Review - Gladiatrix

When I received Russell Whitfield

In response to:

http://www.unrv.com/forum/index.php?s=&amp...ost&p=99704

From where I am, inadvertently or not, by posting some of your material without giving too much spoilers you may be exciting the curiosity of some potential future readers, like yours truly.

By now, I have the impression that "Ileanna" (real of stage name?) is most likely your main protagonist (at least for this chapter), that she was the definitive winner of those three and that "Pyrrha" (a Greek one? Red-haired?) was the first one to fell, presumably after some meaningful dialogue; that your amphitheatrum had a huge female section and that not all their gladiatrices were thraeces.

Hi Sylla...

If I'm being honest, the thought of enticing new readers with this sort of thing never really occurred to me (but hey, if it works great, and I'm hugely grateful that you're even interested!). That truly was a twilight zone moment - I had just typed it and thought - I'll have a look at UNRV, and there was the comment. And previously, Nephele had offered up a HUGE list of possible gladiatorial names which I duly used as a resource - or stole if she's going to sue me...).

Really, its taking me so long to write the damn thing that if it ever comes out, everyone will have forgotten this thread anyway. The truth is that only way I can say "thanks" to people who have helped me with writing the book is to put them in it (and kill them in the bloodiest manner possible) - it must be fun to read a passage in the bookshop and snigger to yourself thinking "that's me, that is." Well, I hope it is - of course, I've mentioned UNRV as a whole in the acknowledgements of this book too, so if it does get into print at least ten more people will know about the forum....

I'll try to take your points here, though.

Aemilia Illeana is her "real" name and I guess she's really the antagonist. That said, when I write this stuff, I try not to have goodies and baddies for the most part. Her fighting name is Aesalon Nocturna - the Midnight Falcon. I called her this to honour the late, great David Gemmell who was one of my favourite writers (ever - I loved that man, even though I never met him!). She's the current Arena Regina (heh - I like that, though I don't use it the book) in Rome and has taken this Pyrrha under her wing as a bit of a side project - I have it that the autocrati tiros like Pyrrha don't get to fight in the Flavian at first, but are sent out to the countryside to blood themselves in smaller-scale fights before stepping up to the premier league, so to speak.

No, there isn't a female amphitheatre or anything like that. I try to keep it real in the sense that no matter how good the female fighters are, they're not the main event (mostly, though I'm going to cling to the spurious "by torchlight" reference for this book). And no, not everyone is thraex. I pair different types of gladiatrices (gladiatrixes - I can't make my mind up) against each other all the time, and they're not always classical pairings. I know this annoys scholars, but not everyone that reads the book will be a scholar and I like the variety. Conversely, how much do we know about female gladiators - not a lot save from the Halicarnassus frieze (ok, that is a classical pairing) and vague references (Medusa is really the expert on this stuff and has written some brilliant articles on here and her own site).

I figure that if the gladiatrix bouts weren't taken seriously then the same rules wouldn't apply - I mean, if they're going to send them up against pygmies I'm sure the mob isn't going to get cross when you have the non-classical female pairings. We have all these amazing gladiator types...dimachaerius, scissorius, paegniarius and so forth, I say lets some of them (and, on that note, why do we have all this different types? I read somewhere that in the provinces the rules were off too and that's where these styles were developed).

Historical accuracy is important of course and I try to keep it real much of the time but there's always going to be dramatic license: at the end of the day, I'm writing a fiction...almost historical fantasy some would say (and have said - reading your reviews is good for the humility let me tell you!). Women in the story have more freedom than was likely and I consciously downplay the "downtrodden, hellish life of the arena" side of things (and thanks, Discovery Channel, recent finds in Ephesus are saying that it wasn't as a bad as we've been led to believe for many of the fighters).

What I didn't want to do in either book was re-tread "Spartacus" with a female who hated her lot and wanted to overthrow the Roman empire and all that. What I have is a bunch of professional athletes who kill each other...I guess its more "Rocky IV" than "Gladiator" in some respects *lol*

Hope that hasn't totally put you off reading it now, though...

Cheers

Russ

Hi Russ,

Many thanks for pointing me out as being an expert on gladiatrices (BTW this would be the correct spelling of the Latin plural of gladiatrix as far as I know but I'm not an expert on Latin language though). For all who are interested in the article I wrote for this board as well on those of my website follow read this thread:

http://www.unrv.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=9890&st=0

Here you will find the links to the articles in question.

When I received Russell Whitfield

When I received Russell Whitfield