Casque de gladiateur du type secutor

Three iron helmets and a bronze penknife handle, discovered in 1998 less than 500 m from the amphitheater of Poitiers/Limonum on the preventive excavations of the Cordeliers block, evoke gladiatorship. They were trapped by the collapse of the buildings aligned in the eastern edge of the major axis of the city following a violent fire dated by the coinage after 257 and before the years 260-270. On the eastern side of this street, on at least 200 m long, workshop-shops framed the entrance of domus or buildings with commercial vocation on which they depended. Six of them have been explored in the Cordeliers. The helmets interpreted as those of secutor were found in workshop P212 and its annex, and in the annex of the neighboring store of a ceramic vase dealer. In workshop P212, where iron, copper alloys and bone were worked, the objects made, being assembled or repaired, were intended for a male clientele, undoubtedly military or warlike (sword, scabbard, folding knife, razor, cutlass, harness...). It is tempting to think of it as the workshop of a "fourbisseur", although the term is anachronistic for antiquity. This exceptional discovery attests to the presence of this armatura in the city.

33 cm high, this helmet is entirely made of iron. It is equipped with a folded down neck cover and a crest with a rounded profile that ends, at the front, with a straight edge. The crest is made up of two thin metal sheets attached to the cap by means of rivets. They are surmounted by a strip of sheet metal, intended to increase the resistance of the whole, which continues at the back of the cap with a U-shaped profile. The remains of hinges visible at the level of the temples indicate the disappearance of the cheek covers (paragnathides) which also served as visors. On the forehead, a trapezoidal plate with a projecting rib formed the central attachment point of the visor. Despite some formal similarities with Roman military helmets of the 2nd-3rd centuries, the helmets found in Poitiers do not fall into this category. The technical details of their assembly, their elongated cap and their crescent-shaped crest: everything leads us to classify them among the defensive weapons of gladiators. Three well-preserved bronze and iron helmets from the gladiators' barracks in Pompeii (Italy) offer the best elements of comparison. They can be attributed to the secutor (the "pursuer") type of gladiator. The Poitiers helmets, however, are a more recent variant of the secutor helmet and a type in their own right: the "Poitiers type".