The Gladiator School
At the gladiator school, Servius lived in a cell just like a prison cell. But he was taken out every day for gladiator training. First, he had to pass a test to see how fit he was.
Two trainers—big men with scars on their faces, wearing armor and carrying short, sharp swords—walked all around him. They poked him and squeezed his arms. Then they pointed to a post, a hundred feet away. “How quickly can you run to that post and back?” one asked.Servius scowled at the man. He didn’t want to learn how to fight, but if he didn’t, he would be killed. Finally he turned around and ran to the post and back.
“Very good,” the trainer said. “Now let’s see how you do for endurance.”
For the rest of the day, the two trainers forced Servius to run, jump, wrestle, and climb. By night, he was covered with sweat and mud, and was so tired he could hardly drag himself back to his cell. But he had passed the test. The next day, Servius stood in the courtyard along with five other new prisoners.
“You will be gladiators!” one of the trainers shouted. “Repeat after me the oath of the gladiator! ‘I undertake to be burnt by fire, to be bound in chains, to be beaten by rods, and to die by the sword.’ To be a gladiator is a wonderful privilege! You are indeed lucky!”
Servius swallowed nervously. He didn’t feel lucky. But all around him, the other prisoners were repeating the gladiator’s oath. So he took the oath as well. The next thing he knew, they were being marched off to their first training exercise—swinging wooden swords at straw men, propped up against the gladiator school wall.
The trainers had once been gladiators. They taught Servius and the other new recruits swordfighting moves. When Servius had learned the moves, he then fought against one of the other gladiator students. They both had wooden swords, so no one got killed. But Servius didn’t parry quickly enough, and the other student’s wooden sword crashed against his side.
He was sore for days, but the trainers just laughed at him. “You’d better learn to be tough,” one of them said. “We don’t care if it hurts. Just keep fighting. You’ll get hurt worse than that when you fight in the arena.”In the arena! Servius’ heart sank. He already knew that his first fight in the arena was only a week away. He was to be a secutor, a gladiator who chased net-fighters around the arena. He had already practiced fighting with his real weapons and armor—a short, strong sword, a large shield, and a metal leg-guard that covered his left leg. On his head he wore a round helmet with two tiny eye-holes. He could barely see out of the helmet! How would he ever catch a net-fighter? What if the net-fighter caught him first?
On the day of the fight, Servius was taken to the arena—a large bare space near the outer walls of Rome. Wooden seats had been built all around it. They were filled with men and women, and even children. All of them were cheering and shouting. They were enjoying this!
Servius’ trainer put his helmet on and tightened his armor. “Go get him!” he said, and pushed Servius into the arena. The metal helmet was hot and tight. Servius felt like he could barely breathe. He turned his head and caught sight of his opponent—a net-fighter, creeping towards him from the other side of the arena. The net-fighter threw his net. Servius felt it strike against his shield. He advanced forward, waving his sword. The net-fighter backed away. Suddenly he turned and began to run.
“He’s as frightened as I am!” Servius thought. He started to chase the net-fighter. His heavy armor slowed him down. The net-fighter wasn’t wearing armor. He was getting away.
Suddenly the net-fighter tripped and stumbled. Before he knew it, Servius was standing right over top of him. He could hardly believe it. He had won the match! He put his foot on the net-fighter’s chest and looked around him. The crowd was booing and making the thumbs-down sign. Servius knew what that meant.
They wanted him to kill his opponent. If the net-fighter had been brave and bold, the crowd might have had pity on him and turned their thumbs up. Then, Servius could show mercy and let the other man live. But he was supposed to do whatever the crowd said.Servius looked down. The net-fighter knew what the thumbs-down meant. He had closed his eyes. He thought he was about to die.
Servius stepped back and put his sword back in its sheath. “Get up,” he said. “I can’t kill you. I am not an animal! I know that it would be wrong to kill a man for sport.”
The net-fighter scrambled away from him, hardly able to believe his ears. The crowd was booing louder and louder. They wanted to see blood! But Servius turned around and walked back towards his trainer. He knew he would be punished. Maybe he would even be killed. But he knew now that he could not kill another man.
The Romans were great, powerful people, but they were also bloodthirsty. They liked to see men hurt. They enjoyed seeing blood.
Some of the historians who lived in Rome thought that this bloodthirstiness was wrong and evil. They wrote about men like Servius who refused to kill their opponents in the arena. Some even killed themselves so that they would not be forced to kill other men. The Roman philosopher Seneca wrote, in a letter to a friend, “The show was even better to watch when this happened—because the men in the audience learned that it is more decent to die than to kill.”