A Jewish gladiator in Roman Pompeii?

In October 79 BCE, the catastrophic eruption of Mount Vesuvius engulfed the vibrant Roman city of Pompeii, forever sealing its fate. At the time, dozens of gladiators lived and trained in the gladiators’ barracks, an impressive four-sided structure featuring 74 doric columns in the heart of the city.

According to an academic article published last month, at least one of them was Jewish.

The gladiator was likely taken as a slave as the Romans captured Judea years earlier and became so successful that he wore a personalized helmet decorated with a symbol of the land he came from: a palm tree.

Some twenty years ago, Samuele Rocca, a senior lecturer of History of Art and Architecture at Ariel University and a lecturer at Haifa University, spotted the helmet at the National Archaeological Museum of Naples. Fascinated by the seven-branched palm tree prominently featured on the artifact, he began researching the topic.

“By 79 BCE, when Pompeii was destroyed, the association between the palm tree and Judea was known across the Roman Empire thanks to a series of coins minted by the Flavian dynasty under Emperors Vespasian and Titus, known as ‘Judaea Capta,’” Rocca said.

The coins were minted to celebrate the suppression of the First Jewish Revolt (66-70 CE) and the destruction of Jerusalem.

During the revolt, the Jewish rebels had minted their own coins, which at the time was considered an important expression of sovereignty and a brazen challenge to Roman authorities. Many of those coins feature a palm tree, one of the seven species of the land of Israel as described in the Bible.

Perhaps for this reason, after the war ended, the Romans decided to create a new series. Many of its coins feature a tied or blindfolded young woman, symbolizing Judea, under a palm tree.

“The Judaea Capta [coins] were minted in a quantity that is surprising for Roman coins in general and for those celebrating victories over other peoples in particular, as if the victory over Judaea was the most important of them all,” Ya'akov Meshorer, a prominent Israeli coin expert, noted in an article in 2001. “No other victory was commemorated by such a large number of coins.”

Rocca first wrote about the Jewish gladiator in Pompeii in an academic article around 15 years ago. He recently revisited the topic, bringing additional evidence of the helmet’s Jewish identity in an article published in the top-tier journal Images: A Journal of Jewish Art and Visual Culture by Brill.

“The palm tree was also used as a symbol by the Phoenicians and Carthaginians, but their palm iconography dates back to 400 and 200 years, respectively, before the period of the helmet,” Rocca said. “In some instances, palm branches were also employed as a symbol of victory, but in this case, we are talking about a full tree with seven branches. The connection with the land of Judea is evident.”

The helmet is not the only piece of evidence of a Jewish presence in Pompeii. A fresco depicting the episode of Solomon’s judgment and some graffiti also testify of a small group of Jews in the unfortunate city.

“One of these graffiti, signed by a man named Yehoshua, mocks a gladiator defeated by another gladiator,” Rocca noted. “The first gladiator was a retiarius, a gladiator that was armed with a net and a short dagger; the second one was a Thracian gladiator. Thracian gladiators wore helmets like the one depicting a palm tree and carried a short sword, the sica. It is important to remember that one of the anti-Roman Jewish sects active at the end of the Second Temple period was called Sicarii.”

In his writings, the famous Jewish-Roman historian Flavius Josephus, who chronicled the Jewish Revolt, revealed how some of the tens of thousands of Jews brought back to Rome from Judea as slaves were ordered to become gladiators.

“It is plausible that one of them ended up at Pompeii,” Rocca said.

More evidence of Jews in Pompeii

The palm-decorated helmet was found at the barracks, along with dozens of other helmets and weapons. It is the only one with this specific image.

“At the beginning of their careers, gladiators did not usually wear personalized helmets,” Rocca said. “As they managed to win and survive, fight after fight, they became famous and their weapons became more personalized.”

Therefore, the helmet’s owner was probably a seasoned gladiator, perhaps even a celebrity, who could display a symbol of his identity on his helmet.

“The eruption happened in 79 BCE, nine years after the destruction of Jerusalem,” Rocca noted. “If the gladiator managed to survive for so long, it is not surprising that he wore a decorated helmet.”

As the volcano began to erupt in those tragic days, many tried to escape Pompeii. Others stayed. Within a short time, most died, suffocated by the ashes, burned, and trapped. Some 18 bodies were retrieved by the archaeologists in the gladiators’ barracks.

The fate of the gladiator from Judea remains unknown, but his helmet offers a glimpse into what may have been his story of slavery and survival.