“Superstar” doesn’t outweigh “slave”. Think about what being a gladiator meant: you were regularly put into situations where even a win risked disfigurement, serious illness or death (imagine being a MMA fighter without antibiotics), and a long career was a decade. Every fight was fought with the knowledge that your best case scenario was to hurt or kill someone just like you badly enough that you’d have a break before being forced to do the same thing next time, when you perhaps would be on the other end of that outcome.

In a fairly graphic comparison, Seneca recorded the suicide of a German slave who was being trained as a gladiator for animal fights. He took advantage of the only freedom he was given to choke himself to death on a xylospongium, one the communal sponges the Romans used instead of toilet paper. Think about how you’d get into a state of mind where that seemed like the best option.

> “Superstar” doesn’t outweigh “slave”.

It did if they earned the rudis.

Also bear in mind at the time a military enlistment was a 25 year commitment. And a legionary didn’t really have more rights than a slave practically speaking. Both were in the manus of their legal superior.

Hormones mean women are less strong and thus less able to do the job. You get more work out of males.

Plus women were more suited for sex, these were not enlightened times so rape of slave women was not frowned on.