Clockwise from top left: Roman mosaic of a retiarius versus a secutor; Roman bronze gladiator helmet, Italy; Roman gladiator fresco, Pompeii, Italy While some ancient written sources describe ...

and a gladiator barracks known as the Caserma dei Gladiatori. Excavators first unearthed the barracks in the late 1700s. Among the ruins they found a bronze helmet, with a circular brim ...

In 79 CE, Mount Vesuvius erupted in southern Italy, burying the nearby Roman city of Pompeii in scalding stone and ash. The catastrophe famously entombed, and preserved, the city’s villas, ...