Roman MMA Champ Recruited Soldiers

Using celebrities to sign people up for stuff is an age old technique that even the Roman Empire was familiar with.

A newly translated inscription dating about 1,800 years revealed that the Roman army used a mixed martial arts champ to recruit soldiers:

His name was Lucius Septimius Flavianus Flavillianus and he was a champion at wrestling and pankration, the latter a bloody, and at times lethal, mixed martial art where contestants would try to pound each other unconscious or into submission.

Flavillianus proved to be so successful as a military recruiter that it was decreed that he be made a "cult figure in the band of heroes" after he died, with each tribe of the city erecting statues in his honor. The inscription, written in Greek, was engraved on the base of a statue found in Oinoanda's agora (a central public space) and would have been erected by the people of the city.

Link (Photo: Shutterstock) - via A Blog About History


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