Modern Ludus Rules and Regulations

[caiusbeerquitius]

As long as we inform the audience about the display they are presented, both types of display have their place.
The audience does not expect to see blood and death shown in the arena - though there are groups that even work with fake blood -, so they will take into account that we do not work with sharps.

I fully agree. But my argument was that the blunt metal blades are less "authentic" in a fighting display than wooden weapons are. I hardly see a way around this argument.

As long as the blunted weapons resemble the original blades in form and function AND the fighters regard them as if they were sharps, I think we can come pretty close to what the fights would have looked like originally.

I cannot see how a blunt metal weapon can resemble the originals in function. Form, well, roughly. I do not agree at all to your idea that we can come pretty close to what the fights actually looked like. I think it is already very hard to come close to what we think that the fights looked like. There is no causal relation at all between the ancient gladiator fights and our modern practice to stage fights in remodeled ancient equipment.

Even when showing a Prolusio with wooden weapons the fighters should consider their weapons as sharps, and act accordingly, since these fights should have showcased the martial skill of the Gladiators before the live steel fights.

So you exclude the possibilty that the ancient Gladiators did also fight differently when using their wooden weapons? On what source would you base such a statement? I think this is very conjectural.

Fighting to "touches" and "points" does however create a competition mind-set, where scoring a hit is considered more important then defending against an attack.

...whereas a fight as such does not create a competition mind setting? I cannot follow the logic of this argument.

To explain what we do: We use the points system only for the show, as an entertaining element. We do not do this in training etc. But we also try to give the audience a feeling that they do not see a realistic fight. That´s why we call it a gladiator-"theatre". All participants do not really mind whether they win or loose. This is one of the first things that is taught in training. No rivalry, presenting a good show together.

Admittedly I came to this realisation only once I started to train HEMA, focusing on military sabre of the 19th century. Here we train with original antique military sabres with dull edges and, if the right mind-set is taken, we can fence at full speed and force with only minimal protection for the hand, elbow and head.

I also think that HEMA is very helpful for an attempt to understand Gladiator fighting. Our trainer is a HEMA fencing trainer for several years, specialized in wrestling and Langes Schwert. He is a personal trainee of Petr Matousek, who is, as I heard, some sort of authority in the field. (I cannot personally verify this, but when I talk to people who know more about HEMA than I do, which is not difficult, they always seem to know this guy and raise their eyebrows. See also http://drei-klingen.de ) So, I can follow this logic, I think.

That is why we have to view Gladiator combat as a refined martial art rather than an armoured brawl I so often see in videos online and also within my own group.

I do not see how the above ca be an argument for this. I understand , and personally also think that Gladiator combat should be understood as a refined martial art, but this is a non sequitur.

This starts with proper footwork, keeping the right distance, defending when necessary and attacking only under cover. With the exception of ACTA Archeo from France, who have pursuit this approach for years now, in most videos of Gladiator combat you see online, one combatant, and often even both, would have received a debilitating wound in the first 30 seconds of the fight.

I think there are good arguments for longer fights, yes. But perhaps rather because the games were supposed to be entertaining, which may have been way more important than any kind of combat logic. But this is, just as your argument is, again nothing but conjectural, since we actually do know nearly to nothing about how these fights actually were staged / working.

[/quote]
Taking into account that the Gladiators shown in the Zliten mosaic and other iconography are shown submitting after receiving a, clearly non lethal, bleeding wound to the arm or leg, I doubt the Gladiator fights would have achieved such popularity if the bouts were over less than a minute.[/quote]

Of course one may doubt this, and I think that you are very probably right about this, just the argument does again not work. What you say is: "Because we see non-lethal wounds on defeated gladiators in contemporary representative art, the fights took longer" That is a non sequitur, again.

Helmets of an earlier or later period will have to be commissioned, and this is why I am currently looking for good images of the late Republican, early Augustan helmets displayed in North America.

So you will perhaps be happy to hear that I have recently finished work on the Hamburg helmet, and am about to receive the first sample. :-)