2011/11/01 by Alfonso Manas · 2 citations
Agricultural and Biological Sciences · Arts and Humanities · Social Sciences · #American Sports and Literature #Ancient history #Art #Bronze #History #Humanities #Linguistic and Cultural Studies #Martial Arts: Techniques, Psychology, and Education
paper · doi:10.1080/09523367.2011.618267
openalex publication_date 2011/11/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/29
The study of female gladiatorial combat encounters the obstacle of the dearth of sources that give testimony of it. Ten literary fragments and one epigraphic inscription is all the written evidence that speaks to us of those women. About graphic sources, the panorama is still more desolate, since a relief found in Halicarnassus is the sole representation we have of gladiator women. Yet, this is so because scholars may not have been able to interpret correctly some other artistic works we have from the Roman period. In this article, I propose that a bronze statuette, currently kept at the Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe of Hamburg, that scholars have traditionally considered as representing a female athlete holding a strigil, actually depicts a female gladiator (more specifically, a thraex, a gladiatorial type that fought with a short-curved dagger, a weapon that to the untrained eye can be confused with a strigil).