The Life of a Gladiator

PRISONERS
A Roman gladiator isn't necessarily a Roman, they can be a Gaul, but first a Roman has to catch one. The Roman's travel from Rome to Gallia and battle with the Gauls, then the Romans go back with prisoners who start a new life.

WHO'S WHAT?
Each prisoner will be sold to a owner who will decide if he'd be a quarry slave, a mine slave, a galley slave, a farm slave, or a gladiator. A Gaul would like to be a slave, but it's the owner's decision, not his.

SCHOOL DAYS
A new gladiator goes to school to train. He starts fights against a man of straw. He has to fight it, because everybody knows it can't fight back.

LUNCH TIME
A gladiator trainer can be bad tempered sometimes, especially in the kitchen. The cook will always make porridge, and ash for dessert, and for some strange reason, it's healthy food.

TROUBLE MAKER
Gladiators have punishments that aren't pretty sights at all. There are four different types of punishments: words get burned into a man's forehead, whipping on a man's back, locking a man in stocks, and putting a man in a cellar.

THE BIG DAY
After a gladiator's training is finished, he's a real gladiator. The crowd will be cheering, the band will be playing, the arena will be big, and most importantly, the emperor will be there.

THE BATTLERS
There's lots of different types of gladiators, there's: an Andabatus (has a helmet that covers his eyes), a Essedarius (a chariot rider), a Retarius (the only net fighter), a Myrmillo (has a dagger and a large shield), a Thracian (has a curved dagger), a Samnite (the only one with a visor helmet), a Dimachaerius (fights with two swords), Laquerius (the only lasso fighter), a Secutor (has a dagger and a medium shield), a Velitus (armed with a spear). Sometimes some of these gladiators are women. People can get killed in these games. If someone loses, they can die.

ACTION
Now the gladiators get into action as the games begin. The men (and women) get real weapons, putting down their practice wooden swords. The gladiators have to worry about three things; their opponent, their trainer who's watching them, and themselves. All the gladiators have to be careful, as they are fighting for their life.

NO MERCY
The winners of the battles will get victory, but the losers might die. If the fallen gladiator is still alive, he (or she) will have to raise one finger by the left hand and appeal to the Emperor will ask the crowd if he (or she) shall live or die. If the crowd hold their thumbs up the loser will live, if the crowd hold thumbs down, the defeated gladiator will die.

SHIP AHOY
There's lots of types of battles. The arena will be flooded with water in a sea battle, and galley slaves row the gladiators out to the arena to attack. The gladiators will be dressed as either Greek, or Persian soldiers.

ANIMAL ATTACK
Another type of a gladiator is a Bestiarius, who is a gladiator that hunts wild beasts such as lions, tigers, bears, and huge elephants. But the fierce, scary, hunting dogs don't fight the gladiators, they're on the gladiator's side. The Bestiarius gladiator has the most weapons out of all the gladiators. This battle is called a beast battle.

VICTORY
The winning gladiator of a fight will get silver dishes, palm branches and sestertii (Roman money) for prizes. As his, or her, opponent's body gets dragged away, the Emperor himself will be down in the arena to give out prizes. After heaps of victory, he or she, will get a wooden sword and become a trainer.

Fasinating Florida

Hello. It's me again and I'm in Florida. This apartment that I'm staying in has an extremely annoying elevator. If you press the up button on the outside, then when you're in the lift the speaker says 'going up'. If you press the down button on the outside, then the speaker says 'going down'. But actually you have to press another button, otherwise you aren't going anywhere!

Outside the apartment, there's a pool with a water slide that goes through a huge wooden pirate ship.

Our apartment only has windows that you can't open and there is no expel air over the oven. So there's no way to let out any black, smelly smoke. Lucky for me, there's a toaster in the kitchen that is like two toasters in one.

Looking out from our deck you can see heaps of trees. But far away in the background, there's some tall fat buildings. Whaea Hilary thinks they're sitting in the middle of nowhere, but I think there's a city back there.

The Blog of Blogs

Hey, you'll never guess where I am... You'll never know I'm in Paris. WHOOPS!! Well, umm, never mind.



Paris has a railroad underground called a metro, where the trains have both train wheels and tyres!!! Strange, isn't it? The first time we rode the metro, we were going to a science museum. In my opinion, science is incredibly awesome. There was a spiny thing that was getting blown up and around into the air. I bet you know what 3D means. I saw a 3D movie about dinos. The archaeopteryx looks like a great escaper, but this bird can't fly. Another movie was about planets. It wasn't 3D but the room was shaped like an enormous rocket nose. This was called the planetarium.



In a different section there was a human sized coffee table that was made out of glass and huge pieces of lego, isn't that cool? To me that was as neat as a rock star.



This blog isn't just about the museum - it's heaps of blogs in one. I also a boat trip where we saw some docked house boats. On one of the concrete bridges there were some hideous faces of the King's courtisans.



I bet you know a truckful about Romans, but you don't know much about Goths. We went to a Gothic church that was designed by an 'un-gothic man' who was a Goth history fan. The church was called Notre Dame. It had some shimmering treasure - it must have been worth a fortune. The church bells were strange. To ring the bells they pulled a rope, but now they can play a piano which will make hammers bonk the bells. The man who designed the church put statues of Jesus' friends and a statue of himself on it. What a self-care, boasting, show-off!



In Paris there is a place called the Lourve - AKA, the home of the Mona Lisa. I also saw some statues of some Greek and Rome gods like Zeus, Jupiter, Apollo, Minerva, Mercury, and Juno. Dad and I stood infront of a frustrated looking statue head and made some cross faces. No one was allowed to touch the paintings. If someone did the humungus security doors will quickly shut with a thundering boom.



Usually when we get off the metro, we go to a place called Champs-Elysese. One time when we were there I got a ride on a towel slide. I wished that New Zealand had all of this as I admired the statue of the tall stone Egyptian obelisk.

By Zeus

Before the Romans and after the Celts, were the Greeks. The wealthy Greeks had magnificent houses made of marble. Today I'm going to tell you about a Greek palace.

Some of the floors were mosaic tiles. There were two heavy baths that each weighed a ton. There were also two weird showers with a whole heap of taps that each do a different type of water spray onto people.

On the first floor there was a relaxation bath as big as a spa tub. Actually, maybe it was a spa tub...

The palace was actually built by a French man who admired Greek history, about one hundred years ago. A neighbour of the palace back then, was the man who designed the Eiffel Tower. Speaking of the Eiffel Tower, I'm going to Paris tomorrow.

Waves in Water

Ahhhhh, 'fishies', lovely little... Oh! Hello. Sorry, just got carried away. Hey, wait a minute, you're here to read my blog, aren't you? Well, OK then, yesterday we went to an aquarium and saw some fish.

In the first tank there was a fish that looked like it had horns. In the same tank there was some sharks lurking about and a big turtle hanging motionless in the water. In another tank there was a huge eel with little fish moving quickly across it, eating parasites off it. So the eel gets rid of parasites and the fish gets a meal. This is called symbiosis.

Want to know what was in another tank? Well, there were some super dads. Super dads have some special body parts. Each one has: a head like a horse, a nose like an aardvark, eyes like a lizard, a tail like an armadillo and a pouch like a kangaroo. Another name for a super dad is a seahorse.

OK then, next tank. It was a weird sight to see some fish that looked like worms sticking out of the ground. One of them usually had to duck quickly into the sand because a fish was after him.

Jellyfish were in two other tanks. Some were sitting upside down, making the ground look like it had wigs!

Now the building wasn't just an aquarium. There was also a turtle sub (an old time war sub) in another part of the building. I got to sit in it.

A whale hunting boat was in the next room, on the boat as a gun that was used to kill whales at top speed. Beside the boat there was some baleen . This is the stuff whales use to sieve the water to get food. Hanging down from the roof there was a huge whale skeleton. Imagine the sound of a whales song echoing softly and then it does a death scream as a harpoon hits.

On the way out of the building I saw a picture of an eel with a shrimp cleaning it's teeth like a living toothbrush.

Do you think this holiday of mine is cool? It is to me, and now, back to day dreaming about lovely fishies...

Wild Life

Who ever is reading this blog should have seen this park of wild life! Want to hear about it? Let's start with the otter. He was so cute and playful and seemed to enjoy himself. The prairie dogs were as cute as the otter and fat, only they didn't have any pool, so they probably couldn't swim. Iguanas were in the park too. They looked really lazy because they were very slow. Something is fishy about these other creatures, because they are ... fish! There were a lot of fish, for example, a shark and some stingray were lurking slowly about. Ick. In the aquarium there were also some bugs. No! Loads of bugs, such as very hairy spiders that didn't move much and scorpions that moved quickly, trying to escape. Do you want to know what moved even slower than the iguanas? The tortoises did, and the turtles moved as slowly as slugs, or snails maybe, except when they were swimming. The park had an ENORMOUS frog which I crept inside, and slipped down it's tongue. Want to know why? Because it was a slide! Have you heard of a pyramid? One was at the park. Well, it wasn't a real Egyptian pyramid, but it was shaped like one. It was a hedge, and when the breeze blew on it, it leaves shimmered.

Une Baguette

I went to a 'House of Pain' where they torture people. They tortured me, they kicked me, they punched me, they clobbered me, and psych! Did I trick you? The 'House of Pain' doesn't torture people. It isn't a house. 'Pain' actually means bread in French. So I went into the store, asked if I could have some bread in French, and the man gave me a pie in the face! Nope, he gave me some bread, hot bread that tortured my hands, so I gave it to Mum.