ROME — The gladiators charge each other with a great clashing and crashing of arms and armor. The combat rages until Atropo snares Taurus’ sword with her net, twists Taurus off balance and batters him to his knees. She whips a dagger from her boot and applies it to his jugular. “Hah!” she snarls. “Now comes the moment when I cut your throat.”
A spatter of applause echoes in a workout room at the Sport and Fitness gym in Ardeatina, an outlying neighborhood of Rome. Atropo helps Taurus pull off his helmet, and the two become 21st-century Romans again: Giulia Mazzoli, a mosaic artist, and Michele D’Orazio, a construction worker.
Some people play Dungeons & Dragons in their spare time; veteran students at the Rome Gladiator School hone their combat skills in a compound that resembles the set of a low-budget swords-and-sandals movie. Their historic re-creation is an all-consuming discipline that expresses the essence of their identity: citizens of Rome.
