Illustration
The "Colchester Vase" is a cremation vessel decorated with a continuous frieze depicting scenes relating to arena spectacles, including the combat between two gladiators named Memnon and Valentinus. Memnon is a well-armoured secutor gladiator who fights with a sword and shield and wears a distinctive, encasing helmet. His opponent, Valentinus, is a retiarius gladiator, identifiable by the trident that he has dropped to the ground, although he has lost his net. The vessel was found buried alongside other ceramic grave goods and dates to the late 2nd century CE. It is one of the finest examples of ceramic art known from Roman Britain.
Colchester Castle Museum, UK.
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Original image by Carole Raddato. Uploaded by Carole Raddato, published on 26 June 2024. The copyright holder has published this content under the following license: Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike. This license lets others remix, tweak, and build upon a work even for commercial reasons, as long as they credit the author and license their new creations under the identical terms. When republishing on the web a hyperlink back to the original content source URL must be included. Please note that content linked from this page may have different licensing terms.
Related Images
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Cite This Work
APA Style
Raddato, C. (2024, June 26). The Colchester Vase. World History Encyclopedia. Retrieved from https://www.worldhistory.org/image/19142/the-colchester-vase/
Chicago Style
Raddato, Carole. "The Colchester Vase." World History Encyclopedia. Last modified June 26, 2024. https://www.worldhistory.org/image/19142/the-colchester-vase/.
MLA Style
Raddato, Carole. "The Colchester Vase." World History Encyclopedia. World History Encyclopedia, 26 Jun 2024. Web. 03 Mar 2025.
