Get Free Shipping on orders over $0
Gladiator : Fighting for Life, Glory and Freedom - Ben Hubbard

Gladiator

Fighting for Life, Glory and Freedom

By: Ben Hubbard

Hardcover | 14 February 2020

At a Glance

Hardcover


RRP $45.99

$23.00

50%OFF

or 4 interest-free payments of $5.75 with

In Stock and Ships next day

"When everyone had had plenty to eat and drink they called for the gladiators. The moment anyone's throat was cut, they clapped their hands in pleasure. And it sometimes even turned out that someone had specified in their will that the most beautiful women he had purchased were to fight each other...." - Athenaeus, The Learned Banqueters

With their origins as blood rites staged at the funerals of rich aristocrats, gladiatorial combat is one of the defining images of ancient Rome. For more than 600 years, people flocked to arenas to watch these highly trained warriors participate in a blood-soaked spectacle that was part sport, part theatre and part cold-blooded murder. Gladiatorial contests were a spectacular dramatisation of the Roman emperor's formidable power.

Gladiator
looks at life and service in the Roman arenas from the origins of the games in the third century BCE through to the demise of the games in the fifth century CE. It explores the lives of the prisoners of war, criminals, slaves and volunteers who became gladiators, their training, and the more than 20 types of gladiator they could become, fighting with different types of weapons.

From Spartacus's slave revolt to the real Emperor Commodus who liked to play at being a gladiator, from female gladiators to the great combats involving hundreds of exotic animals, Gladiator is a colourful, accessible study of the ancient world's famous warrior entertainers.


More in General & World History

1942 : The Crux of War - Jonathan  Parshall

$71.75

Unleashed - Boris Johnson

Paperback

RRP $29.99

$24.99

17%
OFF
The Most Interesting People You've Never Heard Of - Riley Knight
The Rape of Nanking : The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II - Iris Chang
Shanghai : The Story of China's Most Dynamic City - Michael Dillon

RRP $51.95

$40.75

22%
OFF
Salt : A World History - Mark Kurlansky

$50.75

The Journals of Captain Cook : Penguin Classics - James Cook

RRP $27.99

$23.75

15%
OFF
The Anarchy : The Relentless Rise of the East India Company - William Dalrymple
The Dawn of Everything : A New History of Humanity - David Graeber
The Golden Road : How Ancient India Transformed the World - William Dalrymple
Weimar : Life on the Edge of Catastrophe - Katja Hoyer

RRP $69.99

$52.75

25%
OFF
Betrayal : Trump, Putin and The New Age of Conquest - Luke Harding
Surveying the Wild Abyss : Unravelling Settler Memory - Barry Corr