A thousand ways to die in Ancient Rome

'Nero before the corpse of his mother Agripina', by the painter Arturo Montero y Calvo, Museo del Prado

Lentulo Batiatus School of Gladiators, in Capua (a few kilometers from Naples), year 73 BC.

Two patricians and their wives have traveled there to engage the fight of two pairs of gladiators.

They offer an astronomical amount, but on the condition that the fight is to the death.

An Ethiopian and a Thracian enter the arena.

Both hit each other extremely hard while the patricians chat quietly in the box about the political environment in Rome.

The Ethiopian manages to bring down the ...

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