Alexandra Sills is an independent scholar and public ancient historian from the UK. After decades of chatting to the public about history during her museum, heritage site and tour guiding career, she was persuaded to undertake a degree in her first love, the history of ancient Greece and Rome, in her 30s. She earned a first class degree in Classical Studies from Birkbeck College, University of London, before achieving a distinction for her MA in The Classical Mediterranean at the University of Leicester. The hard work paid off, and she has since appeared on multiple podcasts as an expert guest, lectured in museums across the country, featured in a documentary, published several academic papers and written a slew of articles for the general public. Proving that life actually does begin at 40, her debut book ‘Gladiators in the Greek World: How a Roman Bloodsport Took Ancient Greece by Storm will be released in the summer of 2026. In truth, I didn’t choose my research niche when I was casting around for undergrad dissertation ideas; it’s a topic I’d been pondering even before I enrolled. I’ve been fascinated by gladiators ever since seeing a full-scale re-enactment show in an amphitheatre in southern France, where, as I sat amongst thousands of cheering spectators, I suddenly understood the ancient hype. Gladiators = adrenaline, even when the fights are bloodless and choreographed. As I started reading, I couldn’t help but notice that amphitheatres pop up everywhere in the Roman empire, but they’re actually really rare in the Greek provinces in the east, despite these being typically very wealthy areas who could well afford big monuments. Did the Greeks simply hate gladiators? So, for my undergrad dissertation I undertook a survey of all evidence I could find of gladiatorial combats in the culturally Greek areas of the empire, and found that an absence of amphitheatres doesn’t actually indicate the absence of interest. Three scholars have already spoken at length about collected gladiatorial epigraphy in these provinces, as well as others collating inscriptions from individual sites, but I wondered why epigraphy should be the sole source of evidence considered. For my dissertation, I decided to add in artworks, osteoarchaeology, and one of my favourite aspects; alternate venues. The scholarship that I devoured mentions Greek theatres and stadiums, some already centuries old, being subtly altered architecturally under the Roman occupation to render them safe for hosting gladiatorial spectacles. Usually, the front row of spectators had their feet resting on the orchestra or running tracks, which isn’t a problem when actors and athletes aren’t armed to the teeth. When gladiators got involved, safety measures needed to be added in a way that wouldn’t detract from the primary use of these venues. So, we start to see post holes being drilled to erect temporary safety barriers, permanent stone walls being placed between spectators and fighters, or the raising of the front rows to lift spectators a metre or more above the arena floor to keep them safe from stray blades. The adaptations were as unobtrusive as possible, as well as being far less expensive than building a separate Roman amphitheatre. These Greek venues, which held their own, deeply embedded cultural significance, could now host a foreign cultural phenomenon safely whilst retaining their original purpose and atmosphere.  So, I didn’t discover this habit, but I noticed that whilst archaeologists were commenting on these alterations in the excavation reports of individual theatres or stadiums, nobody seemed to know how common the habit actually was. I had stumbled across a question that I could answer, and in doing so, provide some original research. I did what I often find myself doing, and built a set of spreadsheets. I’m neurodivergent, which might explain why I gravitate towards making them so frequently, but it makes spotting anomalies or patterns in a dataset an absolute breeze. I had one set of spreadsheets regarding gladiatorial epitaphs, because I figured they deserved a fresh pair of eyes and a new perspective. Then I created another set devoted to every venue I could find that gladiators once fought in. When it came time to choose my MA dissertation, I tossed a coin to choose which set to write about, planning to turn both (eventually) into academic papers. I decided to concentrate my dissertation on everything about epitaphs, simply because my chosen supervisor is an epigraphy whizz. Then, I set about logging every published literary and artistic depiction of each type of gladiator, and added their locations to a spreadsheet with a column for latitude, and a column for longitude. For this to work, I had separate spreadsheets for murmillones, secutors, retiarii et al. Once every spreadsheet was saved as a .csv file, I then loaded each into a free GIS software; I chose QGIS for desktop. I’ve not been formally trained in GIS building, so QGIS was a good choice for learning ‘on the job.’ The joy of a GIS is the ability to isolate each subset of data, and to display or hide each subset as you wish in order to view exactly what you need at any moment. Each uploaded spreadsheet thus becomes a ‘layer’ of points laid on top of a standard map of the chosen region. Different shaped or coloured icons for each theme made it a lot easier to digest the information when looking at multiple layers at once. I already knew from my spreadsheets that some types of gladiator were more popular than others, but now I could easily see regional differences and preferences. Then I mapped all epitaphs that mentioned Hades, or family members, or that depicted victory wreaths and palm fronds. All of this epigraphy had been catalogued before, but seeing the data mapped for the first time allowed me to spot new patterns, as well as illustrating how widely gladiator gravestones were distributed. The eureka moment came when I added my spreadsheet of known venues. Surely, the cities with a lot of gravestones of gladiators would be the cities with […]

We light the first Hanukkah candle this evening, but we could all use some light right now, so here’s my super-sized 254th #ScholarSunday thread of great public scholarly writing & work, podcast episo...