Description

The Gladiator – Original Painting
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Digital – tmpx – May 14, 2019
Painting – tmpx – December 2019
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Acrylic painting on Alupanel
Themes: societal, history, pets or not, allegory (visual arts)
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Sizes cm : 75 x 60 x 0.3
Sizes inch : 29.53 x 23.62 x 0.12
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Signed by the author
+ Certificate of authenticity

The Gladiator – Original Painting

Neo expressionism artwork tmpx – The Gladiator – Original Painting
Here > Copies printed on Hahnemühle Fine Art paper

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The gladiator

Under the Roman Empire, in arenas, slaves and prisoners of war
were staged to fight to the death.

They were called the Gladiators.

The gladiators (from the Latin Gladiatores, from Gladius, sword, meaning “sword fighters”, or “swordsmen”).

They were, in ancient Rome, professional fighters who fought in well defined pairs. Each of the two adversaries belonging to a category and specific combat techniques.

The origin of gladiatorial combat is found in southern Italy, where the armed combat between members of the same family was intended to honor the memory of a dead man.

The oldest were found in Campania in tombs at Paestum, dated between 380 and 320 BC. AD

Historical

In Rome, the oldest gladiatorial combat mentioned in the texts takes place in 264 BC. AD with three pairs of slaves.

Organized during the funeral of his father by Decimus Junius Brutus at the Forum Boarium.

The Rome Ox Market, a utilitarian space without prestige located near the north end of the Circus Maximus.

This fight was quickly followed by many others. Thus, in 105 BC. AD, the games became public.

The funereal nature of these confrontations gradually faded in Rome, where the combatants became professionals. Whether committed free men or slaves.

These fights, which took place in the framework of an amphitheater, became the favorite spectacle of the Roman crowd.

Organized according to precise methods, they could end in the death of one of the two adversaries.

In the fourth century, they were subject to restrictions by the emperor Constantine I, a measure with no real effect before the end of the fourth century.

More than prohibitions, it is the reluctance of the elites to bear the financial weight of the Munera following the weakening of cities and the economic recession which would have resulted in the disappearance of the gladiators.

Sources

Sources for knowledge of the Gladiature are relatively abundant. But unevenly distributed over time. They are not lacking for the Haut-empire, but are much rarer for other times.

They are diverse in nature: literary, epigraphic and iconographic sources. But also, although very rare, artifacts.

The Romans did not leave us, and perhaps never wrote, a “treaty” of Gladiature.

In compensation, we have many literary sources, whose subject is not Gladiature but in which we can glean scattered information.

The iconography is abundant and the various supports. Mosaics, bas-reliefs, statuettes, paintings, but also graffiti as well as many medallions of oil lamps.

It informs us about the range of gladiators or their fighting techniques and their evolution.

It is epigraphy that allows us to discover individual destinies through funeral inscriptions rich in information on the age, origin, career, family of a gladiator or even his mentality.

Artifacts are extremely rare. Most of the pieces of equipment discovered were in one place: the Pompeii gladiator barracks.

Course of a fight

Gladiators begin by saluting the publisher, who holds the presidency of the munus, a function that leads him to make important decisions.

Modern authors believe that the publisher is currently conducting a pre-examination of weapons. Staff members prepare fire, yards, and whips, which are used to remind the order of a gladiator who would lack zeal in combat.

The referee, who is called rudis in Latin after the wand that allows him to intervene during the fight. Gives some instructions to fighters who engage in ultimate warm-up.

The editor gives the signal (signum pugnæ) and the fighting begins. They are accompanied by music.

The orchestra, which plays trumpet (tuba in Latin) and horn (horn in Latin), is set up in the arena. The use of a hydraulic organ is first mentioned under Nero.

Arena hero

The most talented gladiators enjoyed immense popularity. A Thracian nicknamed Suspirium Puellarum, “the sigh of the young girls” put the women of Pompeii in a trance.

The many graffiti depicting the actors in the arena also testify to this craze.

In one of his Satires, the poet Juvenal mocked these uncontrolled passions. Epia, a senator’s wife, abandoned her notable husband to follow an adventurer.

Sergiolus, a charismatic gladiator, despite his severed arm and broken nose and accompanied him to Egypt

In popular art and culture

In cinema, the genre of peplum designates films whose action is historically located in Antiquity and in particular that of ancient Rome.

Many peplums have staged the daily life of gladiators and have reconstructed their battles in the arena.

Among the best known, we can cite Spartacus (by Stanley Kubrick, released in 1960).
Barabbas (by Richard Fleischer, released in 1961).
The Son of Spartacus Le Fils de Spartacus (by Sergio Corbucci, released in 1962).
Gladiator (by Ridley Scott, released in 2000).
Or the television series Spartacus: The Blood of the Gladiators (by Steven S. DeKnight, Robert Tapert and Sam Raimi, broadcast in 2010).

Documentaries were also devoted to the subject, like Gladiateurs, Franco-British docufiction diffused in 2004 and inspired by the life of the gladiator Verus.

Text Wikipedia