Short answers, pulled from the story.
A gladiatrix was a female gladiator in ancient Rome who fought other women or wild animals to entertain audiences at games and festivals. They used much the same equipment as male gladiators, including shields, daggers, greaves, and arm protection called manicae, and were almost certainly matched against opponents of comparable skill.
Female gladiators were officially banned from 200 AD by the emperor Septimius Severus, reportedly after a crowd responded to his attempt at dignified female athletics with ribald chants. An earlier legal restriction under the Larinum Decree of 19 AD had barred citizen women from arena appearances, though lower-class women were not explicitly named in that legislation.
Amazonia and Achillia were two female gladiators commemorated on a marble relief found at Halicarnassus. Their names reference the mythical Amazons and a feminized form of Achilles. The relief's inscription records their bout as missio, meaning both were released, suggesting they fought to an honourable standing tie.
Female gladiators could be declared infames, meaning they lost certain social standing and legal rights. The Larinum Decree of 19 AD, issued under Tiberius, extended existing prohibitions to cover the equestrian order and all citizen women who appeared in the arena. Lower-class women, designated mulieres, were not mentioned in the decree and were therefore legally permitted to participate.
The Great Dover Street woman is a cremation burial unearthed in Southwark, London in 2001 that some researchers believe may be that of a female gladiator. Her grave contained pottery lamps of Anubis, a lamp depicting a fallen gladiator, and burnt Stone Pine cone remnants whose fragrant smoke was used to cleanse arenas, though her identification as a gladiatrix remains disputed.
The word gladiatrix does not appear in Roman sources until late antiquity. Its earliest known use is by a scholiast writing in the 4th or 5th century, who used it mockingly to describe a woman training for a performance at the Floralia festival. Romans of the classical period had no specific word for female gladiators as a class.