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The ancient Romans love gladiators. They loved the men, the weapons, the fighting and the bloodshed. The great amphitheatres of Rome, like the Colosseum, were routinely packed with spectators, who watched men fight bloody battles, both with each other and with a dazzling array of wild and dangerous animals. Awful violence stalked the arenas in the form of a sword, arrow, trident, tooth and claw, of an intensity that we can barely now imagine.

The arena was also a place of public executions, where men and women were thrown defenceless to the beasts. The gladiators themselves were all coming from war prisoners and became the superstars of their day, lusted after by both women and men. Their celebrity status ensured that they were followed by crowds of adoring fans whenever they went out into streets.

The Roman people looked down on their gladiators even as they cheered their triumphs and howled abuse at their defeats.
It's a serious mistake to consider these spectacles purely in the context of modern morality.
In our own age human life is prized and respected above all else ( at least in theory), but such a perspective simply did not exist in the ancient world.

The morality of the roman state was more complex.

The Romans brough a lot of prisoner of war to meet their death in the arena, but this tended to be the last resort, a means of dealing finally with an irreconciliable foe.
Gladiator fights were originally held as part of a funeral to honor a dead person' s memory. The first contest in Rome took place in 264 B.C, when three pairs of slaves fought in the marketplace.
Roman gladiators were mostly criminals, slaves and prisoners; they were trained in special gladiator schools called in latin " Ludi". They usually fought to the death; a wounded fighter could often ask the crowd to decide if he lived or died.
The gladiators fought in the afternoon in the Colosseum and were the main attraction at the games. The entertainment began in the morning, with a procession of gladiators, dancers, and musicians. next came the wild beast shows. Animals were let loose in the arena to fight each other or attack unarmed prisoners.

Wealthy Romans spent vast sums of money shipping beasts such as tigers, bears, and rhinoceroses back to Rome to fight.

To make the gladiators' contest more exciting, fights were held between different types of gladiators. For example, a retiarius, armed with a trident and net, might be matched against a murmillo, armed with a swords and shield.