Pollice verso

[4] Juvenal uses verso pollice in the Satires: Quondam hi cornicines et municipalis harenae perpetui comites notaeque per oppida buccae munera nunc edunt et, verso pollice vulgus cum iubet, occidunt populariter ...[8] These men once were horn-blowers, who went the round of every provincial show, and whose puffed-out cheeks were known in every village; to-day they hold shows of their own, and win applause by slaying whomsoever the crowd with a turn of the thumb bids them slay.

[9] Prudentius mentions the thumb gesture (converso pollice), used by a Vestal virgin who delights in the carnage: inde ad consessum caveae pudor almus et expers sanguinis it pietas hominum visura cruentos congressus mortesque et vulnera vendita pastu spectatura sacris oculis.

consurgit ad ictus et, quotiens victor ferrum iugulo inserit, illa delicias ait esse suas, pectusque iacentis virgo modesta iubet converso pollice rumpi, ne lateat pars ulla animae vitalibus imis altius inpresso dum palpitat ense secutor.Then on to the gathering in the amphitheatre passes this figure of life-giving purity and bloodless piety [the Vestal], to see bloody battles and deaths of human beings and look on with holy eyes at wounds men suffer for the price of their keep.

She rises at the blows, and every time a victor stabs his victim’s throat she calls him her pet; the modest virgin with a turn of her thumb bids him pierce the breast of his fallen foe so that no remnant of life shall stay lurking deep in his vitals while under a deeper thrust of the sword the fighter lies in the agony of death.

A 26-page pamphlet published in 1879, "Pollice Verso": To the Lovers of Truth in Classic Art, This is Most Respectfully Addressed, reprinted evidence for and against the accuracy of the painting, including a letter dated 8 December 1878 from Gérôme himself.

[12] Pollice Verso is also the title of a controversial 1904 drawing of the Crucifixion by Australian artist Norman Lindsay,[13] depicting Christ being rejected by nude pagans.