Twitter: Seth4nerdsFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/historyuncensoredpod/Email: Contact@historyuncensoredpod.com Gladiators part 2 Last week we Learned about who the gladiators were, as people. This week I want to Focus on the fights and who the gladiators were as combatants. Let the Games begin!Gladiators were not an undifferentiated group of sword fighters; they were divided up into categories based on different styles of armour, weapons and fighting. Sometimes it is hard to determine with certainty the type a gladiator depicted in surviving ancient representations. We must accept the possibility that occasionally variety in armour and weapons was allowed within a given gladiator category.166 For the most part, however, gladiators conformed generally to type. During the Republic, there were five known gladiator types: samnis (Samnite), gallus (Gaul), thraex (Thracian), provocator (‘challenger’) and eques (‘horseman’). The first three types are ethnic in origin, that is, their armour, weapons and style of fighting were derived from peoples who had engaged in war with the Romans: the Samnites, Gauls and Thracians. As noted earlier, these gladiator types must have developed from the practice of forcing prisoners of war from the same region to fight each other wearing their characteristic armour and employing their distinctive fighting styles. In time, the names of these three ethnic gladiatorial types no longer indicated warriors native to these regions, but merely a gladiatorial style. These ethnic gladiatorial types throughout the Republic kept the memory of Rome’s past military successes alive by re-enacting them in the arena. The Samnite and the Gaul, the earliest gladiator types we know of, did not survive much beyond the Republic; only the thraex survived into the imperial period and remained popular into late antiquity. Eques One type of gladiator easy to identify is the eques (‘horseman’), a lightly armed fighter who fought both on horseback and on the ground. It is clear that the equites were real horsemen. Cicero reports that the crowd’s hissing of an unpopular politician startled ‘the gladiators and their horses’.171 These gladiators with horses could only be the equites. An eques always fought an opponent of the same category.172 The only detailed description we have of the equites in a munus comes from a medieval author Isidore of Seville (seventh century AD), but his overall knowledge of gladiators accords well with the ancient sources, thus giving credence to the evidence he provides: “Of the several types of gladiators, the first contest involves the equestrians. Two equites, preceded by military standards, entered the arena, one from the west, the other from the east, riding on white horses, wearing smallish golden helmets and carrying light weapons.” Provocator The provocator(‘challenger’) was another gladiatorial type that originated in theRepublicandsurvivedintoimperialtimes.Ciceromentionstheprovocator in the same speech along with the equites and the Samnites.178 The provocator looked much more like a standard gladiator than did the eques. His visored helmet was not brimmed and had a neck guard in the back. He wore a loincloth (subligaculum), standard attire for all gladiators except for the eques, and a greave on his left leg. The shield of the provocateur was concave and rectangular. Perhaps his most identifiable feature was the breastplate he wore, held on the body by straps that met at the back, which protected the upper chest.179 No other type of gladiator wore any protective armour on the chest. Thraex The thraex was the sole survivor into the imperial period of the ethnic-based gladiators of the Republic. It is uncertain when the thraex became a gladiatorial type at Rome. There are two possibilities: (1) when Rome took Thracian mercenaries captive in the war against Perseus (171–167 BC), or (2) when many Thracians were taken as prisoners in the Mithdridatic wars in the 80s BC--- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/seth-michels66/support
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