Welcome to Historical Tidbit Thursdays. For the next few weeks, we'll follow the timeline presented in the book, "A History of Weaponry" by John O'Bryan. Last week we took a look at the ancient Roman weapons. This week we'll delve more into the Gladiators, one of my favorite topics in Roman history.
The Gladiator events were the most popular forms of entertainment in ancient Rome. Successful gladiators were highly revered and became like celebrities. Each gladiator depicted a different persona in the arena and would usually fight a complementary persona. These are the most common personas:
Amazones - female gladiators whose helmets showed off their gender; mostly used for novelty or entertainment.
Andabata - wore a helmet that blocked his vision, mostly for ridicule
Cestus - one who boxed with an iron-studded hand wrap
Crupellarius - very heavily armored, completely covered, and not very mobile
Dimachaerus - fought with two swords
Eques - fought on horseback with lances then would dismount and fight with gladius
Essedarius - drove a Celtic war chariot around the arena to crush people
Hoplomachus - heavily armored, modeled after the Greek Hoplite; used a spear and gladius
Laquearius - lightly armored who used a short sword and a lasso
Retiarius - unarmored warrior with a weighted net and a trident
Sagittarius - mounted archer; had to be very accurate to avoid accidentally shooting a spectator
Scissores - used dual-tipped scissor-like blades
Thraex - swordsman who carried a curved blade sica and a rectangular shield
Source:
A History of Weaponry by John O'Bryan; ISBN#978-1-4521-1054-7
Photo Credit: Gladiators - https://www.curriculumvisions.com/search/C/colosseum/colosseum.html
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