GLAD-15
John Jenkins Designs
Not yet released - expected in early October.
Gladiators were armed combatants who entertained audiences in the Roman Republic and Roman Empire in violent confrontations with other gladiators, wild animals and condemned criminals. Some gladiators were volunteers who risked their lives and their legal and social standing by appearing in the arena, but most were despised as slaves, schooled under harsh conditions, socially marginalized and even segregated even in death.
Irrespective of their origin, gladiators offered spectators an example of Rome’s martial ethics and in fighting or dying well, they could inspire admiration and popular acclaim. They were celebrated in high and low art, and their value as entertainers was commemorated in precious and commonplace objects throughout the Roman world.
By common custom, the spectators decided whether or not a losing gladiator should be spared, and chose the winner in the rare event of a standing tie. The final decision of death or life belonged to the editor, who signalled his choice with a gesture described by Roman sources as “police verso” meaning “with a turned thumb”, which is a description too imprecise for reconstruction of the gesture or its symbolism.
Whether victorious or defeated a gladiator was bound by oath to accept or implement his editor’s decision.
An official would be dressed in a mask of Charon, to represent the ferryman of the dead, and would strike a corpse with a mallet.
This was normally reserved for the Noxii or criminals condemned to death, but gladiator skulls found in a gladiator cemetery, and by modern pathological examination has also confirmed the probable fatal use of a mallet on some.
It has been suggested that gladiators who disgraced themselves might have been subjected to the same indignities as noxii, and denied the relative mercies of a quick death, and therefore would have been dragged from the arena as carrion.