With what gesture did the Roman emperor sentence the gladiator to death? Detailed answer

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With what gesture did the Roman emperor sentence the gladiator to death? Detailed answer

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With what gesture did the Roman emperor sentence the gladiator to death?

Raising your thumb up.

Neither the Roman spectators demanding the death of a gladiator, nor the Roman emperors who sanctioned it, ever showed "thumbs down". What's more, the Romans didn't use the thumbs down sign at all. If the gladiator was about to die, the fingers were raised up - like a drawn sword. When they wanted to give life to the vanquished, the thumb was bent inside the clenched fist - like a weapon in a scabbard. There is even a special phrase in Latin: pollice compresso favor iudicabatur, "favor is decided by the thumb hidden inside."

Before Ridley Scott agreed to direct the famous "Gladiator", the producers showed him a canvas by the nineteenth-century French artist Jean-Leon Gerome called "Pollice verso". The Roman gladiator depicted in the picture is waiting for the fate of his rival to be decided, and the emperor, sitting in a box, pokes his thumb down, pronouncing a death sentence. Scott was so shocked by this impressive image that he made his decision on the spot.

The director did not even suspect that the source of his inspiration had little to do with reality. Jérôme's painting is solely responsible for one of the greatest misconceptions of the last two centuries: that "thumbs down" means death.

Historians are unanimous that the artist misunderstood the Latin phrase, suggesting that pollice verso, "bent finger", meant "bent down", while this phrase means "bent up".

If additional evidence is required, please. In 1997, a Roman medallion from the XNUMXnd or XNUMXrd century was found in Southern France. It depicts two gladiators after a fight and an arbiter tucking his thumb into a clenched fist. The inscription on the medallion read: "Those who stand on their feet must be released."

The use of thumb gestures in today's world can be ambiguous and threaten dangerous ambiguity. So, in the countries of the Middle East and South America, "thumbs up" is considered a rude insult - about the same as the "V" sign in the West. In Iraq, for example, this caused certain problems for American soldiers who could not understand whether they were welcomed by the local population or sent to hell.

Desmond Morris, author of The Naked Monkey, traces the positive connotations of "thumbs up" to medieval Britain, where the sign was used for successful deals. The sign received a new life during World War II, when it was adopted by American pilots as a signal of readiness for takeoff.

Scott was eventually told about the "thumbs down" misconception, but the director decided not to change the scene where Commodus gave the "thumbs up" to give life to Maximus in order to "not confuse the viewer."

Author: John Lloyd, John Mitchinson

Random interesting fact from the Great Encyclopedia:

In which city does a high-speed elevated highway pass through a 16-story building?

In the Japanese city of Osaka, there is a Gate Tower building, through which an elevated highway passes. In 1983, the owners of the land below the building decided to redevelop the existing property, but faced a ban from the city authorities due to the approved road construction plan. However, the owners did not give up and after lengthy negotiations with the corporation that laid the highway, they reached a compromise. The 16-story high-rise was built so that the road passed through it between the 4th and 8th floors, and in the building itself, only stairs and elevators are located on these floors. The highway at the intersection is surrounded by a special structure that protects the house from noise and vibration.

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