by Cleopatra Aelia on Mon Aug 06, 2007 11:03 am
Salve mi Draco,
I try to answer your question as best as I can out of personal experience in practising Martial Arts (Wing Tsun - Kung Fu Style) and the gladiatura:
No matter what you practise you always become better by training regularly, you gain experience from training sessions and fights. Even though your coach tries to tell you why to do things one way or the other you often understand it only after a little while when you've gained more experience.
When using weapons they are formed a special way. E.g. a scutum is large and heavy, it slows me down and I'm not that swift carrying that heavy thing compared to a thraex or hoplomachus wearing only a small parmula (no matter if that thing is round or rectangular). The gladius has a short straight blade used for thrusting mainly, while a sica is curved which allows you to attacks you can't do with a gladius, e.g. get it behind the shield of the opponent, rip it away and than stab. When fighting with a short weapon against a fighter with a long weapon (spear, trident) you have to try to get close hence out of his range and into your range.
Since the gladiators fought also for entertainment you could always add a spectacular move but usually these moves are very exhausting so you would not overdue it esp. when taking into consideration that the fight is with sharp weapons with which you were about to kill your opponent. Also spectacular moves usually open your defence. (A fight of course did not have to end with the death of one of the combatants though - very often injuries were more likely than the death since gladiators were expensive in training). The balance between effective moves and spectacular moves needed to be found.
Why one gladiator fought in one category and the other in another is not sure. Some scholars assume that the basic training was for all the same and also similar to that of legionaries - fighting with wicker shield and rudis (wooden gladius) against a pole (palus). What where the reasons after which the doctores/magistri decided to train one gladiator as murmillo, another as thraex and the third one as retiarius we do not know hence there are no written records about gladiatorial training. This makes it on one hand hard on the other hand interesting to do gladiatorial reenactment - it's a lot of trial and error.
Cleopatra Aelia
alias Medusa Gladiatrix