I was watching this really good program about gladiators the other night on Discovery Channel, where, after examining hundreds of gladiator bones from a huge recent grave find in Turkey, forensic anthropologist, Dr. Karl Grossschmidt of the University of Vienna, said he believes Roman gladiators survived massive wounds. But the bizarre part was where he then noted that their heavy diet of barley and beans made them “fat vegetarians,” as the press is miss-portraying his comments. Dr. G. however concluded that they devised the diet primarily, “to protect themselves from slashing wounds and damage to nerves and blood vessels, with the layer of fat supplementing their scant armour.”
Sorry to all my heavy friends out there, but the idea that a layer of fat over muscle would significantly help protect from sword strikes is nonsense. Fat is mostly water. It’s soft and is one of the easiest things to puncture or slice through with a sword. No fighter is going to imagine for a second that blubber would protect him from thrusts and cuts of sharp blades. It seems to me the logical and obvious function of such a diet was the protien & carbohydrate-rich intake necessary for intense physical training or stressful athletic performance. They’d need it in the same way a boxer or runner sheds considerable body weight by burning off fat for energy during matches or distance runs. While Dr. G. could certainly tell from examination of their bones that gladiators trained heavily and were well-conditioned muscular athletes, how he possibly managed to determine they were “fat” from their bones was not explained. I think he was merely speculating outside his area of specialty. In my extensive study of sword wounds injuries, and deaths from the Medieval and Renaissance eras as a historian of fencing, I have never encountered any suggestion that extra body fat was an aid to defense in any way. Indeed, if anything it made a man a slower clumsier target. There is certainly no historical precedent for body fat being any degree of protection in armed close-combat in any martial culture I am aware of (and no, unarmed sport sumo wrestlers don't count). Given the distinctive entertainment function of Roman gladiatorial combats, as opposed to purely martial effectiveness, it would seem more probable that a stocky physique might possibly serve more to slow down a fighter’s movements slight and perhaps encourage blood flow from minor wounds all for the viewing pleasure of the spectators (especially given that they now beleive only 1 in 8 or 9 fights resulted in a death of a combatant).
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