The Fighting Gladiator

When it comes to fighting manuals, no Paladin author is better known than Dwight McLemore. His Fighting Weapons series—including books on the tomahawk, staff, sword, and Bowie and other big knives—has earned him a legion of loyal followers. Now in a labor of love that took decades to complete, McLemore incorporates his eclectic knowledge of combat techniques into this long-awaited manual on the bloody and brutal sport of gladiatorial combat.

As always, McLemore's focus in The Fighting Gladiator is on training and fighting techniques. His book presents one-on-one, squared-off, dueling-type fighting in the context of a blood sport fought to the death before cheering crowds. To prepare this manual, McLemore scoured everything he could find—including scholarly papers, contemporary sources, and surviving pieces of art—to learn about gladiator fighting arts, including equipment, pairings with various opponents, how the gladiator games were organized and conducted, and the operation of gladiator training schools. From his research, he distilled his own curriculum featuring five types of gladiators from Rome's imperial period: the murmillo, thraex, provocator, dimacherus, and hoplomachus.

Richly illustrated with hundreds of McLemore's signature dynamic drawings, as well as dozens of specific combat training tasks and engagement sparring sets, The Fighting Gladiator is for martialists of all disciplines—or for anyone who just wants to learn more about the "sports superstars" of ­ancient Rome!