Medieval History
Millennia before modern-day military recruiters talked up potential soldiers in shopping malls or put up posters, one Roman city took a rather different approach to recruiting soldiers for the emperor's army.
A newly translated inscription, dating back about 1,800 years, reveals that Oinoanda, a Roman city in southwest Turkey, turned to a mixed martial art champion to recruit for the Roman army and bring the new soldiers to a city named Hierapolis, located hundreds of miles to the east, in Syria.
His name was Lucius Septimius Flavianus Flavillianus and he was a champion at wrestling and pankration, the latter a bloody, and at times lethal, mixed martial art where contestants would try to pound each other unconscious or into submission.
Flavillianus proved to be so successful as a military recruiter that it was decreed that he be made a "cult figure in the band of heroes" after he died, with each tribe of the city erecting statues in his honor. The inscription, written in Greek, was engraved on the base of a statue found in Oinoanda's agora (a central public space) and would have been erected by the people of the city. Discovered by a team in 2002, it wasn't until now that researchers translated and published it.
Click here to read this article from LiveScience
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Medieval History
Mixed Martial Arts Celebrity Recruited for Ancient Roman Army
A newly translated inscription, dating back about 1,800 years, reveals that Oinoanda, a Roman city in southwest Turkey, turned to a mixed martial art champion to recruit for the Roman army and bring the new soldiers to a city named Hierapolis, located hundreds of miles to the east, in Syria.
His name was Lucius Septimius Flavianus Flavillianus and he was a champion at wrestling and pankration, the latter a bloody, and at times lethal, mixed martial art where contestants would try to pound each other unconscious or into submission.
Flavillianus proved to be so successful as a military recruiter that it was decreed that he be made a "cult figure in the band of heroes" after he died, with each tribe of the city erecting statues in his honor. The inscription, written in Greek, was engraved on the base of a statue found in Oinoanda's agora (a central public space) and would have been erected by the people of the city. Discovered by a team in 2002, it wasn't until now that researchers translated and published it.
Click here to read this article from LiveScience
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A "substantial, high-status" Roman villa discovered in Peterborough has shed new light on the city's occupants 2,000 years ago, archaeologists say. Although the city - known as Durobrivae - was well-documented as a strategic area for the movement...
- Deciphered Ancient Tablet Reveals Curse Of Greengrocer
A fiery ancient curse inscribed on two sides of a thin lead tablet was meant to afflict, not a king or pharaoh, but a simple greengrocer selling fruits and vegetables some 1,700 years ago in the city of Antioch, researchers find. Written in Greek, the...
- Crusader Inscription By Frederick Ii Discovered In Israel
An Arabic inscription that bears the name of the Holy Roman Emperor, Frederick II, and the date ?1229 of the Incarnation of our Lord Jesus the Messiah?, was recently deciphered by Professor Moshe Sharon and Ami Shrager of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem....
- School For Roman Gladiators Discovered In Austria
A sensational discovery has been made by an international team from the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for Archaeological Prospection and Virtual Archaeology (LBI-ArchPro), together with the Archaeological Park Carnuntum, using state-of-the-art ground penetrating...
- Lost Roman Port Found In Wales
The remains of a 2000-year-old Roman port have been discovered in south Wales by archaeologists from Cardiff University. Uncovered outside the Roman fortress in Caerleon by a team of staff and students from the School of History, Archaeology and...