An ordinary Roman oil lamp shows two gladiators with unmistakably female features, fighting in the same poses as men. Discovered by archaeologist Dr. Anna Miaczewska, it may be the strongest visual evidence yet that women fought in Roman arenas.
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TRANSCRIPT
-If women were fighting throughout all those years, then maybe we should start looking at the evidence from a different perspective.
-Dr.
Anna Miaczewska studies everyday objects from the ancient world to gain an understanding of the ordinary people typically left out of the history books.
-I really wanted to have a closer look at things that people would use on a daily basis.
-Clay gladiator lamps were cheap and easy to produce.
There are thousands of them in museums around the world.
-The lamps were like souvenirs.
We have them everywhere throughout the entire Roman Empire.
-Images on the lamps like these at the British Museum celebrated highlights of the fights.
-One of the scenes shows a gladiator who's on his back, probably just about to be killed.
The other one here is one gladiator is running away from his opponent.
He's holding his back, so probably he's already injured, or some scholars just suggested that it's a satire, a bit of this really funny moment.
And, then, this final lamp is a gladiator who's, in a sense, it's this stance of victory.
-At the Nicholson Collection in Sydney, Australia, Anna studied more than 400 gladiator lamps.
-I came across one particular lamp, oil lamp, and I thought the image was just different from anything I've ever seen before.
♪♪ So I decided to study it in more details.
So, the upper body of the two figures had attached circular shapes that were slightly protruding.
And interestingly enough, it's not only on one figure, but it was on two figures.
And, also, the circular shapes were added basically where the female chest is, actually had two figures with what we could really recognize as female breasts.
And then I realized that I was actually looking at female gladiators.
-The lamp depicts women fighting the same way men did.
-It's exactly the same scene -- one person running away and the other person just about to probably attack his opponent from the back.
And I do believe that if we have one lamp like this, perhaps in the future, we're gonna find more lamps with female gladiators on them.
-Gladiator lamps captured the interests of everyday Romans.
Perhaps these items left by ordinary people can provide the most authentic images of female fighters.