A few ancient sources mention the thumb in connection with gladiator fights in the arena. But what did this gesture really mean, and who made it? Are there others?
The significance of the thumb
The expression “pollice (con)verso” appears twice in Roman poetry. One is a satire by Juvenal about two parvenus who organize a munus and win the audience’s favour by giving the verdict of the deathblow by turning their thumbs whenever the audience wants the defeated gladiator to die. The other source is Prudentius’ Contra Symmachum. Here he writes about a Vestal Virgin who orders the death of the defeated gladiator, who is lying on the ground, by turning her thumb. This text might have been the inspiration for the representation of the Vestals in Jean-Léon Gérôme’s painting. But in which direction was the thumb turned?
The expression (hostile thumb) might give a clue. In Quintillian’s discussion of rhetorical gestures, the orator is mentioned as standing with his arm stretched out and the hand extended “with the hostile thumb”. In connection with the amphitheatre, we come across 415.27-28: “Even in the fierce arena the conquered gladiator has hope, although the crowd threatens with its hostile thumb.” Anthony Corbeill reasons that the sign for the death of a defeated gladi ator is not the downward-turned thumb, as is commonly assumed, but indeed a thumb that points in the opposite direction: upward.
