The Way of the Gladiator

An account of the gladiatorial spectacles mounted in the Colosseum to satisfy the decadent tastes of Ancient Rome, patrician and plebeian alike. The torture and butchery took place on a prodigious scale; the emperor Trajan gave one set of games that lasted 122 days and slaughtered 11,000 people.

---

"Hail Caesar, we who are about to dic salute you"! And die the gladiators did. In a vast marble Colosseum larger than the Yankee Stadium, the people of Rome, patrician and commoner, flocked to see gladiators mangled beneath the hoofs and wheels of horses and chariots, slaughtered by half-starved wild beasts and butchered by well-armed and armoured professionals. With the Empire in decline, death and torture became the only spectacles that satisfied the decadent Romans' longing. The Emperor Trajan gave one set of games that lasted 122 days; at its end, 11 000 people and 10 000 animals had been killed. The people of Rome loved it- and they wanted more. This is the extraordinary and true account of the Roman Games and the gladiators who fought and died in the cruelest, costliest spectacles of all time!