Blood & Sand

Dan Snow heads back nearly 2000 years to explore what it was like to go to a sold-out show at the Colosseum, first as a spectator and then as a gladiator! Finding out how to get a ticket, what you'd see, where you'd eat, even where you'd go to the loo. A day at the Colosseum was an assault on the senses - the roar of the beasts and crowd, the stench of blood, the spectacular and gruesome sights.

These amazing games needed incredible staging too, all intricately worked from deep underground. Dan travels to the surviving amphitheatre at Pozzuoli to explore how this hi-tech backstage worked - this packed area of ropes, pulleys and levers was the real inner workings of the show. An elaborate set of lifts and traps would launch fearsome animals onstage from nowhere or even a troop of battle-ready gladiators!

Dan digs deep into the truth about gladiators. We might instantly think of them as the traditional Hollywood hunk, but they would have come in all shapes and sizes and were the ultimate Roman sex symbol. Dan discovers from sex-historian Kate Lister that women even bought the sweat of fighters to use as the ultimate aphrodisiac perfume! There are plenty of myths that grew around these mysterious men, from graffiti that portrays them just like today's football stars to the likelihood of dying in the arena. But what would life really be like as a gladiator? What's the truth behind the stories and how many gladiators lost their lives on the Colosseum floor? Dan discovers the surprising reality.

Dan also explores the other events put on in the arena. There were specific spectacles for each set of games, from parades of exotic animals, beast hunts, music and criminal executions. There were even fights between women.