THE Roman arena may have played host to appalling brutality in the name of entertainment, but at least the gladiators who fought there maintained certain standards. A forensic analysis of remains from a gladiator cemetery at Ephesus in Turkey reveals that unlike the gory free-for-all depicted in films like Ridley Scott鈥檚 Gladiator, real gladiators stuck to strict rules of combat and did not resort to the savage violence and mutilation typical of battlefields of the era.
The forensic work may also confirm what historians had previously suspected 鈥� that gladiators whom the crowd condemned to death were often still alive when dragged from the arena, and were in fact dispatched by a final hammer blow to the head from a backstage executioner.
Much of what we understand about gladiatorial combat comes from Roman artwork, which suggests that gladiators were well matched in their capabilities, and followed sets of rules enforced by two referees.
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To find out whether they actually stuck to the rules, Karl Gro脽schmidt of the Medical University of Vienna in Austria and Fabian Kanz of the Austrian Archaeological Institute used modern forensic techniques to determine the causes of death of 67 gladiators discovered at Ephesus, the centre of power for ancient Rome鈥檚 empire in western Asia. The cemetery, identified by tomb reliefs of gladiators, was uncovered by archaeologists in 1993 and is thought to date from the second century AD.
Kanz and Gro脽schmidt used CT scanning and microscopic analysis of bone injuries to identify whether the gladiators鈥� injuries had occurred at the time of death or earlier in their lives.
Injuries to the front of each skull suggested that each opponent used just one type of weapon per bout of face-to-face contact, the researchers say in a paper to be published in Forensic Science International. The lack of multiple injuries and mutilation shows that the very strict nature of combat rules for gladiator fights was adhered to, they say.
However, despite the fact that most gladiators wore helmets, 10 had died of a squarish hammer-like injury to the side of the head. A possible explanation is that the injuries were inflicted after the fight, possibly by a backstage executioner who struck the doomed victim鈥檚 head, as has been suggested in artworks and literature.
Gro脽schmidt says his findings dismiss the theory that gladiatorial combat was a kind of martial-arts spectacular in which death was rare (New 杏吧原创, 22 January 2005, p 14). Kathleen Coleman of Harvard University who was historical consultant on Gladiator agrees with their findings. 鈥淭he fact that none of the gladiators鈥� skulls was subjected to a repeated battering does seem to confirm that discipline was exercised in gladiatorial combat and its aftermath,鈥� she says.
