In the Vienna manuscript, the original text is as follows: The original instruction is found in three of the four known Gladiatoria manuscripts. Needless to say, what happened here was that rather than following proper scientific method and investigating the technique and its source material, people turned an incorrect translation into a simple meme for personal gratification. One of the rules I live by is “don’t read the bottom half of the internet”, because the article/video area of a website is where potentially interesting information lives, and the comments area of a website is usually where the dross of the internet collects without adding any useful knowledge to the conversation. The meme developed in the comments on the YouTube video. To give him his due, he didn’t try to make it a meme, he was simply highlighting an interesting and unusual technique that he found in a translation of a 15th century source. The meme in question of course the whole “end him rightly” phrase that became popular after a video by Skallagrim in December 2014. In other words, it is a series of errors, and should be laid to rest along with any other incorrect translations or dysfunctional interpretations. I know, I’m a grumpy old man, and memes tend to annoy me anyway, but this particular meme stems from an incorrect translation and an incorrect interpretation.
Since 2014, there has been a certain meme on the internet that really annoys me.
