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.