MARK OF THE THIEF arc giveaway

I fell in love with your books from the end of the first chapter of False Prince. The ascendance trilogy created a group of life long readers in my classroom last year, and I can’t wait to share your next book with a new group!

I just have a quick question: if we got the 5 or 10 bonus entries, then does that mean we are automatically entered in the drawing? I just want to make sure because I combined my reason why I want The Mark of the Thief and the Roman facts in my one post so I just want to make sure I am entered in. Thanks! 🙂

1. Some of the first recorded examples of UFO came from Rome. In 218 B.C.E there was a written record stating a fleet of gleaming ships floating in the sky of Rome.
2.purple clothing was a status symbol reserved only for the emperor or senator. It was consider treason for anyone other than the emperor to be dressed completely in purple clothing.
3. Romans thought not owning slaves was a sign of extreme poverty, so they would bring around 3 slaves to the baths with them.
4.after a death of an emperor, an eagle will be released to bear his soul to heaven
5.some romans used honking geese instead of watchdogs to alert them of intruders.

1. There is a law against using magic to transfer growing crops.
2. There is a law that allows cats to live without disruption in the place they were born
3. Romans did not consider children as beings with developed souls.So they would bury a body of a dead child in the backyard like a pet.
4. They had toilet god, and door good
5. They thought the death of famous romans were predicted by the hoots of the owl, including Julius Caesar, and augustus.

I hope these couple of facts from the internet will get me bonus entries Miss Jen hehe…
1.) In ancient Rome the olive mixed w/ dust and sweat which the gladiators and athletes scraped w/ strigils was collected and sold as rhypos for the manufacture of unguents, belief to confer something of the energy of these fighters to the Roman ladies.
2.) It is funny that Roman flour contained a lot of dust and bits. At that time, if not be careful when eating bread, people could lose their teeth.
3.) The majority of the Roman soldier’s diet was comprised of grains, such as corn, wheat and barley. Grain was the soldier’s main source of carbohydrate, and it was ground and used to make bread, porridge, soup and pasta. Approximately one-third of a ton of corn was consumed yearly by each Roman soldier.
4.) Excavations of a mass gladiatorial grave near Ephesus have allowed scientific reconstruction of the diets of one group of gladiators by examination of bones, according to Andrew Curry in a 2008 issue of “Archeology.” Bone analysis confirms that gladiators ate primarily vegetarian diets and that, despite their attempts to supplement calcium with ground burnt bones, they often showed signs of calcium deprivation.
5.) Ancient Roman human sculptures especially for men sculptures had small penises because it was considered offensive to the model to make his penis large because it was not to be the main focus of the piece, especially if the man was someone important. Also, men had smaller penises back then because they were generally smaller people who did not consume hormone induced foods.
6.)While the Romans adopted many aspects of Greek education, two areas in particular were viewed as trifle: music and athletics. Music to the Greeks was fundamental to their educational system and tied directly to the Greek paideia. Mousike encompassed all those areas supervised by the Muses, comparable to today’s liberal arts. The area that many Romans considered unimportant equates to our modern definition of music. To the Greeks, the ability to play an instrument was the mark of a civilized, educated man, and through an education in all areas of mousike it was thought that the soul could become more moderate and cultivated. The Romans did not share this view but did, however, adopt one area of mousike: Greek literature.
6.) Facts about Pantheon

~In the seventh century was converted into a church under the name “Santa Maria ad Martyres”. For this reason it is the only building of ancient Rome to be come down to us practically intact.
~There is a moat around the Pantheon. A curious Roman legend tells that a great magician named Pietro Bailardowho had used the services of the devil, at the end of his life he decided to repent and came to Rome to confess and take the Eucharist. But when he went outside the Pantheon he found the devil waiting for him to get what was due, then the magician threw nuts to the devil and ran back into the Pantheon. To anger the devil caught fire and sank to the underworld leave a moat around the church. According to others the devil before sinking nervously began to turn around the Pantheon, a long time to form a groove.

1. Mary Beard, a professor of classics at Cambridge University, wrote in the New York Times: The books Greeks and Romans read “were not “books” in our sense but, at least up to the second century. The “book rolls”—long strips of papyrus, rolled up on two wooden rods at either end. To read the work in question, you unrolled the papyrus from the left-hand rod, to the right, leaving a “page” stretched between the two. It was considered the height of bad manners to leave the text on the right hand rod when you had finished reading, so that the next reader had to rewind back to the beginning to find the title page, bad manners—but a common fault, no doubt, Some scribes helpfully repeated the title of the books a the very end, with just this problem in mind.”

“These cumbersome rolls made reading a very different experience than it is with the modern book,” Beard wrote. “Skimming, for example, was much more difficult, as looking back a few pages to check out the name you had forgotten (as it is on Kindle). Not to mention the fact that at some periods of Roman history, it was fashionable to copy a the text with no breaks between words, but as a river of letters. In comparison, deciphering the most challenging postmodern text (or “Finnegan’s Wake,” for that matter) looks easy.”

2. Ancient Roman Book Market

Julius Caesar was a writer… Beard wrote in the New York Times: “All reading material was laboriously copied by hand. The ancient equivalent of the printing press was a battalion of slaves whose job it was to transcribe one by one as many copies of Virgil. Horace or Ovid as the Roman market would buy.”

“Bookstores in Rome clustered in particular streets . One was she Vicus Sandalarius, or Shoemaker’s Row, not far from the Colosseum (convenient for post-gladiatorial browsing). Here you would find the outsides of the stores plastered with advertisements and puffs for titles in stock, often adorned with some choice quotes from the books of the moment. Martial, in fact, once told a friend not to bother to venture inside, since you could “read all the poets” on their door posts.

For those who did go in, there was usually a place to sit and read. With slaves on hand to summon up refreshments, it would have been not unlike the coffee shop in a modern Borders. For collectors there were occasionally secondhand treasures to be picked dup at a price. One Roman academic reported finding an old copy of the second book of Virgil’s “Aeneid”—not just any old copy but, the bookseller assured him, Virgil’s very own.”

A new book could cost as much as two years of salary for a professional soldier, “The risks on cheaper purchases were different.” Beard wrote, “A cut price book roll would presumably have fallen to pieces as quickly as a modern mass-market paperback. But worse, the pressure to get copies made quickly meant they were loaded with errors and sometimes uncomfortably different from the authentic words of the author, One list of prices from the third century A.D. implies that the money needed to buy a top-quality copy of 500 lines would be enough to feed a family for four (admittedly on very basic ration) for a whole year.

31. After the fall of Rome, Latin continued in a variety of dialects which later developed into the Romance languages such as Portuguese, Romanian, Italian, French, and Spanish. Though not directly related, Latin has also significantly influenced English.a
2. There seems to be no evidence that a “thumbs up” or a “thumbs down” was used in Roman gladiatorial games.The editor or judge of the game (such as an emperor) would more likely gesture with a thumb turned horizontally, probably in a striking motion toward the heart, or cover or compress his thumb to signal “put away the blade.”e
3. To die honorably, the defeated gladiator would grasp the thigh of his victor who would then hold his opponent’s head or helmet and plunge a sword in his neck. To make sure the gladiator was not faking his death, an attendant dressed as Mercury would touch him with a hot iron rod and another attendant dressed as Charon would hit him with a mallet.j
4. Gladiatorial combat probably dates back to the Etruscans or Samnites who made prisoners fight to the death during the funerals of aristocrats. It perhaps served as a kind of a substitute for old human sacrifices.a
5. The Roman Emperor Gaius (nicknamed Caligula after a type of military boot) tried to make his horse a consul, which was the most important job in the government. He also dressed in women’s cloths, presented himself as a god, had incestuous relations with his sisters, and had a habit of giving the manly Praetorian Guards watchwords like “Kiss me quick.”a
6. In battle, Romans sometimes grouped together and held their shields all around them in a move called “the tortoise.”e
7. Most Roman aqueducts were over 55 feet high. Their great height not only controlled the flow of water but also made it more difficult for someone to steal water and for enemies to put poison in it. The Roman Aqueduct of Segovia was built of stones with no mortar and is still used to carry water today.j
8. In A.D. 64, a huge fire destroyed half of Rome. Some claim Nero purposely set it so he could rebuild the city how he wanted it. The saying “Fiddling while Rome burns” comes from the story that Nero played his lyre while Rome burned.a
9. Roman days were divided into 12 hours, measured by a sundial.b
10. The Monte Testaccio is a vast, nonbiodegradable garbage dump where an estimated 53 million amphorae (ceramic vases) were thrown. It is one of the largest and most organized dumps found anywhere in the ancient world.a
11. Roman coins were used to publicize the emperor, his achievements, and his family in a world with no mass media.a
12. Some scholars speculate that pagan Romans would have been happy to add Christ to their list of gods, and that some did. The Christians, however, would have none of it.j
13. The Romans had gods for doors (Forculus), hinges (Cardea), and thresholds (Limentinus).b

14. wine bread

15. The early Romans thought the Christian sacrament was literally a form of cannibalism

16. The early Romans thought Christians were literally practicing some sort of cannibalism when the word was out that they consumed bread and wine as symbolic representations of the body and blood of Christ.d
17. The diet of ordinary Romans consisted mostly of starchy food and did not include many green vegetables, fresh meat, or fats. Hence, many children suffered from malnutrition.b
18. At its peak, Rome included more than one million people. After the fall of the Roman Empire, the city’s population fell dramatically to less than 50,000 people.j In 2007, there were over 2.7 million people living in the greater Rome area.
19. In order to escape her forced engagement to a senator, the emperor Valentinian II’s sister Honarias sent Attila the Hun her engagement ring as a plea for help in the spring of A.D. 450. He interpreted it as a marriage proposal and demanded Rome as a dowry.c
20. Rome’s last emperor was Romulus Augustus, whose name recalls both the founder of Rome and Rome’s first emperor. He was deposed by Odoacer, the leader of the Barbarians.a
21. Theories as to why Rome fell include political weakness and corruption, immorality, Christian pacifism and superstition, racial mixing, class conflict, environmental problems, a divided capital (Rome and Constantinople), plagues, and mass migrations of wild Germanic people. Another theory is that water supplied by lead pipes caused widespread health problems including brain damage and impaired intelligence. Some scholars speculate that Rome never fell, it just adapted to a changing world.j
22. After the fall of Rome, the Colosseum became overgrown with exotic plants—seeds had inadvertently been transported with the wild animals that were used for fighting. During the Middle Ages it became a fortress for the city’s two warrior families.i
23. If not for the painstaking work of medieval monks who copied and illustrated the works of Roman writers and philosophers, many keystones of western culture would have been lost forever.a
24. Founder of classical humanism, Petrarch (1304-1374) discovered many manuscripts from ancient Rome, and by the fifteenth century, Florentines were modeling their embattled republic on the Roman republic. During the Renaissance, Rome was second only to Florence as a major force of influence.j
25. Now assumed to be an ancient Roman manhole cover or part of a first-century statue, past generations thought Rome’s “Mouth of Truth” (La Bocca della Verità) to be a sort of ancient lie detector. Allegedly, it would cut off a person’s hand if it was placed in the mouth while the person spoke a lie. Later, priests in the Middle Ages would put scorpions in it to help perpetuate the myth.i The Mouth of Truth also appeared in the film Roman Holiday with Gregory Peck and Audrey Hepburn.

The way you wrote the Ascendance Trilogy changed how I think about writing, and has profoundly shaped my own writing style. Honestly, you ruined me for enjoying anything of less quality.
I can’t promise that I will talk about your books on any social media (sorry), seeing as I am not on any, really. But know that you have a couple of steadfast fans here in my family and potential fans in my friends. I know that I would savor the opportunity of reading your book before I ever even expected to, especially seeing as I have lately been on the hunt for more books that I can truly enjoy. Thank you for writing a series where I can respect and truly like the characters, and not be sure what the ending is.

The Colosseum had a large sun roof that could be stretched over the crowd to keep the spectators in the shade. The Colosseum took 12 years to build, and the exit time for all 70,000 spectators was only three minutes.
The Circus Maximus could seat nearly 250,000 fans. In its passageways and arches under the seats, cooks and prostitutes catered to the fans’ other needs.
Wealthy Roman women would smear lead paste on their faces to look fashionably pale. They might also use ass’ milk or crushed snails as a facial moisturizer. Crushed ant eggs were often used to highlight women’s eyebrows.
Toothpaste was regularly used by those who could afford it. Nitrum, probably either potassium or sodium carbonate, was burned and rubbed on the teeth to restore color.
Romans invented central heating and would warm rooms from under the floor using what was called a hypocaust, literally “heat from below.” Homes of some rich people had both running water and central heating.
Some wealthy women often wore wigs made from the blond hair of foreign slaves. Slaves could also dye a woman’s hair blond or red by blowing powder onto it. Slaves could be tortured for a styling hair poorly.
Some men were advised to use hippopotamus skin to make hair grow. Men and women would remove hair with bat’s blood or hedgehog ashes, or keep hair from turning gray by coloring their hair with oil mixed with earthworm ashes.
When Romans would visit the temple of Aesculapius (the god of medicine and healing), they would leave offerings shaped like the part of their body which is afflicted, such as an ear or a leg.
Some common girl names in ancient Rome included Julia, Livia, Drusilla, Antonia, and Claudia. Common boy names included Marcus, Julius, Antonius, Titus, Caius, Didius, Marius, and Septimus.
Wealthy Romans might enjoy exotic foods such as stuffed flamingo. Fish sauce called liquamen or garum made from fish intestines was also popular.
After the Romans deposed the last of their kings in 509 B.C., they created the Law of Twelve Tables in 450 B.C., a rule of law that remained in force for 800 years until the end of the western empire.
On Capitoline Hill (one of the Seven Hills of Rome) at noon on April 21 every year, a special bell called Patarina rings to celebrate the founding of Rome.
A man could lose Roman citizenship if he deserted the army, mutilated himself so he could not serve, or dodged a census to evade taxation.
Girls were expected to marry at the age of 13 or 14 in arranged marriages. Strewing nuts, symbolic of the casting off of childish toys and of fertility, was an important part of the wedding. The bride wore a saffron-colored wedding gown with a flame-red veil over her hair.
In Roman custom, a bride was carried over a threshold for good luck with the words “Ubi ti Baius, ego Gaia.” (“Where you [are] John, there I [am], Mary.”) Tripping over a threshold was considered bad luck.
Roman divorce was quick and easy. Either party merely uttered to the other the Latin phrase “Tuas res tibi habeto.” (“Keep what’s yours for yourself.”) If there were any children, they remained with the father, though the dowry was returned to the woman provided she had not committed adultery
Romans thought that not owning slaves was a sign of extreme poverty. Many people would take three slaves with them just to go to the baths
The Greeks thought that when non-Greeks spoke, they were mumbling words that sounded like an indeterminate “barbar,” which led to the Roman word “barbarian.”
Crimes such as treason or desertion were punishable by beheading or crucifixion. But only criminals without Roman citizenship (such as Jesus Christ) were crucified because that death was so slow and painful.
Built by the emperor Hadrian (118-125), the Pantheon (“Temple of the Gods”) is remarkable because its massive dome is made of concrete that has withstood the elements for almost 2,000 years—with no steel reinforcing. The Pantheon was the largest concrete curved dome in existence until the nineteenth century.
The Romans trained some female slaves to fight as gladiators.
After criticizing Rome’s transition from a republic to an empire, the famous philosopher/rhetorician Cicero was murdered and had his head and hands displayed on the Rostra in the Forum Romanum. It is rumoured that Fulvia, the wife of the influential Roman politician, Antony, pulled out Cicero’s tongue and stabbed it repeatedly with her hairpin.
There seems to be no evidence that a “thumbs up” or a “thumbs down” was used in Roman gladiatorial games.The editor or judge of the game (such as an emperor) would more likely gesture with a thumb turned horizontally, probably in a striking motion toward the heart, or cover or compress his thumb to signal “put away the blade.”
To die honorably, the defeated gladiator would grasp the thigh of his victor who would then hold his opponent’s head or helmet and plunge a sword in his neck. To make sure the gladiator was not faking his death, an attendant dressed as Mercury would touch him with a hot iron rod and another attendant dressed as Charon would hit him with a mallet.
In battle, Romans sometimes grouped together and held their shields all around them in a move called “the tortoise.”
In A.D. 64, a huge fire destroyed half of Rome. Some claim Nero purposely set it so he could rebuild the city how he wanted it. The saying “Fiddling while Rome burns” comes from the story that Nero played his lyre while Rome burned.
At its peak, Rome included more than one million people. After the fall of the Roman Empire, the city’s population fell dramatically to less than 50,000 people.j In 2007, there were over 2.7 million people living in the greater Rome area.
In order to escape her forced engagement to a senator, the emperor Valentinian II’s sister Honarias sent Attila the Hun her engagement ring as a plea for help in the spring of A.D. 450. He interpreted it as a marriage proposal and demanded Rome as a dowry.
Rome’s last emperor was Romulus Augustus, whose name recalls both the founder of Rome and Rome’s first emperor. He was deposed by Odoacer, the leader of the Barbarians.
After the fall of Rome, the Colosseum became overgrown with exotic plants—seeds had inadvertently been transported with the wild animals that were used for fighting. During the Middle Ages it became a fortress for the city’s two warrior families.
If not for the painstaking work of medieval monks who copied and illustrated the works of Roman writers and philosophers, many keystones of western culture would have been lost forever.
Now assumed to be an ancient Roman manhole cover or part of a first-century statue, past generations thought Rome’s “Mouth of Truth” (La Bocca della Verità) to be a sort of ancient lie detector. Allegedly, it would cut off a person’s hand if it was placed in the mouth while the person spoke a lie. Later, priests in the Middle Ages would put scorpions in it to help perpetuate the myth.i The Mouth of Truth also appeared in the film Roman Holiday with Gregory Peck and Audrey Hepburn.

Some people who fought against animals in the Colosseum were well-trained men and thought of it as a career. A great deal of them, however, were unarmed criminals or prisoners of war who were thrown to the animals with virtually nothing to defend themselves. As you can imagine, such a fate was terrifying for even the most hardened of men. Many prisoners killed themselves with whatever they had on hand rather than risk being killed by whichever strange beasts lined up for the morning show.For example, one German prisoner killed himself by forcing a sponge down his own throat. And not just any sponge—this was a lavatory sponge that inmates used to wipe their anuses. Other stories involve prisoners making murder suicide pacts with each other, like the 29 Saxon prisoners who all fatally strangled one other to avoid death in the arena. How the last one alive managed to kill himself isn’t recorded, but considering “choking on a sponge of human excrement” was an option, we’re guessing it wasn’t pretty.
The sheer quantity of slaughter in the Colosseum saw the number of lions, jaguars, and tigers plummet across the globe. According to some, Roman hunting absolutely “devastated the wildlife of North Africa and the entire Mediterranean region,” wiping some species of animal off the map entirely. For example, after one particularly brutal set of games in which 9,000 animals were slaughtered, the hippo disappeared from the river Nile. Creatures like the North African elephant, which was also commonly used as a war elephant during the time, were wiped of the face of the Earth completely.
Because the majority of bestiari were prisoners of war or other such undesirables, they were almost always ill-equipped for the task of slaughtering a rampaging wild animal. In the highly unlikely event a bestiari actually managed to kill the animal he was forced to fight, another would almost certainly be let loose before he’d even finished celebrating. The ancient Greek philosopher Strabo once described the plight of a particularly unlucky bestiari who was first sentenced to be killed by a boar. When the boar accidentally fatally gored its handler, leaving the guards no choice but to kill it, a wild bear was brought in to the arena instead to kill the prisoner. In an unbelievable stroke of luck, the bear then refused to leave its cage, once again leaving the prisoner alive and the guards with the frustrating task of killing the bear. Not ones to be deterred, the Romans finally brought into the arena a caged leopard, which happily tore out the bestiari’s throat. Some people just don’t have any luck, do they?
Emperor Commodus (played by Joaquin Phoenix in Gladiator) took great pleasure in slaughtering animals and people in the arena. He enjoyed it so much that in one day alone, he reportedly killed more than 100 bears. Though we don’t know exactly how Commodus managed such a feat, scholars agree he probably just stabbed them while they stood tethered and helpless. Though such actions paint Commodus as a poor fighter, he was reportedly a crack shot with the bow, which he liked to prove by decapitating ostriches in full sprint with crescent-shaped arrows. Commodus would then brandish or even throw the decapitated heads at members of the crowd or his own senate, either as a warning or a sign of his madness.
Damnatio ad bestias (“condemnation by wild beasts”) was the act of condemning criminals to death by animal attack in the arena. Unlike the betiarii, who stood at least a small chance at defending themselves, those condemned via damnatio ad bestias were either defenseless, tied to the spot, or just naked and armed with a wooden weapon.The very first case of damnatio ad bestias in Roman history occurred when Aemilius Paullus sentenced a group of army deserters to death in 167 BC. To make it interesting, he ordered them crushed to death by a horde of elephants. The spectacle proved so popular that death by animals became a part of everyday life for the Romans—literally. Every morning, a Roman citizen could go to the arena to watch such executions take place before an afternoon of actual gladiatorial combat.
The killing of animals was usually left to trained professionals or unarmed prisoners. But on rare occasions, the general public got the chance to kill rare and exotic animals for their own enjoyment. Emperor Probus turned one of the most famous chariot racetracks in Rome, the Circus Maximus, into an actual forest around 280 AD. Into this forest, he released hundreds, if not thousands, of ibexes, sheep, ostriches, and other beasts. After the forest had been suitably filled with hapless herbivores, the public was then permitted to enter and hunt animals for fun. As a bonus, they could keep anything they killed. The following day, Probus had 400 lions and 300 bears stabbed to death, because the public apparently still wasn’t satisfied with all the free ostrich meat they’d received the day before.
According to legend, the hero Orpheus was a musician of such skill that he could charm all living things with nothing more than a lyre. The Romans loved this legend and tried to recreate it many, many times. They’d dress a condemned criminal up like Orpheus, give him a lyre, and then throw him into an arena full of angry bears, normally ones that had been starved or beaten. Sometimes, though, the Romans would put a further twist on the myth and crucify the man playing Orpheus before exposing him to the bear. Mostly, however, the Romans were a little more sporting and the criminal was free to defend himself with the lyre he’d been given. This went about as well as you’d expect. Then again, it could have been worse . . .
Besides the bestiari, arena competitors included better-trained, voluntary fighters called “venatores.” Carpophorus is likely the most famous of them all. He once killed 20 wild beasts in a single day, straight-up strangling some of them to death. However, Carpophorus had another talent that we want to discuss today. Along with being an expert killer of animals, he was also a rather skilled trainer of them. Carpophorus trained multiple animals, including giraffes, to rape women. To accomplish this, Carpophorus would wait for female animals to be in heat so he could collect samples from them to arouse the male of the species. Carpophorus would then rub these samples against slaves or homeless women he’d tempted to the arena. According to one account, “Carpophorus used up several women before he got the animals properly trained.” The reasoning behind such madness was, like with the sad case of prisoners forced to dress as Orpheus, to reenact Greek or Roman myths. In particular, these involved Zeus, who liked to take the form of various animals before having his way with women. One story involves a woman accused of poisoning five being raped by a jackass, before Carpophorus ended the ordeal by releasing wild animals into the arena to ease her suffering.
If you hadn’t already guessed by now, the Romans didn’t exactly take good care of the animals they intended to fight or kill. Most animals, to save on the cost of housing and feeding them, would be killed outright after each games, since, well, replacements were easy to come by. However, exceptions existed. According to the famed Roman philosopher Cicero, one lion in the arena killed an astounding 200 men before it was finally slain. Other notable animals include the group of 18 elephants who stormed the crowd in an escape attempt. The elephants were originally to be killed by a group of men armed with darts, but they smashed through the fence separating them from the crowd. To stop this from ever happening again, the Romans placed a large trench between the arena and the crowd for future events.
Perhaps the most cruel aspect of all is that the animals brought to the arena never really needed to be killed. We don’t mean that killing animals for sport is wrong—the Romans had little patience for that argument. We mean that the animals proved perfectly capable of entertaining the crowds while staying alive. For example, trained elephants who danced, bowed, and did other tricks delighted the crowds. In fact, elephants were noted as being one of the only creatures the crowds didn’t like to see being killed. Writers of the era note that spectators would boo upon seeing elephants killed, thinking them smart and gentle creatures. Other stories tell of the crowd being in awe of just seeing crocodiles sit in a ditch full of water. That’s it—no one stabbed them, and they didn’t fight anything. People were happy just to look at them, as though in a zoo. Another time, a crowd of thousands once sat and laughed their heads off at the sight of a bunch of leopards running in a straight line. The crowd was literally just as happy to see the animals run in a circle or sit and do nothing, but the Romana decided to kill them anyway to spice things up.

Facts about Gladiators

Fact 1 The first recorded gladiatorial fight was staged in 264AD when three pairs of slaves who were selected to fight at the funeral of a prominent Roman

Fact 2 The word ‘Gladiator’ was derived from Gladius which was the Latin word for sword

Fact 3 Gladiator games were seen as a method to appease the Roman gods and avert Rome from disaster

Fact 4 Gladiatorial combats were first fought in wooden arenas. The first stone built amphitheatre in Ancient Rome was called the Amphitheater of Statilius Taurus was built in 29 BC. The Roman Colosseum was built in 80AD

Fact 5 Nearly 30 types of gladiators have been identified

Fact 6 The role of the Gladiator became big business in the Roman Empire. Political careers could be launched on the back of spectacular games. Large sums of money could be won by gambling on the outcome of gladiator fights

Fact 7 The games organised by Julius Caesar, on the death of his daughter Julia, featured 320 matched pairs

Fact 8 Roman courts were given the authority to sentence criminals to death fighting as gladiators

Fact 9 Slaves, criminals and prisoners of war were forced into the roles of the first gladiators

Fact 10 By the period of the Roman Empire free men started to enrol as gladiators. Some were ex- soldiers, some wanted the adulation and the glory and some needed money to pay their debts. A Free gladiator was called Auctorati

Fact 11 Gladiators were allowed to keep any prizes or gifts they were given during gladiatorial games

Fact 12 Entrance to the gladiator games was free but spectators, between 50,000 – 80,000 were issued with tickets

Fact 13 Trainee gladiators were called Tirones or Tiro

Fact 14 Female Gladiators, some noble and wealthy, appeared in the arena
Fact 15 42 different Roman Emperors witnessed the carnage at the Roman Colosseum

Fact 16 Catervarii was the name given to gladiators when they did not fight in pairs, but when several fought together

Fact 17 Bestiarii (Beast Fighters) were the gladiators who fought wild animals

Fact 18 The Praegenarii were the ‘opening act gladiator’. This type of gladiator only used wooden swords, accompanied to festive music.

Fact 19 Elite types of Gladiators were the Rudiarius who were gladiators who had obtained their freedom but chose to continue fighting in gladiatorial combats

Fact 20 Gladiatorial schools “Ludi Gladiatorium”. The gladiator schools also served as barracks, or in some cases prisons, for gladiators between their fights.

Fact 21 New Gladiators were formed into troupes called ‘Familia gladiatorium’ which were under the overall control of a manager (lanista)

Fact 22 At the end of the day the gladiators who had been killed were dragged through the Porta Libitinensis (Gate of Death) to the Spoliarium where the body was stripped and the weapons and armor given to the dead gladiator’s lanista.

Fact 23 Prospective gladiators (novicius) had to swear an oath (sacramentum gladiatorium) and enter a legal agreement (auctoramentum) agreeing to submit to beating, burning, and death by the sword if they did not perform as required .

Fact 24 Gladiators often had tattoos (stigma, from where the English word stigmatised derives) applied as an identifying mark on the face, legs and hands.

Fact 25 Trained gladiators joined formal associations, called collegia, to ensure that they were provided with proper burials and that compensation was given to their families.

Fact 26 The early enemies of Rome included the Samnites, the Thracians and the Gauls (Gallus) and gladiators were named according to their ethnic roots

Fact 27 Gladiators were always clothed and armed to resemble barbarians with unusual and exotic weapons and their fights depicted famous victories over barbarians and the power of the Roman Empire

Fact 28 One of the most famous gladiators was the Emperor Commodus (177-192 AD) who boasted that he was the victor of a thousand matches. The Roman Emperors Caligula, Titus, Hadrian , Cracalla, Geta and Didius Julianus were all said to have performed in the arena.
Fact 29 The Emperor Honorius, decreed the end of gladiatorial contests in 399 AD

Fact 30 The last known gladiator fight in the city of Rome occurred on January 1, 404 AD.

I talked about your book here 🙂

http://fangirlsuniquecritique.tumblr.com/post/105112135273/book-that-i-am-excited-is-coming-out-soon.

I would like an arc so I could read it and share it around with the people at my work. My co-workers are avid readers and they loved the ascendance trilogy almost as much as I did 🙂

I want this book because after reading the ascendance trilogy, I have fallen in love with your writing. No author has made me love books as much as you did and I noticed that my writing skills have improved significantly after reading your books. Even though I have already read Mark of the Thief in the library, I feel that I need this book because it is worth reading over and over again because I have never been so happy to read.Thank you for being an amazing author and I hope to be able to get a copy someday.