Dimachaerius

Author: Graham Ashford 2001

The dimachaerius is the unique gladiator of the group in that there is very little known about these fighters. It has been supposed by some that rather than being a separate class of gladiator they were in fact almost any other form of gladiator that bore a shield and a weapon, who instead had opted to fight with two swords. It is this doctrine that we have used whilst equipping our dimachaerius.

In brief experiments of a matched pair consisting of a scutarii (large shield fighter) against a dimachaerius it soon became obvious that the main strength of the dimachaerius lay in the ability to be able to rain down a series of quick blows which left the scutarii almost unable to consider a counter attack. At this stage in our abilities the counter attacks could be made but they were made blindly or with tremndous committment, and consequently, peril to the scutarii. The main way of offense appears to be to confuse the enemy with volley after volley of swift slashes and thrusts until a mistake is made and the fatal blow can be delivered.

The primary weakness of the dimachaerius seems to be their inability to defend at very close quarters, once the attack has been made by the dimachaerius it becomes difficult to defend against thrusts to the stomach and lower chest due to the lack of a shield that would otherwise passivly resist the attack.

Considering the above information, careful thought is being given to the armour that our dimachaerius will wear. The armour needs to be large enough to give confidence that crippling slashes to arms, legs and stomach will be rendered useless, but light enough for them to be able to move swiftly to be able to close fast, launch the attacks and then back away even quicker if the attack was repelled. Starting at the bottom and working up here are our thoughts about the dimachaerius armour. The greave length in most fighters seems to be directly linked to the shield length. The thraex with his small shield is often identified by his large greaves, worn on both legs extending beyond the knee to mid thigh, it is thought that this length came about to give added protection where the shield ended, it would make immediate sense for our dimachaerius to wear similar high greaves.

Not having the casual defence of the shield is a problem to the forearms and stomach in that a shield can by virtue of its natural position protect these areas from hasty blows with little or no movement, the dimachaerius does not have this luxury. On certain gladiator resources a high bandaged protection can be seen around the abdomen from the solar plexus to the top of the groin, traditionally a large belt or band of metal or leather, again this is something that may be considered for our dimachaerius.

Owing to their potential requirement for speed and arm movability the manica presents and interesting difficulty. Should there be two on each arm or perhaps the preferred arm should be covered exposing the less favoured one. The retiarius wore one manica commonly on their lead left arm as opposed to most gladiators who often wore the manica on their sword arm behind the shield, perhaps consideration to this form of protection or to be the way to progress, at this stage all we can do is experiment. Which we will hopefully do over the Christmas holidays.

Nearly all gladiators wore head protection except for the retiarius. The netman was known for his strong reliance upon speed and agility so the heavy gladiatorial helm would have presented more of a problem than a blessing however, the retiarius had the privilege (if it can be called that) of being able to keep his enemy at a good distance with his trident, the dimachaerius is required to close this gap to be able to attack his opponent. Of most helmets the thraex helm is considerably airy allowing much movement, but the Gallic military helm without face visor would allow even more room and this has been seen on the three gladiators of the marble relief of the gladiators held in the Museo Nazionalle Romona.

Currently no hard and fast decision have been made about the dimachaerius we are portraying because of the above issues that we need to resolve, as we make them we will update this section.