Rome - The first lesson at the gladiator school of the Roman Historical Society stressed discipline. "You are slaves, and that is how I will treat you," Giuseppe Coluzzi barked at eight adults fidgeting in short white togas.
Coluzzi, who used the name "Korakos" in the arena, glared at them icily. There were a few snickers, but mostly, the five men and three women who signed up last week to learn how to fight to the death, listened raptly through two hours of gladiator history and combat theory.
"I have always been a Roman history buff, but I want to relive it more intensely," Giuseppe Pecorelli, an employee of a German multinational corporation, explained. "It is one thing to read histories or Roman poetry. I want to get in touch with my warrior side."
The Roman Historical Society, which has about 100 members, was founded in 1994. The members devote most of their time to staging Roman scenes and battles for pageants and town fairs. But the society, which had long hoped to open a gladiator school, seized the coat-tails of the recent Hollywood hit, Gladiator, starring Russell Crowe, to begin offering classes this month.
But the school does not sanction real bloodletting. Mostly, students are taught how to choreograph combat, both to savour simulated savagery and, eventually, to perform gladiator combat the way it was done in the Colosseum more than 2 000 years ago.