Joycee’s Reviews > The Gladiator's Mistress > Status Update

Said Acestes to the Phaedra...

THE Phaedra. 🤣

Oh, no. Antonice is following in her (deceased) mother’s footsteps ... she seeks men for companionship, not necessarily for marriage.

And she is only 16?

And ... she’s back. Four years older (and wiser?). And now widowed, too. Did she and Marcus ever consummate their marriage?

And Valens’ mother is likewise no longer in this world.

I turned twenty annums two months past. That is not so young.

Twins were unusual and sometimes even considered bad luck, but not so damming that it needed to be kept secret.

DamNing?

Valens came to the ludus at 15 or 16. (His sickly younger sister was 5.) He has been at the ludus for 8 years.

That makes him 23 or 24.

He struck me as older. Maybe that was “old” in those days.

Yay! I can do math! 😆

Lanista: a trainer of gladiators in ancient Rome

Which is what I surmised that word meant, from context clues.

Sure enough ... “I bring honor to my ludus, the gladiator school that trains me, and the place I have called home for the last eight years.”

Ludus: “The senator had been good enough to send guards back to the ludus where Valens lives and trained as a gladiator.

Wikipedia says that “ludus” had several meanings from ancient Rome, one of which is “training school for gladiators”.

Triclinium: a dining table w/couches along 3 sides used in ancient Rome; a room containing such a table