ATTENTION NEW GLADIATORS!
It is our pleasure to greet you and introduce you to life here at the Coliseum. We know you’re all excited to start running around killing literally everything that moves, but before you do we here at the welcoming committee wanted to take a few moments to say hi (hello!) and tell you about how things work here. We promise it won’t be TOO boring.
Small detail to get out of the way: for those of you who were brought here as slaves, prisoners of war ripped away from your families to serve as fresh meat for a bloodthirsty Roman Empire whose soul died long ago, and are wondering if there is any chance of eventual freedom and return to your homeland, quit your worrying now. There is absolutely no chance of you ever being freed, and your families and friends are all most likely dead!
Now, as for sleeping arrangements. There will be four to a room. Each room has two sets of bunk beds, and won’t that be fun! But seriously guys, no fighting over the top bunk. Save that energy for the arena because if you kill a guy with a top bunk, the unofficial rule is that you have just won his bed. Also, if you like, you can eat his heart.
Meals will be served everyday in the cafeteria at 5am, 11am and 5pm, except on fight days because we find the whole ‘hunger for blood’ thing really only works if you are actually hungry. Please remember to wash your trays.
Cleanliness and hygiene are actually a top priority here at the Coliseum. So before you go to bed every night, make sure you wash out any sand, blood, mud, dried blood, blood that looks like sand or mud, dirt and blood that won’t come out no matter how much you cry and curse the Gods for your fate from your body and clothes.
And speaking of bed, lights out is at 10p.m. sharp and we have a strict ‘no overnight visitors’ policy. If a fair lady or lad (we don’t discriminate, I mean its 15 BCE for Apollo’s sakes) sees you in the stands and wants to see your other spear (not the one you’re forced to use to mercifully finish off injured colleagues with after a fight is over, we mean your penis), then take them out back to the orgy house - that’s what its there for.
Now, as to the rules for when you’re actually fighting in the arena:
There are none.
We mean it though. Go fucking nuts.
Just remember to say a big thank you to the crowd and Emperor when its all over. They are the reason you get/are forced to be here after all.
That about does it for us. Thanks so much for agreeing to live by the community standards we have set up! We can’t wait to get to know you all better. We’re sure that we will all soon become really good friends, even though that will likely make your incredibly imminent demise all the more difficult for us.
From:
The Welcoming Committee. A.K.A. Judy and Peter.
P.S. We’ll be meeting tonight at 8 for an introductory gathering. We’re going to play name games and eat cookies. Last one there has to fight 5 tigers tomorrow!
Luke Gordon Field is a writer, history nerd and stand up comic in Toronto. His Twitter is very important to him.
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