I, indignantes pollice

I am a most indignant thumb

Digitus pollex (thumb)

Me, pollex, the most powerful digit

Infestus pollex (hostile thumb)

Pollice verso (turned thumb)

Not just the separated finger from a family of four on your hand

Don’t underestimate my pollex (power)

for magic and healing

in controlling access to the gods

Like a disembodied Doggerland

Arbiter of death and life, I decide whether you, gladiator, live or die!

Missos or iugula (mercy or dispatch)

In the Ancient Greek gladiatoris consessu (gladiatorial arena),  

death, desire, (dis)order

Marginal and liminal

You thracians in your armour

fight each other

Killed or spared by my movement

Lactanius understood,  

‘The thumb’ so he said,

‘has complete control over grasping and controlling

as if it were the guide and moderator of all the fingers’  

I am one of a pair of thumbs on an editor (umpire, referee)

You had better respect me

Your fate is not in the hands but in the thumbs of the spectators

Or so they think

Think they can save you from the lions

I, the editor’s thumb, have the final say and will overturn them

I have no compassion

Empathy will only get you killed
Me police verso (downturned thumb) means your one way ticket to the lion’s den

Some argue me pressed to fist conveys mercy

and me erect, upright, pointing to sky not floor requests deathblow

Give yourself to the people

Entrust yourself to the Games

Are you afraid of being hissed?

Are you terrified of not being applauded?

When you fall and can fight no more

may the gesture of the waving closed fist be your saviour

Think again before you give someone a thumbs up

Some may argue you have in fact sealed their doom