Time to rewatch "Gladiator". BTW, Gladiators apparently had sufficient sex appeal to drive the ladies wild. They reportedly had plenty of fanatical female fans.
Oh yeah, they were hot stuff. :') The original "extras" disk in the deluxe DVD of Gladiator (there's another extras edition out now, more stuff) had a cool 1 hour program discussing the world of the Roman gladiators, and that came up. :') Here's a cool, tacky old paperback from the 1950s, entire text online:
Those About To Die by Daniel P. Mannix
http://www.kurtsaxon.com/those_a_t_d