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Explanation: When noxii (criminals considered especially heinous by the Roman government) were condemned to die in the arena, they were expected to damn well die. So if any were still breathing after the real gladiators and animals had their fun with them, a man would come out with a mallet, dressed as Dis Pater (one of the Roman gods of the underworld), and give them a friendly tap on the head to crush their skulls as they lay dying on the ground. Brutal stuff.
Video of the event:
And the crowd goes WIIIIIIIIILD!
There's a reason the Romans noted that 'foreigners' got queasy at the gladiator games, lmao.
That's super interesting! Do you know where I could read up more on that? I've searched Wikipedia and there it describes something similar, but says that a pair of men dressed up as Mercury and Charon respectively would poke the bodies with hot iron to check if they're dead, and then smash their heads with a hammer
Eleven (16% of MNI) individuals exhibit a total of 16 well-healed antemortal cranial traumata. Five of the 11 individuals showed multiple trauma. Ten (15% of MNI) individuals exhibited a total of 10 perimortal cranial traumata. This is a surprisingly high frequency of deadly head injuries, taking into account that most of the gladiator types wore helmets. A possible explanation could be the frequently reported deathblow technique used by the hammer-carrying death god “Dis Pater”.
After the final blow, arena servants carried the combatant on a stretcher into the carcass chamber and gave the twitching body a deathblow. It is not known exactly how this execution was performed. The executor, a costumed arena servant, associated with the Roman god of death “Dis Pater” or the Etruscan counterpart “Charun” carried a deadly hammer accompanying the gladiator on his last journey [2], [3].
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0379073805005815
Page 38 here as well clarifies that noxii were under a death sentence, specifically, when getting their heads crushed, though I can't copy-paste anything from it.
https://archive.org/details/worldofgladiator0000shad/page/38/mode/2up
Thanks for the reading! Morbid, but fascinating stuff
My name is Maximus Decimus Meridius, Commander of the Armies of the North, General of the Felix Legions, loyal servant to the true emperor, Marcus Aurelius. Father to a murdered son, husband to a murdered wife. And I will have my vengeance, in this life or the next. -Maximus Decimus Meridius
My name is Maximus Decimus Meridius,
-Maximus Decimus Meridius