While on a study tour in Greece and Turkey this summer, I saw many beautiful artifacts depicting Roman gladiators. While all of these artifacts were fascinating, the most interesting ones that I found were two gladiator grave stelae in the Istanbul Archeological Museum that depicted left-handed gladiators.

With the first stele (labeled “A”), it is easy to tell that the gladiator (a secutor) was left-handed since he is depicted holding his sword in his left hand. It was not as easy to determine the handedness of the gladiator depicted on the other stele. The second stele (labeled “B”) depicts a gladiator (a provocator) resting his right hand on his stacked helmet and shield. The clue that reveals that this gladiator was left-handed, however, is that he is wearing his greave (leg guard) on his right leg. The heavily armed gladiator types, like the one depicted in this stele, wore a greave on the leg that corresponded with their shield arm. A left-handed gladiator would have carried his shield with his right arm and therefore would have also worn his greave on his right leg. Using this information, I was able to determine that the gladiator depicted in the second stele was a lefty.

I found these left-handed gladiators so fascinating partly because of my experience fencing. I am right-handed, and I distinctly remember that fencing with left-handed people was always very difficult. Although the Roman method of sword fighting was very different from modern  fencing, I can’t help but think that differences in handedness between gladiators would have presented the same sort of challenges. The almost universal use of shields by most gladiator types would probably compounded these issues.

I know that whenever I tell someone that I’m taking Latin, the immediate response is always, “say something in Latin!” Of course, I usually just say “veni, vidi, vici,” or something, but I know that I and many others want to know really how to speak conversational Latin. I recently uncovered a few links containing resources on conversational Latin, so here you go!
Simple Phrases!
http://www.novaroma.org/nr/Latin_phrasebook

This one’s just a preview of a book, but even the preview contains some pretty cool stuff. Unfortunately we don’t have it at Hatfield, but if you want it’s pretty easy to order through Summit.
http://www.amazon.com/Conversational-Latin-Oral-Proficiency-Dictionary/dp/086516438X?tag2=latinteach

In case you want to text your friends in Latin (email is too outdated, but that’s what they used for this article!)
http://www.novaroma.org/nr/Latin_for_e-mail

Et tandem, I thought this was a fascinating video on the importance of conversational Latin!