Arbelas

The arbelas (plural arbelai) was a type of ancient Roman gladiator. The word is a hapax legomenon, occurring only in the Oneirocritica of Artemidorus, a Greek work on dream interpretation that discusses the symbolism of various gladiator types.[1] It may be related to the Greek word arbelos (ἄρβηλος), a cobbler's semicircular blade used to cut leather.[2] A few reliefs show gladiators armed with a curved blade fighting each other; it has been argued that these are arbelai, though they have also been seen as the scissores who were matched against net-fighters (retiarii).[3] The scissor, with whom the arbelas may be synonymous, is referred to in a roll call from the gladiator training school (ludus) owned in the 1st century BC by the lanista C. Salvius Capito.[4]

Artemidorus lists the arbelas among gladiators who might appear in dreams advising a man about what sort of woman he is to marry. Both the dimachaerus, who fought with two curved blades, and the "so-called" arbelas signify that the woman will either be a poisoner, malicious, or ugly.[5]

References

  1. ^ Anne Duncan, Performance and Identity in the Classical World (Cambridge University Press, 2006), p. 205.
  2. ^ Duncan, Performance and Identity, p. 205; Garret G. Fagan, The Lure of the Arena: Social Psychology and the Crowd at the Roman Games (Cambridge University Press, 2011), p. 217.
  3. ^ M. Carter, "Artemidorus and the Arbelas Gladiator," Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik 134 (2001) 109–115, as cited by Fagan, The Lure of the Arena, p. 217.
  4. ^ M. Carter, "Artemidorus and the Arbelas Gladiator," p. 114.
  5. ^ Michael Carter, "(Un)Dressed to Kill: Viewing the Retiarius," in Roman Dress and the Fabrics of Roman Culture (University of Toronto Press, 2008), p. 129.