It's been a while since I posted anything here, but I recently picked up a model of the Roman Colosseum by Daz Studio. This model is breathtaking! It is especially noteworthy not only for the detail of the Colosseum itself but because it had a BIG crowd in the seats! I've used a couple of other arena sets, but it always bugged me that they were empty. I even went so far as to try to add spectators in Photoshop postwork, and I HATE Photoshop postwork! Anyway, my efforts were useless until now. One additional comment on the model is that it's pretty light on resources, considering the detail shown. My renders went pretty quickly.
Anyway, here's the backstory of my images: To titillate the audiences, the managers of the spectacles in the Colosseum decided to do something a little different in the midst of the usual gladiatorial contests and Christians being consumed by Lions. They didn't have the words way back then to say it like we would today, but basically they decided to have a . . . <wait for it> . . . a LADIES DAY!
There were a small number of female criminals in prison awaiting their turn in the arena, and it was decided to have them executed one at a time on this special day, with one of the small number of female gladiators (or gladiatrix) being assigned to each female criminal to oversee their execution. Most of the condemned criminal women would be crucified first, of course, which was always an audience favorite, but it was considered rather ho-hum by this time. To make the spectacle more exciting (and wrench the most maniacal screams from the "entertainers"), the gladiatrix were instructed to make each lady's last moments on earth more memorable by torture.
So, here's the first miscreant, the murderess Diona, a gallic slave who killed the slavemaster who tried to rape her. Her executioner was the gladiatrix Aurelia, who had gone to the arena rather than the whorehouse after being abandoned by her husband, who fled to Syria. Female gladiators were few in number and were looked down on by the Roman authorities, but they would not be outright banned for another fifty years by the Emperor Commodus in 200 AD.
To say that the gladiatrix Aurelia looked forward to her task this day would be a great understatement. She had always preferred females to males when it came to sex, but if she could not have the delectable Diona kneeling between her thighs, it would be almost as exciting to see her nailed in place like a butterfly while she strained mightily against the spikes holding her helpless while a hot iron caressed her bare, helpless flesh. Aurelia cared nothing for the fate of the hapless Diona other than hoping she put on a good show for the audience. The scene shown is the first touch of the hot iron after Aurelia and several guards had nailed Diona to her crucifix and raised it upright.
