Every gladiator fought in an armatura, a fixed kit of weapon, shield and armour, and trained in nothing else. The types were matched against each other in set pairings that the crowd knew as well as a modern crowd knows the weight classes, and the interest of a bout was the contest between two different answers to the same problem: a big shield against a small one, armour against speed, a net against a helmet.
The oldest types were national. In the Republic, men fought as Samnites, Gauls and Thracians, in the arms of Rome's defeated enemies. By the time of Augustus the Samnite and the Gaul had been renamed or replaced and only the Thracian kept his name.
Murmillo
The heavy man. A murmillo carried the legionary's tall oblong shield and the short gladius, wore a helmet with a broad brim and a high crest, a padded guard on his sword arm and a short greave on his leading leg. The name comes from a fish, the mormylos, which may have been the crest. Slow, well protected and hard to knock down, he was the standard opponent of the thraex and sometimes of the hoplomachus.
Thraex
The Thracian: a small square shield, two tall greaves to make up for it, a helmet crested with a griffin, and the sica, a short curved sword built to reach round a shield's edge. Faster than the murmillo, lighter, and more exposed, he was the murmillo's classic opponent. Roman crowds divided into partisans of the big shields and the small ones, the scutarii and the parmularii, and emperors were known by which they favoured.
Hoplomachus
The name is Greek for an armed fighter, and the kit is a Roman idea of a Greek hoplite: a spear, a small round shield, a dagger for when the spear was gone, and quilted leggings under two greaves. He was paired with the murmillo or the thraex, and his spear gave him the reach that the small shield cost him.
Retiarius and secutor
The retiarius was the fisherman: a net, a trident, a dagger, a guard on the left shoulder and no helmet at all. He was the only gladiator whose face the crowd could see, which is part of why he was thought the least respectable. He was built to fight the secutor, the pursuer, who was a murmillo with a smooth, close-fitting helmet with two small eyeholes, made so a net could not catch on it. The retiarius appears under Augustus, and the pairing lasted as long as the games did.
Dimachaerus, and the rest
The dimachaerus fought with a blade in each hand and no shield. The word is Greek, and it is extremely rare in the sources, rare enough that some scholars think it names a stunt rather than a standing type. Nobody knows whom he was paired against. The provocator wore a breastplate, the only gladiator who did, and fought only other provocators. The eques fought on horseback, then on foot, against other equites, and opened the programme. The essedarius fought from, or around, a British war chariot, and probably came to Rome with Caesar.
Sources
- Marcus Junkelmann, Gladiatoren: Das Spiel mit dem Tod (2008).
- Suetonius, Titus 8, Domitian 10 and Caligula 55, on emperors and the two shields.
- Juvenal, Satires 8.199–210, on the retiarius.
Checked against the sources on 2026-09-07. Where two ancient authors give different numbers, both are given.