Gladiators: Fair Fights, Dispatched With A Hammer

Gladiator Trident Wounds

What gladiators were really like
7 June 2007by Hilary Jones

New evidence indicates gladiators may not quite match Hollywood's interpretation.
Image: AFP

When you hear 'gladiator', what do you picture? A fat vegetarian with bad teeth, who never fought wearing strappy leather sandals? Well, that's what evidence from an ancient mass grave is telling us.

The discovery of the first confirmed collection of gladiator remains has allowed scientists to apply forensic analysis - such as seen in television dramas like CSI, except with real science and not just fluorescent sprays and swabs - to bones, providing startling new evidence of just how gladiators lived and died.

Instead of the all-out brawling of gladiators depicted in film, the injuries discovered on the remains suggest the fighting in a nearby arena was organised and refereed, with fights between pairs of evenly matched gladiators. These gladiators would have been trained, well fed and given regular medical attention.

The gladiator cemetery was found in 1993 by archaeologists from the Austrian Archeological Institute in Vienna. They stumbled upon it in Ephesus, now part of Turkey, while surveying the ancient route from the city to the nearby Temple of Artemis, one of the seven wonders of the ancient world.

Ancient cemetery

Located 300 m from the stadium where they fought for their lives, the gladiators' mass grave was found to cover an area of about 20 square metres. In it experts uncovered a three-metre-deep layer packed with over 2,000 bones and 5,000 smaller fragments which are thought to have belonged to nearly 70 men.

“I think the balance of evidence suggests these people were gladiators: skeletal data, archaeological data – graffiti on wall paintings at Ephesus, tombstones of gladiators at Ephesus and historical documentation for gladiators at Ephesus," comments archaeologist Charlotte Roberts from the University of Durham in England.

Historical sources tell us that Roman gladiators were mostly recruited from prisoners of war, slaves and condemned criminals, and were trained in specialised gladiator schools. There were seven main types of gladiators, each packing a different combination of armour and weaponry. These types were matched to fight in pairs with evenly balanced defence and attack weapons. The sources indicate there was no point system, and fights were pursued to a decisive outcome; generally injury, or even death, for one of the participants.

The first gladiatorial contests took place in Rome in 264 BC as a funeral rite, but they became increasingly popular as a public spectacle throughout the Empire around the time of Julius Caesar. Under the Romans, Ephesus was the capital of their Asian province. The Roman commander-in-chief Lucullus introduced the first gladiator fights to Ephesus in 69 BC and the stadium was then converted to an elliptical arena for the purpose.

Counting the dead

Now, anthropologists Fabian Kanz and Karl Grossschmidt, of the Medical University of Vienna in Austria, are painting a picture of gladiatoral life as never imagined before. The pair have spent the past five years painstakingly analysing all the bones with forensic methods much like those used in modern homicide cases. They detail the technique in an article in the journal Forensic Science International.

"We've been able to prove theories about the weaponry and fighting techniques of gladiators based on wounds [on the bones and skulls]," says Grossschmidt. "Inscriptions on the tombstones also tell us that some gladiators survived 136 fights."

To estimate the number of bodies in the grave, the researchers used the standard procedure for analysing mass graves; they looked at the skeletal parts that are generally best preserved, to count the minimum number of individuals in the grave.

Of the minimum of 68 individuals, all were men aged from 20 to 30, except for one young woman found with a gravestone that marked her as a slave and an older man, up to 55 years old. While the men were short by modern standards, their average height - around 168 cm - was within the normal range for the ancient population.

When the pair analysed the bones further, they found high bone densities, similar to modern trained athletes. Enlarged muscle markers on arm and leg bones also provide evidence of an extensive and continuous exercise program.

Intriguingly, the high bone density of the feet hinted that to Kanz and Grossschmidt that the gladiators fought barefoot in the sand rather than with their feet protected by leather sandals - a common Roman fashion accessory.

Green diet

The researchers expected gladiators would need a protein-rich diet to build muscle - however their analysis of the bones in fact suggested a vegetarian diet.

Plants contain higher levels of the element strontium than animal tissues. So, people who consume more plants and less meat will build up measurably higher levels of strontium in their bones. Levels of strontium in the gladiators' bones were two times higher than the bones of contemporary Ephesians, according to research presented by Kanz and Grossschmidt at a meeting of the American Association of Physical Anthropologists in Philadelphia, U.S., in April this year.

This agrees with some historical reports of gladiators eating a diet of mainly barley, beans and dried fruit, says Grossschmidt.

It would have given them a lot of strength, but may also have contributed to the tooth decay found in teeth in the cemetery and potentially made the men fat. However, a little extra weight could actually have had benefits in protecting vital organs from cutting blows during fights, argue the researchers.

Grossschmidt says that the gladiators also drank foul-sounding plant or bone ash solutions, acting as a kind of ancient isotonic sports drink. The mineral-rich drink may even have been a kind primitive painkiller, he says.

Expensive commodity

The large number of well-healed wounds found on the skeletons show us that the gladiators were better treated medically than they were with their limited menu. Some bones even show evidence of surgical intervention, such as amputations.


A sample of the kinds of head wounds suffered by gladiators, and the remnant of an ancient trident that may have been responsible for some of them.
Image: Fabian Kanz
"Medical care and physiotherapeutical treatment were excellent for them," says Grosschmidt, possibly because trained gladiators were such an expensive investment.

"As far as I can see, the treatment of gladiators (historical records) suggests they were well cared for because it was in the interests of their owners that they were healthy and ready for fighting," agreed Durham Universitiy's Roberts.

The most commonly healed wounds seen on the skulls were blunt force wounds to the front of the skull, which the researchers believe were most likely caused by repeated blows to a helmet just above the eyes. Other gladiators survived sharp wounds to the skull, such as that caused by the 'gladius', a thirty-centimetre sword used by most types of gladiators.

One skull struck the researchers as unusual, because it was the only skull with more than one deadly incision. The holes were five centimetres apart and consistent with stabs from a sharp, tapered weapon. These injuries show the same dimensions as a trident, a characteristic gladiator weapon. And a trident of these dimensions was found during excavations of the ancient harbour of Ephesus, and dated to the second or third century.

Death rather than retirement

In general however, the remains tended to lack evidence of multiple injuries or mutilation - unlike the excessive violence often seen on bones from mediaeval battlefield victims. This pointed to strict rules and refereed fights, not a free-for-all melee.

According to historical records, a losing gladiator's fate rested in the hands of the games organiser, who appealed to the mood of the people in the stands. "Upon the cry of 'iugula' (lance him through), it was expected of the vanquished that he would set an example of the greatness of manhood ... and would motionlessly receive the death thrust," write the researchers.

"We found evidence for the final blow to the throat (cut marks on the vertebrae), the chest (lesions on the breastbone/sternum) and on the back (lesions and cut marks on the shoulder blade)," says Grossschmidt.

Given that gladiators wore helmets, it's surprising that ten of the individuals had a single head wound that lead to death. Four of the wounds were a round to square shape of nearly the same diameter, similar to a Roman hammerhead, rather than any known gladiator weapon.

Kanz and Grosschmidt conclude that this could be consistent with historical literature and artworks depicting a death blow administered to condemned gladiators by an arena servant dressed up as the death god 'Dis Pater' carrying a hammer.

After five years fighting, if a gladiator survived he could retire or become and instructor in the Roman army. "They were much sought after, afraid of nothing, and everyone was afraid of them," says Grossschmidt.

Even though gladiators could retire after five years, the evidence shows that very few of them lived beyond the age of 30. The bones from Ephesus show one gladiator, out of almost seventy bodies, was able to survive the carnage and lived to old age.

Recent research, carried out this year for the BBC television's Timewatch series proposed that the body of a 45 to 55 year-old man found in the mass grave could have been a retired gladiator who went on to become a trainer. Evidence to back this up included two major healed wounds on his skull and a tombstone dedicated to a gladiator trainer named Euxenius.
http://www.cosmosmagazine.com/node/1369

Sifu Glen Hairston's Tai Chi Chuan

Internal Damage Video

Short-Range Taiji Punch

Here's a guy that shows what Tai Chi Chuan can really do. Glen Hairston was a police detective, formal Federal agent and now runs a corporate security firm. I got his "Internal Damage" DVD a year or so ago and it's pretty good. He's a powerful guy and his student doesn't mind getting the crap kicked out of him. It's clearly an urban combat scene, and Glen demonstrates some interesting variations for all of the postures in the Yang-style form.
In the second video, he shows the short-range power (fa-jing) that Tai Chi Chuan is known for. As he says on the back of his DVD, "This aint your Grandma's Tai Chi"...

Navy Seals

Well, not really.
Here's a little Dojo Rat Animal Planet scene, I hope everyone can se it ok. We live in a wonderland, our home is in the deep woods with a huge swamp, teeming with wildlife. My commute to work varies, but because we live on an island it always meets the water. This is my first attempt to capture the wild nature of our home, so my timing was a little off with these seals. I think my dog may have scared them back into the water. There are several generations of seals that hang out on this rock. I hope to get pictures of the young pups that will come later in the summer. These guys are pretty funny; they burp, scratch and fart while they lounge on the rocks in the sun. Kinda' like Dojo Rats with a hangover.
Dojo Rat is about the Martial Arts, Political Arts, and The Art Of Living Simply.
What better instructor is there than mother earth and nature?

OK, I Had To Do It...Paris Checks In To The Greybar Hilton

Tommy Chong slams the news media

I know you have been sitting there all week wondering "What does Dojo Rat think about Paris going to jail?? --NOT!
This video clip sums it up, Tommy Chong (of Cheech and Chong) slams the news media, the criminals in the Cheney administration, Mel Gibson, the INjustice system, Marijuana laws and just about everything else you can think of. He stuns MSNBC news model Contessa Brewer and nearly leaves her speechless. This is priceless, and I tip my hat to a brilliant verbal sparring match clearly won by my new hero, the great Tommy Chong!
It's the weekend, so there is other fun stuff to follow...

One Man's Journey In Karate

C.W. Nicol In The '60's

I absolutely loved this, from The Japan Times.

Reflecting on life's amazing twists and turns


By C.W. NICOL
I came to Japan in October 1962 to learn martial arts

Since the age of 14 I had practiced judo — taught to us at the YMCA in the leafy, western English town of Cheltenham by an ex-marine commando hard man. At 15, I met my first Japanese person, the legendary judo master Gunji Koizumi, who had been sent to Britain by the Kodokan Judo Institute toward the end of World War I to teach judo. That was still at the time of the Anglo-Japanese Alliance. Two world wars later, Koizumi visited us in Cheltenham, and his skill and his gentlemanly manners seemed, to this then 15-year-old hairy-bottomed Briton, nothing less than awesome.

It was about then that I first heard about karate. An American military policeman called Mike Devito, stationed at a local base, used to come and train with us at weekends. He regaled us with tales of a mystical fighting art called karate, whose practitioners could kill with a single blow. At that time, when I sometimes had to tussle with Teddy Boys — local townie louts with slicked-backed greasy hair, funny long jackets with velvet collars and "drainpipe trousers" — that facility sounded rather handy. However, in the mid 1950s there were no real karate instructors in Britain.

By 1962, I had gleaned enough about karate to believe its origins were in Okinawa. I almost hero-worshipped Mike, and liked Americans in general. But as much as American music, films and literature loomed huge in my life, by the age of 22 my feelings were turning against the mayhem in Vietnam.

Returning at that time from an expedition to the pristine peace of the Arctic, I had no wish to go to islands under U.S. military occupation. However, judo friends in Montreal had told me that in the early years of the 20th century, an Okinawan master had gone to Tokyo, and that there were now several schools and styles of karate flourishing there.

Stagger and dodder

So, in October 1962, Tokyo became my destination. Stemming directly from that, I now live in Kurohime, Nagano Prefecture, and have done so since 1980. Beneath my study and library is a small dojo, or gymnasium, where I still stagger and dodder through the practice of karate despite worn, creaky joints and an ongoing battle of the bulge.

On a few occasions, however, karate — whose Chinese characters are generally translated as "empty hand" (although I prefer to interpret them as "open hand") has saved my life. It has given me lifelong friends all over the world. And it has provided a kind of focus and balance that other physical activities could not.

As I get closer now to 70, I have to confess that if asked what karate is, I could no longer come up with any of the easy, standard answers I did when I first gained a black belt at the age of 24.

But to explain that apparent difficulty involves traveling again to the archipelago of Okinawa, strung out as it is like a necklace glinting across the Pacific Ocean and South China Sea. Comprising more than 150 inhabited islands, many isolated by distance, ocean currents and storms, and often surrounded by deadly reefs, the small populations on these specks of land each developed their own language and culture, and were historically often in sometimes hostile competition with each other.

Meanwhile, China's influence on Okinawa has been huge. No small wonder. You can see Taiwan from the southern islands. China's official contact with Okinawa, which they called Liu Chi'u (Ryukyu), began in the sixth century. By 1372, Chinese-Okinawan relations were official, with the King of Okinawa declaring allegiance to the Ming Emperor of China. This greatly increased China's cultural influence on Okinawa — including in the martial arts.

Okinawa had been a unified kingdom since 1429. Between 1432 and 1570, it established 44 embassies in Annam (modern Vietnam), Thailand, Malaysia and among the many kingdoms of Java. All these embassies included warriors attuned to the fighting arts. Their experiences were bound to feed into the culture back home.

Among the many influences was the fighting style of the Shaolin monks, who had originally been brought to China from India. Over the centuries, such arts mingled with older fighting styles introduced from elsewhere in Asia.

With their small, scattered island populations, Okinawans had to learn to defend themselves — and with all this knowhow in the air, they developed a fighting art known as tode, te or ti — which basically means "hand." It was a style of fighting that emphasized quick killing or maiming of an opponent. It certainly wasn't a sport.

When I first practiced karate, I was told a simplified version of its origins. According to this, samurai from the fiefdom of Satsuma in southern Kyushu subjugated the Okinawan archipelago in 1609. They then banned Okinawans from the use of bladed weapons such as swords and halberds. Consequently, native warriors developed and polished their traditional arts into a more clandestine form of self-defense, in which agricultural or seafaring tools — such as sickles, flails, hand-mill handles and oars — were used to augment otherwise unarmed combat.

After subduing the islands, the Satsuma authorities still needed to recruit local officials to help police the populace, and although these Okinawan warriors did not carry swords, they bore long fighting staffs and steel truncheons with widely curved hilt guards known as sai. To this day, sai, usually used in pairs, are deadly weapons that augment karate moves and can be used by the truly skillful to overcome spears or swords.

The practice of karate has been a huge influence on my life, but it wasn't until 1975 that I finally got to Okinawa. I was seconded from Environment Canada to the Ministry of External Affairs in order to become the Assistant Manager of the Canadian Pavilion at the International Ocean Exposition. What a fabulous gig! I stayed for eight months in Okinawa and became enamored of its food, drinks, music, dance, martial arts, coral reefs and pretty well everything else except the huge expanses of priceless land still occupied by U.S. military bases. And that was even though Okinawa had officially reverted to Japanese rule.

Greedy construction industry
That return to Japanese rule, however, also gave the green light to a greedy and politically well-connected construction industry to "develop" — actually, to ravage for profit — the islands. More environmental havoc has been wreaked since the reversion to Japanese rule than was ever inflicted during World War II.

But as economically subdued as they may be, or otherwise pandering to the artificially bloated construction industry, ordinary Okinawans must also admit to and share the blame.

Despite a sadness nearing despair over changes to the environment that I have witnessed over the past 30-odd years, I still love Okinawa, and gladly accepted the chance to do a documentary television program in an NHK World series called (in English) "The Japan the Japanese Didn't Know." Rather a grandiose title perhaps, but a central theme on the origins of karate runs through the program — and besides, few Japanese know much about the history and culture of Okinawa, even those who have practiced some karate.

The last bit of filming we did was on April 14 this year. We went to Yagaji Island, Nago. This is reached by a long bridge across beautiful coral reefs. Our filming was during the annual shii mii devotions, when Okinawans visit their family tombs to clean them and have a party in memory of their ancestors. We chose our location because there the tombs are cut into the rocks along the shore. These folks' ancestors were immigrants to this part of the Okinawan kingdom, and land was too scarce for any to be given over to graves.

The tiny, uninhabited island is also named Yamaton Chuumi ("Japanese forest"), because legend has it that a lone Satsuma man once lived there (what kind of fascinating tale that would be!). To get to this tiny island of tombs, people wait for low tide and then cross the mud flats on foot. The islanders allowed us to film and the weather was fine. A few white clouds scudded across blue skies, and tiny white butterflies were fluttering over the tidal flats. Undisturbed by our passing, platoons of white egrets stood on sentry duty aboard fishing boats resting on the mud.

By then, only three of the shoreline cave tombs remained to be tended. The others had been neglected, their stone entrances smashed open by crashing typhoon waves. Broken shards of funeral urns were scattered on the muddy shore. I think somebody must have tidied up the bones. Shii mii visiting parties can be quite lively, with shamisen playing, singing and dancing. This group was rather quiet. The people cleaned up the area in front of a single tomb, changed the flowers, placed offerings, burned some packs of yellow grave money, then spread out blue plastic sheets on which to sit and enjoy sushi and other tidbits washed down with beer and awamori (liquor distilled from Thai rice).

Until the 1950s, it was the custom in Okinawa to leave the dead in a temporary grave for a few years. Then, when the flesh had decayed, the bones were cleaned with awamori, put in a funeral urn and placed in their final resting place in a family tomb. On this island, family bones all went in the same urn together, presumable until it was full.

A solitary old man
While the surviving relatives were having their little party, a solitary old man was wandering over the tidal flats, turning over rocks and catching small crabs. When I wandered out and asked if he intended to cook and eat them, he answered no, explaining that the crabs made a fine fishing bait. An osprey darted over the flats, then rose and darted on a fish in the calm water beyond. The osprey, the herons, the quickly scuttling crabs and the strange little perambulating, jumping mud-skipper fish carried on with what they did.

I, meanwhile, stood apart and alone for a while — remembering the American Mike Devito, and wondering about all the tides and turns that brought me to this corner of the world.

When Does A Class Become A Cult?

While browsing through Bagua videos I came across this one of Jerry Alan Johnson, who is demonstrating some applications of the animal forms of Bagua. It's a very theatrical production, with the participants wearing long Taoist robes and some cleverly edited slow motion for effect. As I often do, I found this guys website and gave it a look. I found it interesting for various reasons.
First, it appears that the Bagua this group practices is secondary to their practice of Taoist magic and sorcery. I actually have no problem with this, though I'm sure it scares the crap out of people who practice Evangelical Christianity. Taoism mimics the cycles of nature, which may be our best instructor. Let's face it, man's attempt to be dominant over the earth has brought us to the tipping point of global warming, war for resource extraction, and general degradation of the non-human life on the planet. His website lists classes and books on Talismans and charms, ritual, and some more esoteric practices such as use of intoxicating herbs and sexual magick.
Not exactly my cup of tea, but upon reflection, it is no different than any other shamanic practice found all around the world.
Take the Catholic Church for example; it is the largest organization practicing "White Magic" in the world. It includes ritual cannibalism, eating the wafer (flesh) and wine (blood of Christ). The ritual chanting is in ancient language, a new Shaman (Pope) is chosen with symbols such as puffs of smoke coming from the Vatican indicating selection. The whole mythology about Christ rising from the dead and appearing in the flesh is an attempt to preclude Gnostic self-enlightenment within the Church. Enough of that though...
Years ago in Portland, there was a woman's self-defense school called "Pokulain" (spelling?) which means "A rose with thorns". They practiced an Indonesian art that specialized in ground fighting, which assumed that women had a better defensive position in a low crouch very close to the ground. It became rather controversial at one point, with a few former students claiming that the school had become a cult. There were candlelight rituals, with oaths and sharp knives being passed among the members. Undoubtadly, this type of ritual is common in Indonesian arts which often delve into esoteric mysticism. On the front side, that's not so bad. However, there were some women that just wanted to learn effective self-defense. This practice offended them, and they made their opinions public.
Two thoughts: If someone teaches a martial arts school, they should make clear what the students should expect. In this respect for instance, informing students about Aikido founder Uyeshiba's spiritualism adds context to the art. Same with the concept of Yin and Yang in Chinese arts. But candlelight ceremonies with sharp knives may be too much for the average student.
And the students responsibility is to have enough self-respect to know where to draw the line. They should survey the potential class, become informed about it and decide if it works for them. If some instructor, through ego or abuse or esoteric ritual causes conflict, move on. That's the beauty of practicing the martial arts, at any level. We analyze and decide for ourselves.

Tim Cartmell's Shen Wu Combat

About a month ago we went to a Sun-Style Bagua seminar with Tim Cartmell. There was an incredible amount of grappling involved, but it was very different than Judo or conventional wrestling. This is a demo for an upcoming video they are producing. It shows how they mix stand-up fighting with grappling, in Shuai Jiao (Chinese wrestling) techniques. Notice the smooth flowing entries, more representative of the Internal Martial Arts. There are also some unique counter-techniques. Towards the end, Tim lets his partner grab his kicking leg, then drops to the ground supported by his arm, uses his free leg to sweep the opponent. Pretty cool stuff!