Russel Crowe, the most famous "gladiator" of cinema. The gladiators of present-day Turkey were vegetarians
The physical effort to which the gladiators of Ancient Rome they were constantly subjected would suggest that they followed a diet based on animal proteins, instead a recent archaeological discovery proves exactly the opposite, at least as regards the gladiators stationed in the area of the current city of Ephesus (Turkey), where some of their skeletons found in a cemetery of the second or third century BC, subjected to careful analysis in a laboratory in Vienna, attest to a vegetarian diet , consisting mainly of vegetables, wheat and completely free of meat.
Another peculiarity of the bones found is the high concentration of strontium, which could be due to "shakes" of ash hired to tone up and refresh themselves after the expensive fights to the death that were their daily bread, "concoctions" actually mentioned in some ancient sources.