The Gladiators: History's Most Deadly Sport [Paperback]

Fik Meijer (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 6, 2007

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.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Locked in mortal combat before 50,000 cheering spectators in the Colosseum, the two gladiators thrust and parry until the crowd gets what it came for: one dead athlete and one living, victorious athlete. While the games themselves might have been exciting for the Roman crowds, Meijer's listless prose and superficial examination of the gladiator's life and work fails to capture any of the excitement, terror and pride that the gladiators and spectators must have felt. In pedantic fashion, he provides a survey of the different types of gladiators, the kinds of animals they fought, the dimensions of the Colosseum and other amphitheaters and the daily life of a gladiator. As many other books have pointed out, the gladiators themselves were slaves or prisoners of war who were rigorously trained in the sport. Meijer (Emperors Don't Die in Bed), a professor of ancient history at the University of Amsterdam, also describes a typical day at the Colosseum that featured hunters fighting animals, followed by executions of criminals during lunch and finally human combat. Apart from a tendentious and nitpicky critique of the historical accuracy of the films Spartacus and The Gladiator, Meijer adds nothing new to our knowledge about gladiators. 55 b&w illus. (Dec.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Review

"Forget Russell Crowe in a skirt and sandals, this is the real deal if you want to know about blood and guts in the arena. The author has pieced together thousands of documents, eyewitness testimonies, and engravings to tell in vivid detail the story of the gladiators of ancient Rome."
-- The Daily Mail [UK]


"Fik Meijer, a professor of ancient history in Amsterdam, gives fascinating insight into Ancient Rome's gladiators. ... An in-depth book...." -- The Big Issue

[Meijer] has written a history that is at once interesting, informative, and fast-paced. Thumbs up or thumbs down? No contest." -- Leeds Guide

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 288 pages
• Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin (March 6, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312364024
• ISBN-13: 978-0312364021
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.4 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #58,770 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #54 in Books > Sports & Outdoors > Miscellaneous > History of Sports
  • #81 in Books > History > Ancient > Rome

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

17 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars EXCELLENT WORK - VERY INFORMATIVE AND READABLE, March 21, 2006

By 

D. Blankenship (The Ozarks) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Gladiators: History's Most Deadly Sport (Hardcover)

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

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Readable, current, exciting, July 25, 2010

By 

T. Trubac "xer0derm" (Ridgewood, New Jersey United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Gladiators: History's Most Deadly Sport (Paperback)

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.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars BLOOD, GLORY, FAME AND RICHES, June 8, 2010

By 

Swubird (Orange County, California) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Gladiators: History's Most Deadly Sport (Paperback)

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.