[IronJack]

I've always wondered if there wasn't a humane method of euthanizing soldiers critically wounded in battle during Roman times. It seems needlessly cruel to keep a valiant warrior alive and in extreme pain in a day when no medicine or anodynes were available and death was inevitable, whether it came quickly and mercifully or with grim delay.

[ansel12]

I've read that if you were victorious, your friends would help you, or help you die depending on the situation. If you were on the losing side it could be anything, for instance Native American women would often torture to death those men that were too weak to defend themselves, whereas healthier wounded could be brought home to entertain the whole tribe.

[Cloverfarm]

They did break the legs of crucified criminals so they'd die sooner ... seems like it would fit that they'd also finish off wounded gladiators.

ann

[Antoninus]

I've always wondered if there wasn't a humane method of euthanizing soldiers critically wounded in battle during Roman times. It seems needlessly cruel to keep a valiant warrior alive and in extreme pain in a day when no medicine or anodynes were available and death was inevitable, whether it came quickly and mercifully or with grim delay.

Field doctors were often better than you think in Roman times. Procopius, writing in the 6th century AD, describes a couple of soldiers, both Roman and Gothic, who had horrible injuries and yet survived. The Goth had received a dozen or so stab wounds and had lain under a pile of corpses outside Rome, but lived.

A terrible wound wasn't always a death sentence.