Those About To Die

by Daniel P. Mannix, Brian P Craig (reader)

1 pages, Audio CD

Published August 27, 2024

About the author

Daniel Pratt Mannix IV was best known as an American author and journalist. His life was remarkably different from other writers of his generation. His career included times as a side show performer, magician, trainer of eagles and film maker.

The Grest Zadma was a stage name Mannix used as a magician. He also entertained as a sword swallower and fire eater in a traveling carnival sideshow. Magazine articles about these experiences, co-written with his wife, became very popular in 1944 and 1945.

As an author Mannix covered a wide variety of subject matter. His more than 25 books ranged from fictional animal stories for children, the natural history of animals, and adventurous accounts about hunting big game to sensational adult non-fiction topics such as a biography of the occultist Aleister Crowley, sympathetic accounts of carnival performers and sideshow freaks, and works describing, among other things, the Hellfire Club, the Atlantic slave trade, the history of torture, and the Roman games. His output of essays and articles was extensive.

Reviews

[Joe Davoust · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this because it is listed as the basis for the Best Picture Oscar-winning movie Gladiator. There is no one-to-one character or plot matchup. Even though I thought it was non-fiction, there is so many perhaps and let’s say prefaces to every chapter that it might as well be fiction. It tells of lots of cruel Roman-times spectacles and I could see someone reading this then going on to produce the movie. The writing and research were fine but I was not comfortable with all the need to graphically detail the brutality. Maybe necessary, but not for me.

[Carl F · Rating 3 out of 5]

“Those About to Die,” something of a cult classic and the inspiration for the movie “Gladiator,” details the horrific gore and cruelty of the Roman gladiatorial “games.” To a lesser extent, striving to give us the “big picture,” it tells stories of the gladiators, emperors, politicians, animal trappers and trainers, bookies, slaves, etc., that made them possible. It is certainly an entertaining and even interesting book, if you like this sort of thing. (I do.)

But is it history? Historical fiction? A “nonfiction novel”? Whatever the genre, it’s impossible to tell whether Daniel Mannix actually got his facts right. Although he includes a bibliography of eight ancient and ten modern sources, he freely admits that some of his descriptions are based on stories and techniques related to him by a Seminole alligator wrestler in Florida, by “a Mexican gentleman I met in Tia Juana who was making 16mm stag films on [a rather gross subject]," and other moderns. Without a single footnote, who is to know whether to trust, or how to interpret (let alone refute), what we’re reading? “History” it’s not.

So what is this book? It is most definitely not a novel, although much of it is clearly fiction. Long sections, Mannix admits, are conflations of multiple threads. Chapter VI opens with this sentence: “Borrowing heavily from Martial, Seutonius and other Roman writers, let’s picture a day at the Colosseum at the time of the Emperor Domitian …” Another long section begins: “From various sources, let’s create the character Fulcinius…” In trying to breathe life into the games, Mannix even invents dialogue (in a distinctly anachronistic late-1950s vernacular), which is an unnecessary distraction. All this frustrated me; as did Mannix’s repeated but inanely superficial attempts to explain why these games were held at all and why they became increasingly brutal over their centuries-long run. All this may have frustrated the book’s editor, as well, whom I imagine resigned rather than bother with the final chapter, which contains more obvious typos in 20 pages than I’ve seen in the last 50 books I’ve read, combined. That sloppiness does not instill confidence in the details.

Nevertheless, it was indeed an interesting book, and I haven’t read a single review or article refuting Mannix’s “big picture.” Even though much of it is fabricated, then, I think we can conclude that his big picture is somewhere in the vicinity of the truth. That’s probably all we can ask, and I am content to think about it as “history-ish.”

[Noah Goats · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book is bad and you should not read it. The problem with Those About to Die is that the author mixes fact and fiction. For example, early in the book he describes a chariot race and he is clear that what he’s doing is creating a fictional chariot race based on details of races reported in the historical sources, and it’s fine as far as it goes. But as I kept reading it became clear that he was making up a lot of stuff to add color, but without being careful to point out what he was making up. There was one story in there about a “Norseman” fighting a Roman officer in the arena and it sounded fake to me, I could not google my way to anything about it on the internet, and I have to assume it was fake. As I kept reading I found more and more details that sounded fake, and many that I knew to be incorrect or related in a way that was highly misleading.

So, what can the reader believe in here? In the first few pages of this I was really loving it as Mannix provided details about Roman sports that I hadn’t heard before, but when it became clear that no detail was to be entirely trusted, my enjoyment of this book fell off a cliff. A book of history that you cannot trust is useless. Worse than useless.

This is an older book that Amazon has reissued in a cheap Kindle edition. They should have left it in publishing oblivion. I didn't finish it and I recommend that you never start it.

[Cassandra Corrigan · Rating 2 out of 5]

While certainly interesting, Mannix definitely takes liberties with the truth. As many historians have pointed out, Mannix makes quite a few claims, especially as it pertains to female prisoners, that have no credible source. I understand how people can find the book compelling or fascinating, but to call it totally non-fiction is a stretch.