LONDON—A 2,000-year-old Roman knife handle shaped like a gladiator that was discovered in northern England will go on public display for the first time, the charity English Heritage said on Friday.
Two divers found the well-preserved object in 1997 in the River Tyne at Corbridge near Hadrian’s Wall, the 73-mile fortification built by the Romans to defend the northern limits of their empire. It was donated to English Heritage this year.
The copper alloy handle, part of a folding knife, was probably used as a souvenir, reflecting the celebrity status that gladiators enjoyed as they fought in arenas for the entertainment of the public, English Heritage said.
“This beautifully made knife handle is a testament to how pervasive this celebrity culture was, reaching all the way to Hadrian’s Wall at the very edge of the Roman Empire,” archaeologist Frances McIntosh said.
Some two millennia later, the fascination has endured, highlighted by the Gladiator film sequel releasing Friday.
Only the second such Roman knife handle to be found in England, it depicts a muscular, left-handed secutor, a class of gladiators who fought with a short sword and a heavy shield.
The secutor’s left-handedness is unusual since the Romans considered it unlucky, McIntosh said, to the extent that the Latin word for left—sinister—came to imply underhandedness or malice.
“It could mean that it’s a very specific, actual, real gladiator that this knife handle is portraying,” McIntosh, who is English Heritage’s Collections Curator for Hadrian’s Wall and the North East, said.
Other gladiatorial objects found in England include glass vials, which would have held perfume and saffron-infused water to sprinkle on spectators, and a piece of glass with a leopard painted upon it, thought to depict a venatio or animal hunt.
The knife handle will be displayed at the Corbridge Roman site in 2025.
