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 merchant. 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.

36.6 cm high, this helmet is formally very close to the helmet 1, with its folded neck cover and its crest with rounded profile. However, it differs from it by some technical details and shows a more careful realization. If the shape of the cap remains the same, the crest, made of a single piece of sheet metal, has a softly curved profile at the front. The remains of the hinges at the level of the temples indicate the disappearance of the cheek covers (paragnathides) that served as visors. The articulated plate serving as a frontal attachment point for the visor adopts here a semi-circular shape. Its central rib shows traces of tearing.