The Active Sun
  • Dramatic Drone Footage Of Iceland’s Latest Volcanic Eruption Shows An Epic Scene From Hell
  • A Shrimp That Lives In A Tree? Indonesia’s Cyclops Mountains Are Home To Some Seriously Strange Wildlife
  • Is NASA’s Claim That Saturn Could Float On Water Really True?
  • Pangea Proxima: This Is What Planet Earth May Look Like 250 Million Years In The Future
  • The Story Of Dogxim, The Fox-Dog Hybrid That Shouldn’t Have Existed
  • Business
  • Health
  • News
  • Science
  • Technology
  • +1 718 874 1545
  • +91 78878 22626
  • [email protected]
Office Address
Prudour Pvt. Ltd. 420 Lexington Avenue Suite 300 New York City, NY 10170.

Powered by Prudour Network

Copyrights © 2025 · Medical Market Report. All Rights Reserved.

Go to mobile version