Modern Ludus Rules and Regulations

[Olaf]

OK since we might misunderstand each other, as we are discussion outside of our own language, I will try to describe my argument a little more precise.
First however I do agree that there are so many unknowns concerning Gladiator combat that we cannot consider any recreation of it as nearly accurate. Of course this is also a problem in countless other fields of Reenactment, so we should not be discouraged to at least try our best to create a good approximation.
Apart from the problems the limited detail the textual sources provide us, we also can never achieve a perfect resemblance of the physique and skill these fighters must have had with their rigorous training regime and fighting experience.
That said, we do have a good idea what the Gladiator fights were supposed to exhibit to the spectators.
They were the exact opposite of the mindless and unskilled bloodshed shown during the executions of the Noxi.
They were supposed to exhibit the high martial skill of the combatants coupled with the display of the Roman Virtues of stoic discipline even in the face of death, bravery, and aggressiveness.
We also know that Gladiators were adored for what they showed in the arena and they had to prove themselves in combat to stay in the favour of the audience and to be spared in the event of a submission.
As we can see from iconography, there were periods, were a Gladiator could submit after receiving only a bleeding would and still live to fight another day, but also periods were fights seem to have been predetermined to last to the death, with both combatants shown grappling for their lives.
In both cases the Gladiators would have the predominantly goal not to be wounded or disabled in the first few seconds of a fight as this would have been no opportunity to adequately show any kind of martial skill.
Even outside of Gladiatorial combat, as we know from common sense and we can read from later manuals on historic fencing, it is a lot more important in a fight with lethal weapons not to be hit, than it is to hit your opponent.
This simple truth is sadly often forgotten in displays of Gladiatorial combat - and even in HEMA tournaments - as our modern sports-orientated mindset, coupled with the safety conveyed by our weapon simulators, makes it more desirable to "score" a touch or "point" then to "survive" a fight unscathed if it would have been fought with sharps.
Now if the same Gladiators, who were supposed to fight in the arena, would also fight in the Prolusio, they certainly would still display their skill of arms, maybe with less aggressiveness and power, but still just as skilled as he would have been trained to be.
The conclusion I personally have drawn from this, is that skilled fighters with the right mindset and training can show a better approximation of a real fight, even with blunted weapons then untrained or even trained fighters with the wrong mindset.
Concerning the weapon simulators, wooden or blunted steel:
As we only have the Rudis from Oberaden and the three short Gladii from Pompeji, all of which cannot even be considered Gladiatorial with any certainty, we actually can only recreate the armour, but not the arms used by the Augustan Gladiators with a certain degree of certainty.
So if you use anything other than a good reproduction of the Oberaden Sica during your Proluiso fights, your wooden weapons are just as "modern" as our blunted steel weapons are.
Still I do not consider this a problem as well balanced blunts only differ from sharps in their behaviour when the point or edge comes into contact with another object.
On the metal surface of a helmet or greave, this difference is negeable.
On the Scutum the point might create a little more force as it will not slip on the surface as easily, but this is also not of any great importance, as providing to much constant pressure on the Scutum, allows the opponent to manipulate your weapon with it, so should be avoided.
Interestingly the fabric parts of Gladiator armor seem to have been quite resistant towards cuts and stabs, as we do never see them hanging in shreds even in very lifelike depictions of the moment after a fight, and cutting through the net also does not seem to have been a very useful technique.
The most important point of contact a point or blade can have during a fight is of course the unprotected flesh of an adversary, and if we fight with the right mindset we can react accordingly, even if we fight with blunt weapons.
The point is, however, to avoid this last kind of contact and submit or end the combat if such a contact made. This way one can strife to have long and active fights that would end with the first decisive hit.

[caiusbeerquitius]

In both cases the Gladiators would have the predominantly goal not to be wounded or disabled in the first few seconds of a fight as this would have been no opportunity to adequately show any kind of martial skill.
Even outside of Gladiatorial combat, as we know from common sense and we can read from later manuals on historic fencing, it is a lot more important in a fight with lethal weapons not to be hit, than it is to hit your opponent.

Hm. So you exclude the possibility, that, say, a very experienced fighter with a lot of fans would have been cheered by the crowd for or expected by the crowd to finish off an adversary very quickly and thus show his superior skill? What do you base that on?

Similarly, you exclude that a gladiator who had his first fight, and who was possibly inexperienced to the surroundings of a filled amphitheatre was either nervous, or keen to take his chance by taking a risk? What would you base that on? Or are those possibilities you have not thought of?

I am not sure that we can really use those later manuals for this specific question. Gladiatorial fight was rather different from the situations that influenced those later fighting styles. I still think that they are usable in regard of some actual fighting techniques, as similarities may be seen in ancient and medieval / early modern fighting books. But this is a different question.

Now if the same Gladiators, who were supposed to fight in the arena, would also fight in the Prolusio, they certainly would still display their skill of arms, maybe with less aggressiveness and power, but still just as skilled as he would have been trained to be.

Or maybe with more agressiveness and power? How could we know?

As we only have the Rudis from Oberaden and the three short Gladii from Pompeji, all of which cannot even be considered Gladiatorial with any certainty, we actually can only recreate the armour, but not the arms used by the Augustan Gladiators with a certain degree of certainty.
So if you use anything other than a good reproduction of the Oberaden Sica during your Proluiso fights, your wooden weapons are just as "modern" as our blunted steel weapons are.

You are turning the argument. It was "wood" vs. "blunt metal" i.e. the material, not about the form of the weapon.
As far as the form is concerned, I definitely agree. Isn´t there an alleged gladiatorial weapon from Switzerland also? Thought to be a sica as well?

Interestingly the fabric parts of Gladiator armor seem to have been quite resistant towards cuts and stabs, as we do never see them hanging in shreds even in very lifelike depictions of the moment after a fight

Yes, but do we not have at least one (I think there are some more) pieces of armour, i.e. a helmet from Pompeii, which shows a severe cutting damage, which was later on repaired with a bronze crescent? I am not convinced that iconography is the right source to look at, here.

[Olaf]

Though both examples you give might or might not have happened, but the question remains if these should be considered the rule rather than the exception.

Your argument was, and correct me if I am wrong, that using wooden weapons in a display of Prolusio is a more authentic display of Gladiator combat as a fight with blunt metal weapons would be in a display of Gladiator combat.
My argument is, that regardless of the simulator used, as long as it looks and behaves like the training and combat weapons we assume to be Gladiatorial, the behaviour of the combatants in the fight itself is the key.
Of course I cannot prove that a trained Gladiator would not fight a little more careless and less defensive in a Proluiso, as he would know that the fight would not end in a life or death decision for him.
What we do know however, is that Gladiator combat was supposed to show martial skill, so it would be odd if a Gladiator would forget or disregard his skill and training just because he is only fighting with wooden weapons. Especially if the Prolusio was supposed to be an opportunity to showcase and gauge the skill level of a Gladiator before the life steel fights.
Maybe we should try to find some sources on the Prolusio to see which function they had in the context of a Munus.

I agree that you cannot just take techniques shown in later fencing manuals and apply them to Gladiator combat, as you have to view these fencing manuals not only in the context of the weapons and armour used but also in the context of the morals and fashions of the time they were developed.
But there are certain basic truth about mortal combat that can be found in all of them - or at least in those that deal with mortal combat and not fencing as a sport.
These truth apply to any form of combat and concern keeping the right distance to an adversary, advancing and attacking under cover, defence before offense and so on.
Since we have very few textual sources describing fights in the arena, the wealth of Iconography is our best source of finding ot how the Gladiators regarded these basic truth and if they might have actually chosen to disregard some of them.

The very long and narrow Sica from Augst, does not look like anything we have in Iconography and is most probably, just as the London trident, wrongly attributed.
To me it could just as well be a furnace hook or other household tool, though I am not an expert on this topic.
It should also be noted, that Junkelmann did not consider the Hamburg helmet as necessarily Gladiatorial.
Typological it is a Boetian helmet with cheek pieces, and can just as well be considered as an early cavalry helmet.
If it is of Gladiatorial origin it is most probably an Equites helmet, as this Armatura is displayed with this kind of military helmet in early Gladiatorial iconography.
The three specimens currently residing in North America however do stand apart from any helmet shown in a military context, but do resemble at least two items of early Murmillo Iconography very much.
Also they are typologically a lot closer to the later Chieti and Pompeji helmets then the Hamburg example.

[caiusbeerquitius]

Though both examples you give might or might not have happened, but the question remains if these should be considered the rule rather than the exception.

Yes, it would seem so. First we should find out, however, if there actually was "a rule", respectively a normative. If it were so, we would need to find evidence for that. I would rather expect that what the ancient audience got to see was very versatile. The displayed fights may rather have varied strongly from ludus to ludus, from time to time, from place to place. I do not think that we should expect a normative gladiatura in antiquity.

Your argument was, and correct me if I am wrong, that using wooden weapons in a display of Prolusio is a more authentic display of Gladiator combat as a fight with blunt metal weapons would be in a display of Gladiator combat.

No, to break it down, my argument was that it is more authentic to display a prolusio (with wooden weapons) than to try to display what we think would be an actual fight (with blunted metal weapons). There is a layer less of modern interpretation to the prolusio.

My argument is, that regardless of the simulator used, as long as it looks and behaves like the training and combat weapons we assume to be Gladiatorial, the behaviour of the combatants in the fight itself is the key.
Of course I cannot prove that a trained Gladiator would not fight a little more careless and less defensive in a Proluiso, as he would know that the fight would not end in a life or death decision for him.
What we do know however, is that Gladiator combat was supposed to show martial skill, so it would be odd if a Gladiator would forget or disregard his skill and training just because he is only fighting with wooden weapons. Especially if the Prolusio was supposed to be an opportunity to showcase and gauge the skill level of a Gladiator before the life steel fights.

A am not convinced, as I said, that the main purpose of the gladiatura was to mainly show the skill level of gladiators. Again, I think that this is a way too normative interpretation. There are many arguments one could bring up to similarly explain the existence of gladiatorial fights, e.g. religious reasons, entertainment, economical, political etc. We do not know to which extent the fights were "staged", or influenced by, say, bets. I see in your argument a quite idealizing picture of gladiator fight, which rather might be a very modern interpretation based on modern standards, or in the tradition of arguing in a classicistic (klassizistisch) way.("Everything the Ancients did was great and wonderful in some way"). I think this narrows down the debate very much, and excludes a more objective approach to the topic.

Maybe we should try to find some sources on the Prolusio to see which function they had in the context of a Munus.

Yes, maybe. It probably is just a semantic question. The suggestion of the prolusio is to keep the display a bit more abstract for the viewers, and to avoid telling them that what they see might be some sort of realistic, which it of course is not, and cannot be, as there is, as I said no causal chain between ancient gladiatura and its modern interpretation.

I agree that you cannot just take techniques shown in later fencing manuals and apply them to Gladiator combat, as you have to view these fencing manuals not only in the context of the weapons and armour used but also in the context of the morals and fashions of the time they were developed.
But there are certain basic truth about mortal combat that can be found in all of them - or at least in those that deal with mortal combat and not fencing as a sport.
These truth apply to any form of combat and concern keeping the right distance to an adversary, advancing and attacking under cover, defence before offense and so on.
Since we have very few textual sources describing fights in the arena, the wealth of Iconography is our best source of finding ot how the Gladiators regarded these basic truth and if they might have actually chosen to disregard some of them.

One might think, but as I said, I do not think that this is possible at all. It is nothing but pure speculation. Also the "basic truth that applies to any form of mortal combat" is apparently there, yes, but we still do not know if there were or were not other reasons which outweighed thes "basic truths". In short: It is impossible to "reconstruct" behaviors.

The very long and narrow Sica from Augst, does not look like anything we have in Iconography and is most probably, just as the London trident, wrongly attributed.
To me it could just as well be a furnace hook or other household tool, though I am not an expert on this topic.

Hm. Well, yes, that´s the problem with objects. Even the nice X gladiator helmet from Pompeii may have actually never been used for fighting but as a mere decorative piece in the arena or during the pompa.

It should also be noted, that Junkelmann did not consider the Hamburg helmet as necessarily Gladiatorial.
Typological it is a Boetian helmet with cheek pieces, and can just as well be considered as an early cavalry helmet.
If it is of Gladiatorial origin it is most probably an Equites helmet, as this Armatura is displayed with this kind of military helmet in early Gladiatorial iconography.

That´s the good thing about it, it think. It may be used in several ways and contexts. :-)

The three specimens currently residing in North America however do stand apart from any helmet shown in a military context, but do resemble at least two items of early Murmillo Iconography very much.
Also they are typologically a lot closer to the later Chieti and Pompeji helmets then the Hamburg example.

Absolutely. But again objects without context. They may have equally been used by the bodyguards of an eccentric Roman senator with bad taste somewhen the late Republic, or by a band of crazy mercenaries, or during the show of a comedy by Plautus in the theatre. ;-)

[cn.caelius]

Our group started experimenting with gladiatura a few months ago. We started with hard weapons (Cold Steel gladius trainers, wood gladius wasters, hard shields, etc.); there were some bruises, but nothing horrible. Then we had a fellow visit who also does Dagorhir, a foam-weapon-based LARP. Well, we had so much fun with the foam weapons (which allowed us to fight at a more realistic speed) that I made a bunch for us: gladii, a sica, and spear/trident. They are wood core, surrounded by dense blue "camping mat" foam, wrapped in layers of duct tape. They make a satisfying "WHACK!" when you land a hit. The tips have a couple of inches of foam, so you can stab with them, too. You can see some of them in the pics I link below. We stuck with wooden shields (which we made) for the extra weight and realism and just limited how the shields could be used offensively. We also have some armor and are making padding.

I started thinking about rules for us and wrote up the following.

EQUIPMENT

1. Foam weapons only.
2. Protective gear must be worn. This includes eye protection, head protection (foam or metal), something on the weapon hand(s) (e.g. padded glove, thick wraps), shin guards, and shoes. Additional padding (e.g. manicae, padded leggings) is optional but suggested.
3. Shields must be wooden, plastic, or metal, with taped edges and corners (at least 2 layers of duct tape, preferably more). No foam shields.
4. All equipment should be inspected before each use. Repair any tears or other damage immediately before use. Equipment that is deemed unsafe will not be used.

TACTICS AND RULES

1. No strikes are allowed to the head, neck, or groin.
2. No sword pommel, spear shaft or spear butt strikes are allowed.
3. No shield edge strikes are allowed. Pushing (but not striking) with the flat of the shield is allowed.
4. Kicks and punches are allowed. (we've actually not practiced this yet, so these are still not really allowed)
5. Participants must remain standing. If any part of the body above the waist touches the ground, the bout is paused until the fighter stands up. No grappling, tackling, or other ground-based fighting is allowed.
6. We're doing this for training and for fun, not for injury or warfare. Unless both fighters have years of training (and none of us do yet!), please don't attack someone with full force and speed. Half-speed is probably a good goal, or even slower. Slower and more accurate is better.

That's it so far. I'd love to see some sort of graded ruleset for gladiators to use. Maybe levels? 1- Foam equipment, etc., like I noted above; 2- wooden weapons, thrown range weapons; 3- dull steel, full speed, etc.

Ideas? Gratias!
Pics from 20 July