Unfortunately for this particular athlete, losing this gladiator match, because of the referee, ended up costing him the ultimate price. At least that’s what has finally been deciphered from his 1800-year-old tombstone.
Michael Carter, a professor from Brock University in Canada, was the gentleman responsible for decoding the Roman gladiator’s gravestone. The figure standing and holding swords in both hands is Diodorus, the fallen gladiator in question. At his feet, cowering in fear, is his opponent, Demetrius, the eventual victor.
Here’s the story of what went down that fateful day…
The tombstone was donated to the Musee du Cinquanternaire in Brussels, Belgium, shortly before World War I. It shows an image of a gladiator holding what appear to be two swords, standing above his opponent who is signalling his surrender. The inscription says that the stone marks the spot where a man named Diodorus is buried.
“After breaking my opponent Demetrius I did not kill him immediately,” reads the epitaph. “Fate and the cunning treachery of the summa rudis killed me.”
The summa rudis is a referee, who may have had past experience as a gladiator.
Carter interprets the picture of the gladiator holding two swords to be a moment in his final fight, when Demetrius had been knocked down and Diodorus had grabbed a hold of his sword. “Demetrius signals surrender, Diodorus doesn’t kill him; he backs off expecting that he’s going to win the fight,” Carter said.
The battle appears to be over. However the summa rudis — perhaps interpreting Demetrius’ fall as accidental, or perhaps with some ulterior motive — thought otherwise, Carter said.
“What the summa rudis has obviously done is stepped in, stopped the fight, allowed Demetrius to get back up again, take back his shield, take back his sword, and then resume the fight.”
This time Diodorus was in trouble, and either he died in the arena or Demetrius inflicted a wound that led to his death shortly thereafter.
The whole thing sounds fishy to me. Diodorus is the original Armando Galarraga, only instead of losing out on a perfect game, he gets killed. Kind of puts things into perspective, don’t it?
Carter’s findings will be published in the next edition of Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik(Journal for Papyrology and Ancient Epigraphics), which I’m going to guess won’t be found in your local public library’s “periodicals” section.
[Yahoo]
