This is way cool: Reuters is carrying a piece today about forensic studies done on the remains of gladiators found in tombs near Ephesus in Turkey which supports the notion that gladiatorial combats were carried out pursuant to a code of conduct.
Injuries to the front of each skull suggested that each opponent used just one type of weapon per bout of face-to-face contact, two Austrian researchers report in a paper to be published in Forensic Science International.Savage violence and mutilation, typical of battlefields 2,000 years ago, were out of order.
And the losers appear to have died quickly.
Despite the fact that most gladiators wore helmets, 10 of the remains showed the fighters had died of squarish hammer-like blows to the side of the head, possibly the work of a backstage executioner who finished off wounded losers after the fight.
The report confirms the picture given of battles in the arena by Roman artwork, which suggests gladiators were well matched and followed rules enforced by two referees.
I expect this had as much to do with the economics of such spectacles as anything else - training and maintaining a first-class gladiator was a pretty expensive proposition and it would have been in everyone's best interest not to run the risk of throwing away such a valuable asset in an out-of-control free-for-all. If I recall my classical civ correctly, the more lawless bloodbaths in the arena usually involved criminals, prisoners and (from the Roman point of view) other more expendable riff-raff.
Yips! to Scribal Terror.
(Cross-posted from Llama Central because I know Kathy is a fellow Latin geek.)
Posted by Robert at February 23, 2006 01:57 PM | TrackBack