The Gladiators: History's Most Deadly Sport

By Fik Meijer

Book Overview

Superfit, muscled, and macho, gladiators were hero-worshipped for their skills and courage as they fought to the death, yet despised for their humble status. For over six cruel centuries, tens of thousands died in the blood soaked arenas of Rome and its colonies, watched by enthralled crowds screaming for violence. Professor Fik Meijer has ingeniously pieced together their true stories from contemporary evidence, describing the gladiators' origins, daily life, training, and the odds of their survival pitted against their legions of fans' lust for blood and spectacle.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0312364024
• ISBN13: 9780312364021
• Release Date: March 2007
• Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin
• Length: 288 Pages
• Weight: 0.85 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 5.5" x 8.4"

Customer Reviews

Readable, current, exciting

Having been a fan of ancient Rome and gladiators for some time now (primarily due to Hollywood), I decided to go out and try and learn more about both of those subjects. This book gives a wonderful insight to the world of Gladiators. Mr. Meijer does an excellent job of breaking the book down into informative sections. Anything you could have been curious about in terms of gladiators, he explains. Why they came to be, where they fought, what happened during the fights, myths of gladiatorial combat, and repercussions of the sport. I highly recommend this book to anyone with even the slightest bit of interest in the sport or history of.

BLOOD, GLORY, FAME AND RICHES

I liked this short book. It was well researched, well written, easy to read and contains almost everything you'd ever want to know about the ancient Roman gladiators and "history's most deadly sport," including who they were, how and where they fought, and how they lived and died. The author discusses emperors in the arena such as Caligula and Commodus, extravagant sea battles, condemned prisoners, gory executions, men and women against wild beasts, and even women gladiators battling it out for glory and fame, all in realistic and spine-tingling detail. The author also discusses why the ancient Romans were so keen on promoting and hosting this horrific activity, which by modern standards of morality seems an impossible concept. Yet he points out that boxing, wrestling, football and other professional contact sports are really just a modern version of this ancient gladiatorial sport. Whether it's in the Superdome, or the Colosseum, it arouses the same basal human drives. It's all fascinating stuff, credible, and well worth the read. I highly recommend this book for casual readers as well as serious students and researchers.

A Comprehensive Book

Of the several works that have appeared on the topic of the gladiator and his world, I have found this particular one the most comprehensive without being written in the pretentious style that most writers on aspects of the ancient world go in for. In light of the popularity of the Starz series "Spartacus: Blood and Sand", this book is and absolute "must read".

A captivating read

It was loaded with interesting facts interspersed throughout little known stories of the everyday life of a gladiator. It was a fun read and worth the purchase price.

EXCELLENT WORK - VERY INFORMATIVE AND READABLE

The author has presented us with a very readable and informative account of Rome's gladiators. This work seems quite well researched and is very well illustrated by black and white photographs. The author's style is quite readable and, like all well written popular history, does not bog the reader down with endless meaningless dates, although he does do a very nice job of chronology. This work is well organized and gives quite good descriptions of the various types of gladiators, the animals fought and interestingly, the social status of the various gladiators. The author has done a very nice job of presenting what little we know of the origins of this particular institution. I particularly enjoyed the point the author makes (a belief I have held for a number of years) that we are not as far from those barbaric times as we would like to think ourselves. The author builds a very good case for this. I suppose if it was forty years ago and I were a graduate student, I might want a work which is more formal, but for my needs, at this time, this well fit the bill. The book is a fast read which could almost be classified as a page turner if it were a different genre. Recommend this one highly. Thank you Prof. Meijer. Don Blankenship, The Ancientreader