20. The Roman World Believed in the Healing Properties of Gladiator Blood
Roman purchasers of gladiator sweat and grime often applied it directly to their faces, as a type of facial cream. Others mixed it with cosmetics and perfumes – which in ancient Rome were usually the preserve of upper-class women. Gladiator blood was also highly sought after. Many women applied the blood of their favorite gladiators to coat their jewelry, combs, wigs, and other accouterments, or mixed it with their cosmetics. Gladiators were seen as particularly virile, which led to the ghoulish practice of using gladiator blood (and sometimes sweat) as an aphrodisiac. The more successful and famous a gladiator, the more potent an aphrodisiac his blood or sweet were believed to be. It could be drunk pure, but more often, was mixed with wine and ingested that way.
Gladiator blood’s usefulness was not limited to cosmetics and aphrodisiacs. It was also used to treat various maladies, particularly epilepsy. As Pliny the Elder described it: “Epileptic patients are in the habit of drinking the blood even of gladiators, draughts filled with life as it were; a thing that, when we see it done by the wild beasts in the same arena, inspires us with horror at the spectacle! And yet these persons consider it a most effective cure for their disease, to drink the warm, breathing, blood from man himself, and, as they apply their mouth to the wound, to draw forth his very life; and this, though it is regarded as an act of impiety to apply the human lips to the wound even of a wild beast!”