SWORDDUELING.COM

This article and this one are about the study of an archeological gravesite found in what was Ephesus and is now Turkey where the skeletons of Roman gladiators provided insight into their lives, wounds and deaths.

VEGETARIAN?

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.

! really ?

Written records tell us that if the defeated gladiator had not shown enough skill or even cowardice, the cry of “iugula” (lance him through) would be heard throughout the arena, demanding he be killed.
The condemned gladiator would be expected to die “like a man” remaining motionless to receive the mortal blow.
The pathologists discovered various unhealed wounds on bones that showed how these executions could have taken place. And these are consistent with depictions on reliefs from the time showing a kneeling man having a sword rammed through down his throat into the heart. A very quick way to die.

woah

Or if you just get critically hurt and need to be put down somebody garbed as the death god “Dis Pater” will swing by to deliver a hammer to the skull.

5 years in the ring and then freedom.

What a hard knock life.

Longsword fencing


Meyer Fechtbuch


Sutor’s Fechtbuch
(IMO – these guards sound a bit unwieldy to me and the instructions are a bit opaque)

These Western martial arts are enjoining a slight modern renaissance, with even people in town (PDX) subscribing to the methods of these fechtbuchs (combat manuals).

For a enlightening and entertaining defense of Western sword arts and the equality of the cut to the thrust see The Secret History of the Sword: Adventures in Ancient Martial Arts by J. Christopher Amberger.