Splendour and Savagery, Man Against Beast, woman against Fiend.

These are the ingredients of Arena, a big, new novel of the days of the Roman spectacles, when gladiators fought savage beasts to entertain the bloodthirsty populace, when the bored playboy emperor Nero sought new atrocities to perpetrate on his enemies, on his subjects, and on the women who had once been his to dally with and were now his to destroy.

It's hero: a bestiarius, a freed man trained to pit his life against the fangs and claws of enraged man-killers. It's story: the tale of his effort to raise himself above this daily horror, to save the woman he loved from unspeakable infamy, to save Rome itself from the monster who ruled it.