Some types of gladiators

The gladiator fights started in 264 BC and ended in the 5th century AD. There were many types of gladiators. A few of them were:

Retiarius
His name meant net man. For weapons he carried a net, a trident, and a dagger.

Mermillo (or Murmillo)
A gladiator who fought the Thracian and carried a long rectangular shield and short sword.

Thracian
He fought with a small square shield and a curved sword.

Flying Buttresses

Il Duomo, by Marcus Obal via Wikimedia Commons

We all recently watched David Macaulay's short documentary Cathedral.

It's based on his fictional book about the construction of a Gothic cathedral. The cathedral is a "typical" Gothic cathedral in a typical town, as if he averaged together all the cathedrals across southern France.


A happy coincidence: he discusses flying buttresses in a little detail. I'm learning that the massive dome of the Duomo in Florence is supported without the use of any flying buttresses (apparently the Italians thought they were unsightly and German-looking).

I look forward to relying on the boy's frightfully sharp memory of the Cathedral video when we're looking at Duomo.

Da Vinci's Mirror Writing

My grandfather asked me why da Vinci used mirror-writing. Historians don't really know why but their guesses are:

• he was left-handed, so probably this was easy for him
• da Vinci didn't want anybody to know what his secrets and ideas were, and mirror-writing made it hard for people to read them

Italian?

I work for an American company that was acquired by a Belgian company that had previously acquired a German company and then was acquired by a Dutch company that's slowly moving all our Engineering jobs to a Polish subsidiary. Oh, yes, and there's a Scottish company in the mix somewhere, and a group of Portuguese software contractors.

All of which is to say I work with a lot of Europeans, and I'm amazed at how the EU has changed Europe. Moving from one European nation to another is now as easy as crossing state lines here, and my younger colleagues all seem to start out their adult lives by moving to a new country.

Their common language is English, which is both happy and sad for us Americans. There was an exotic thrill to visiting someplace where people couldn't talk with me, even in shops and airports, and I'll miss it.

I suspect we're not going to need much Italian on our trip.

But I want a little anyway, so I've been going through Pimsleur's Italian CDs in the car. When we were gardening this weekend, Elizabeth was listening with me.

We don't know much yet: just things like Do you want to eat at the restaurant now? and I don't understand Italian. Do you speak English?

That second line might come in handy.

The Pantheon

Rome, Italy 118 - 125 AD The Pantheon was a temple to the gods. It was rebuilt by Emperor Hadrian. A large dome covers a circular room. The dome has an occulus at the very top. An occulus is a large circular hole, thought to be a window to the gods. A four and a half foot thick ring of bricks, called a compression ring, surrounds and supports the occulus.

You can read more about the Pantheon here.

Five things I learned about Leonardo da Vinci

1. He designed a bike that would have worked if someone had built it. This was 300 years before an actual bike was built.
2. He learned about the human body by dissecting dead bodies.
   
3. He adopted a boy named Salai, which means rascal in Italian.
4. He kept hundreds of notebooks filled with his drawings and ideas for his inventions. I like to keep notebooks too.
   
5. He wrote in mirror writing that you have to put up to a mirror to read.

Architecture and War

I'm going to take a closer look at these subjects while I'm in Europe, both ancient and modern.

Ponte Fabricio in Rome, Italy was built in 62 BC. A bridge was needed to be built over the 200 foot wide Tiber River. Boats went along the river constantly, so the bridge couldn’t be too low. It couldn’t have only one arch, because it would be impossible to climb. The Roman engineers came up with a two - arched stone bridge with three smaller arches in between the larger ones. Ponte Fabricio was made of stone because that made it fire proof.

This bridge is still in use. You can see it here. We're planning on crossing the River Tiber using the Ponte Fabricio.

Where we learned about the various gladiators

The kids and I have listened to several audio books from a series called The Roman Mysteries by Caroline Lawrence. The one we're currently reading aloud is The Gladiators from Capua. Within the first chapter (or scroll, as it's known in these books) several types of gladiators are identified. There's a handy glossary at the end that explains the particular weapons and armor of the different fighters.

Watching the BBC docu-drama last night, we were struck with how similar the gladiators were to contemporary sports stars. They were hand-picked, trained, sold to other gladiator-training schools, and, obviously, pitted against each other. These ancient men were also desired by the women and wagered on by the men. They enjoyed the perks of the day (e.g., frequent baths and massages) as well as an income that far surpassed that of the Roman soldier.

A true upside - if you were a successful gladiator as well as a slave, and if you fought well enough and long enough, you could buy your freedom. The big downside - dying was a very real possibility each time you entered the arena.

The film also focused on the opening of the Colosseum with its Inaugural Games that lasted 100 days. Our Roman mystery book takes place during these days. We're looking forward to reading more of the story today.

And, of course, to seeing the Colosseum in person.

What I Learned Today

I learned about Vivaldi today. He was baptized in San Giovanni Battista in Bragora. It's in Venice,Italy. He studied with the choir master at St. Mark's Basilica.

Watching Gladiators

We're watching a light documentary called Colosseum: A Gladiator's Story. How do Camille and the kids know the names of all the different types of gladiators already?