new book by Ars Dimicandi

[michiann]

I received the soft-covered book De Rebus Gladiatoriis by authors Battaglia-Ventura in the mail, and now I would like to give a PICTURE review of the book here ... I cannot read italian, thus I cannot give a review of the text in this book. I'll start off by saying that I wouldn't recommend this book to the new people who are just beginning to learn about gladiators because the author was not able to produce photos of the basic armor & common helmets. This is because he either didn't receive permission from the copyright owners or he didn't want to pay a fee to the copyright owners. So, instead, the author draws his own rough sketches of the above items. Personally, this is ok by me because i already seen the photos of the above items in other books such as Junkelmann's "Das Spiel mit dem Tod". The author does produce small black & white re-enactment photos of fights that show glimpses of certain parts on some of the helmets. Here however, you don't get an excellant look at whole helmets with the visors ... you only see parts of these. Anyway, amongst these small photos, there is a galli (gallus)-category gladiator helmet with a visor that i never saw before and this is NOT to be confused with the provocator helmets. Also, there is a secutor gladiator wearing a special-looking myrmillo helmet whereas all of the brim runs from top to bottom at a 45 degree angle. Finally amongst the photos, is a slightly varied-from-the norm myrmillo helmet worn by a hoplomachus-gladiator fighting a dimachaereus-gladiator. Believe it or not, the best photo that shows the whole helmet is the photo that appears on the cover of the book which is the only color photo in the whole book. Overall, you're better off looking at all the color photos that the internet has to offer on helmets such as the ones appearing in re-enactment photos ... the previously-mentioned helmets can all be seen in re-enactment photos shown at flickr.com ///////////////////// The Battaglia-Ventura chart on the evolution of gladiator/military helmets is partly different from Junklemann's chart on the evolution of gladiator/military helmets ... however, I feel that the Battaglia-Ventura chart is slightly inaccurate because it says that the earlier greek helmets were the root-beginnings of the gallic helmet while Junklemann's chart points to a celtic influence that gave rise to the gallic helmet. In the same respect, it says that there was a Beotico (Bootische)& Thyreomachus (both greek)root-beginning for the provocator helmet while Junklemann's chart instead points to a celtic influence for it. I personally agree with Junklemann's version of this. /////////////////// Additionally, for each of the individual categories of gladiators, he gives an individual evolution starting with the earliest stages, transitioning all the way through to the final stage just before the gladiatorial games were finally terminated > I considered this to be important information in trying to understand how the romans derived their ideas in order to: advance the costume of different gladiators; and cause the contests to be complex by pairing-off certain types of gladiators against one another ... here again, he does this through his own rough sketch-artwork. I did not see this same type of evolution in junklemann's book. I diagramically-wrote up this evolutionary tree of gladiator types according to the "De Rebus Gladiatoriis" book and you can see it if you click the attachment at the bottom. ///////////// The best feature of the Battaglia-Ventura book is a 5 page reconstruction of different gladiators. Here, these are not just rough sketches like mentioned earlier in the other facets of his book. Instead, these are excellant professional drawings that are very appealing. The helmets in the reconstructions all appear in junklemann's (2000 edition) book and other books but there are 2 provocator helmets that I never saw before ... I hear now that this type helmet does appear in Junklemann's (2008 edition) book. Both helmets are very similar to one another except that one of the helmets has lines on it and the other one doesn't. I'll attach my own drawing of the helmet with the lines on it, so that everyone can see the only unusual helmet that appears in Battaglia-Ventura book. The author says that this helmet is now housed in the Milas Museum, in Turkey. Overall, besides the differences discussed in the above, this book covers the same things as the other gladiator books such as "Das Speil mit dem Tod". Picture-wise, I'm only fairly-impressed with this book ... but evolution-wise, i was very impressed. ////////////////////// The book is expensive in cost and in shipping and the authors want the money wired to them which is very expensive because they don't take credit cards.
[attachment=1089]provocatorhelmetfromEuprepesmuseodiMilasinTurchia.jpg[/attachment]