and Pollicis Versio, were used at the combats of gladiators as signals of life or death to the vanquished combatant; in other words, to the victor to spare or take the life of his antagonist. The pollicis pressio, by which the people granted life to the prostrate gladiator, was no more than a clenching of the fingers of both hands together, and so holding upright the two thumbs close together. The pollicis versio, which authorized the victor to kill the vanquished as a coward, was the bending back of the thumbs. Such is the opinion of Dacier; but others say that the pollicis pressio was when the people held up one hand with the thumb bent, and the pollicis versio when they showed the hand with the thumb raised. Authors, however, are not perfectly agreed on this matter; though the phrases policem premere and policem vertere frequently occur in the Latin classics as indications of the people's will that a gladiator should live or die.