How you died was important to gladiators. Part of the training at the gladiator school was how to die appropriately. If you lost, you needed to make eye contact with the victor and offer your neck. You put two fingers in the air in the direction of the editor (the head of the show) and the crowd. They responded with thumbs down for life (indicating thrusting the victor’s sword in the ground) or thumbs up for death. (This is the opposite of what we have been led to believe. The painting below was a primary reason for the screw-up.) The editor usually went with the crowd’s wishes. If you died poorly, your body was dragged out the arena by a slave that was sometimes dressed as Anubis (the Egyptian god of the underworld) or Hermes or Charun (the Etruscan demon of death). The body would be thrown in the river or a trash dump. If you died well you were carried on a stretcher to a death room where you had your throat cut if there was any reason to believe you were faking it. Your armor would be recycled to another gladiator. The body was cremated and buried by fellow gladiators.
https://historycollection.co/17-facts-about-gladiators-that-make-us-cringe/
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