Pollice verso
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Pollice verso or verso pollice is a Latin phrase, meaning "with a turned thumb", that is used in the context of gladiatorial combat. It refers to the hand gesture used by Ancient Roman crowds to pass judgment on a defeated gladiator.
The type of gesture described by the phrase pollice verso is unclear. From the historical and literary record it is uncertain whether the thumb was turned up, turned down, held horizontally, or concealed inside the hand to indicate positive or negative opinions.[1]
Popularly, it is assumed that "thumbs down" was the signal that a defeated gladiator should be condemned to death; "thumbs up", that he should be spared.
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[edit] Classical sources
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The Roman text Satire III of Juvenal seems to indicate[vague] that, contrary to modern usage, the thumbs down signified that the losing gladiator was to be spared and that the thumbs up meant he was to be killed.[citation needed]
Although more recently people[who?] are beginning to think that the thumb was held up and in towards the chest to mean deliver the killing blow. Otherwise the thumb was held down and out (away from the body) to tell the gladiator to throw down his weapon and spare the other's life.
[edit] Popular history
The notion of the pollice verso thumb signal was brought to popular attention by an 1872 painting by French history painter Jean-Léon Gérôme titled "Pollice Verso" (usually translated into English as "Thumbs Down"). It is a large canvas that depicts the Vestal Virgins signifying death to a fallen gladiator in the arena.
The picture was purchased from Gérôme by U.S. department-store magnate Alexander Turney Stewart (1803–1876), who exhibited it in New York City, and it is now in the Phoenix Art Museum in Arizona.
The painting was a strong influence on the film Gladiator. The producers showed director Ridley Scott a reproduction of the painting before he read the script; "That image spoke to me of the Roman Empire in all its glory and wickedness. I knew right then and there I was hooked", commented Scott.[2]
Pollice Verso is also the title of a controversial drawing of 1904 by Australian artist Norman Lindsay.[3]
[edit] See also
[edit] References
[edit] Further reading
- Anthony Corbeill - "Thumbs in Ancient Rome: pollex as Index" in Memoirs of the American Academy in Rome 42 (1997) pp61-81.
- Anthony Corbeill - Nature Embodied: Gesture in Ancient Rome (Princeton University Press, 2004) 978-0-691-07494-8
- Desmond Morris - Gestures
[edit] External links
- "Pollice Verso", article by Edwin Post in The American Journal of Philology, Vol. 13, No. 2 (1892), pp. 213-225, online at LacusCurtius
- "The Gladiator and the Thumb"
- "Pollice Verso" at Phoenix Art Museum
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