2008 Woodie Awards
Going back to gladiators
Ancient warriors grab the interest of Miami students and associate classics professor Steven Tuck
Cassidy Pazyniak
Issue date: 11/16/07 Section: Features
With a quick wit, an abundant supply of jokes about Russell Crowe in Gladiator and tales of his numerous visits around Europe, it's hard to identify this guy with the adjective "ancient." But just because he isn't, doesn't mean that his passion and interests aren't ancient-literally.
Steven Tuck, an associate professor in Miami University's department of classics, has a self-proclaimed obsession with gladiators. When asked what appeals to him about them, he replies: "What doesn't?"
Tuck began to study gladiator artwork in the early 1990s on a Roman cemetery dig at a site of Paestum in southern Italy, where the earliest images of gladiators ever found were excavated, and he has been hooked ever since. Now he pursues his passion lecturing on behalf of the Archeological Institute of America (AIA) about gladiators and teaching Latin, classical mythology and a range of ancient history classes here at Miami.
Modern times
When Tuck visited Italy, the artwork in the amphitheaters depicting gladiatorial battles and life captured his interest and he questioned if we could use them to reconstruct what happened during the battles, considering that there are few literary resources with descriptions.
"If you look at modern novels you can't learn how to play football-it's not going to give you every detail," Tuck said.
Despite them being thousands of years old, Tuck feels that part of his interest in gladiators stems from their relevance in pop culture.
"The Romans watched (gladiators) die for entertainment … we do all the time in movies; it's not real, but it's the closest we can get to it," Tuck said.
Tuck has narrowed down the reason gladiators exist to two purposes-to celebrate manliness and because they were sponsored by politicians as a way for the government to be involved in the action.
Tuck feels situations like this exist in our modern times.
"We celebrate our national past times: the Super Bowl, the World Series," Tuck said. "The government's interaction is pretty limited, but the president throws the first pitch-he doesn't require people to show up or make males attend … he is still connected to athletes."
Steven Tuck, an associate professor in Miami University's department of classics, has a self-proclaimed obsession with gladiators. When asked what appeals to him about them, he replies: "What doesn't?"
Tuck began to study gladiator artwork in the early 1990s on a Roman cemetery dig at a site of Paestum in southern Italy, where the earliest images of gladiators ever found were excavated, and he has been hooked ever since. Now he pursues his passion lecturing on behalf of the Archeological Institute of America (AIA) about gladiators and teaching Latin, classical mythology and a range of ancient history classes here at Miami.
Modern times
When Tuck visited Italy, the artwork in the amphitheaters depicting gladiatorial battles and life captured his interest and he questioned if we could use them to reconstruct what happened during the battles, considering that there are few literary resources with descriptions.
"If you look at modern novels you can't learn how to play football-it's not going to give you every detail," Tuck said.
Despite them being thousands of years old, Tuck feels that part of his interest in gladiators stems from their relevance in pop culture.
"The Romans watched (gladiators) die for entertainment … we do all the time in movies; it's not real, but it's the closest we can get to it," Tuck said.
Tuck has narrowed down the reason gladiators exist to two purposes-to celebrate manliness and because they were sponsored by politicians as a way for the government to be involved in the action.
Tuck feels situations like this exist in our modern times.
"We celebrate our national past times: the Super Bowl, the World Series," Tuck said. "The government's interaction is pretty limited, but the president throws the first pitch-he doesn't require people to show up or make males attend … he is still connected to athletes."
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