Gladiator Records

[Nathan Ross]

Perhaps if it had gone national (or... imperial?) there would have been better records

There surely were records - the three big gladiatorial schools in Rome and those in the provinces were imperial concerns, run by imperial procurators, and these men doubtless would have had offices full of records detailing all the fighters under their command.

But how would these records have survived? Of all the vast amount of documents (wax tablets, papyri, codices, letters, laws, potsherds etc) generated by the Roman empire over the centuries only tiny fragments survive today. Excepting chance finds (Vindolanda tablets, papyri from Egyptian rubbish dumps or mummy wrappings, etc), only those things thought valuable or significant by future generations were preserved. The full details of Scorax and his fifty victories (or whatever), however fascinating they might be to us, were apparently not so to the record-keepers of intervening centuries.