Distinctive gladiator helmet found in the Flavian Amphitheataer (Colosseum) in Rome, Italy, 300-500 CE at the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto, Canada

Distinctive gladiator helmet found in the Flavian Amphitheataer (Colosseum) in Rome, Italy, 300-500 CE at the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto, Canada.
Spectators preferred to watch highly skilled, well matched gladiators with complementary fighting styles. These were the most costly to train and to hire. A general melee of several, lower-skilled gladiators was far less costly, but also less popular. Even among the ordinarii, match winners might have to fight a new, well-rested opponent, either a tertiarius, "a third choice gladiator," by prearrangement, or a "substitute" gladiator (suppositicius) who fought at the whim of the editor of the games as an unadvertised, unexpected "extra". This yielded two combats for the cost of three gladiators, rather than four. Such contests were prolonged, and in some cases, more bloody. The emperor Caracalla chose to test a notably skilled and successful fighter named Bato against first one supposicitius, whom he beat, and then another, who killed him.
Ludi and munera were accompanied by music, played as interludes, or building to a "frenzied crescendo" during combats. Blows may have been accompanied by trumpet-blasts. The Zliten mosaic in Libya (circa 80–100 CE) shows musicians playing an accompaniment to provincial games. Their instruments are a long straight trumpet (tubicen), a large curved horn (Cornu) and a water organ (hydraulis). Similar representations of musicians, gladiators and bestiari are found on a tomb relief in Pompeii.


Distinctive gladiator helmet found in the Flavian Amphitheater (Colosseum) in Rome, Italy, 300-500 CE at the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto, Canada. Image courtesy of the museum.

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