Gladiator, by David Franzoni; fiction, pgs. 130- 140

The gladiators in the slave wagon/caravan were headed to the gates of Rome, and the slaves could see nothing outside from the caravan, but Proximo, at the front of the slave wagon saw all too much. Rome looked a lot different from when he last visited it five years ago. It had completely turned into an armed camp, when they stopped at the gates, the guards demanded papers, which they handed small documents to them. They also pulled off the tarps covering the slaves in the back of the wagon, the guards appeared to be Praetorians. He studied the slaves, Maximus first, it seemed as if these two have met before, they were staring each other in the eyes, but the guard just continued to study the rest of the slaves, eventually, they let the wagon in. Everyone looked so much poorer and dirtier, than he remembered, it just showed how good the new services, and council were to Rome(under Commodus). Once the slaves got out of the wagon from their long journey, and stretched on the courtyard, there were many marvelous sights; the gladiator school (Poximo's), and the giant marble fountain, and the giant statue of Mars, the war god, were the ones in front of them, and you would think they would be the first things you notice, but what caught their attention first was the unbelievably huge behemoth of a statue at the end of the courtyard; in the coliseum. It took up a fraction of the sky, and you could hear the 56,000 people screaming for blood. It was the statue of the grand school compound. They were all put in prison cells and waited to be picked for the next battle.
Here it starts to begin the action for real, after there long, boring, journey, they finally get to Rome, where some might die, and you're not getting out easy. Everything in Rome had changed, and later, a little boy came named Lucius, son of Lucilla, and I think the emperor. The battle starts in the next pages.

Fratricidal:The killing of one's brother or sister, or sibling.