Italian authorities, have following a three-year investigation, recovered a dozen stolen frieze panels with superbly carved images of gladiators, dating back to the later part of the 1st century BC.
Washington, Aug 29 : Italian authorities, have following a three-year investigation, recovered a dozen stolen frieze panels with superbly carved images of gladiators, dating back to the later part of the 1st century BC.
Depictions of gladiators were somewhat common on funerary monuments of upper-class Romans in the later imperial period, but the latest find documents the gladiatorial games in the later first century BC.
Archaeologists say they provide a rare glimpse into the games while they were evolving from funerary rituals to bloody sporting events symbolizing the political power and clout of Rome's elite.
The scientists found the carvings hidden by thieves under a thin layer of earth near the modern town of Fiano Romano, site of the ancient settlement of Lucus Feroniae, about 25 miles north of Rome.
"They were placed next to each other like dominoes. The looters had placed them side by side with great precision...so as not to damage them and lessen their value," said Anna Maria Moretti, superintendent of archaeology in northern Rome.
The slabs, thought to have decorated a tomb, depict six pairs of fighters.
"We can see a gladiator stepping on the hand of his opponent (right). The downed gladiator raises a finger in the typical gesture used to plea for mercy. Another scene shows a dying gladiator, falling on the ground with his shield lost (above),"said Moretti.
She said the gladiator with his finger raised reflected the tradition of fighting ad digitum - fighting until one opponent raised a finger - signalling defeat.
She said musicians are also shown flanking the combatants. While one is shown playing a curved horn or cornu, two others are shown playing the tuba, a four-foot-long straight trumpet.
"The panels are especially important because of their quality, as well as the precision with which the weapons and armour of the gladiators are depicted. They come from a period very early in Augustus's reign, before he instituted certain changes in the ludi [gladiator schools] and the style of gladiators' armour and weaponry. The images in these friezes depict much simpler battle dress and weapons than those that were created later in the Augustan age," Moretti said.
Moretti said the friezes and the other artefacts were restored and initially displayed at Rome's Villa Giulia museum last January, but they were recently transferred to the Lucus Feroniae Museum of Archaeology, where they will be on permanent display.
"While it was important to share this discovery with the public as soon as possible...it's appropriate that they be returned to the region of their origin. We're lucky that they weren't gone for long," Archaeological Institute of America quoted Moretti as saying.
ANI