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Roman Empire
The piece of art belongs to the category of sculpture
The art was discovered is the Roman Empire (Metropolitan Museum of Art)
This is estimated to have been either made in the 1st to the 3rd century AD
It is made of stone marble (Metropolitan Museum of Art)
This was a stone sculpture that is part of the reservation of the culture of gladiators among the romans during the imperial period
This is a rather interesting to note that, the art piece is meticulously curved out of marble. It shows two gladiators that are fighting. This was a common practice at the time. They are on the arena as the parts on the right and on the bottom of the piece show part of the platform that the gladiators would use in their activities for entertainment. It is important to note that the romans were pretty good with the marble sculptures such as is seen with the Marble head of Greek General that is also dated 1st to 2nd century AD (Metropolitan Museum of Art). This is around the same time as the art on the gladiators. It shows the trend at the time among the romans and their way of preserving their culture and heritage. This is also the case with the Marble head of a Hellenistic ruler (Metropolitan Museum of Art). This too was made of marble and was during the 1st and 2nd century AD. This trend shows that the romans were quite prominent with the marble especially with the development of the sculptures.
Gladiators were professional combatants in ancient Rome and they used to perform. In most of the cases the fights would be to the death ("The Roman Gladiator"). This meant that either of the gladiators depending on the show would have to die so that the winner was the only one that remained standing and alive. At the start, the shows were not as popular however with time, they spilled over and were adopted around Rome. It also started with one show that then these turned into hundreds of shows which would then dominate Rome.
‘Gladiatorial shows were essentially a Roman phenomenon, but their popularity quickly spread to the Greek cities of the eastern part of the Empire. This fragmentary relief with its Greek inscription is evidence for the existence of gladiators in the Greek-speaking world. The scene shows two types of gladiators pitted against each other in the arena.’ (Metropolitan Museum of Art)
At the time of the sculpture, there were some very significant trends in the Roman Empire among them the fact that sculptures were a very common way of expressing their creativit...