Above all, be a Roman my son

It’s a spring day in 2008, but it might as well be 130AD. It’s baking hot, there aren’t many other people braving the early-afternoon sun, and the few sounds reverberating behind the stone walls of the hippodrome are in Latin, exchanged men almost exclusively wearing sandals. As an instant history lesson, it is perhaps as close a facsimile of life on the Eastern fringes of the Roman Empire at its height as you will find: well-practiced discipline sprinkled with some showing off, plenty of fraternal banter and, perhaps, a collective desire for a few more minutes in the shade. Even before the men of the Sixth Legion – sorry, Legion VI – enter the arena in the northern Jordanian city of Jerash, where they will entertain tourists and schoolchildren with a faithful recreation of Roman army fighting techniques, including gladiatorial combat and dust-caked chariot race, the Roman Army Chariot Experience has more authenticity than any number of repeats of Ben Hur, the recently-deceased Charlton Heston’s 1959 epic.

Conceived as a living history project by an international group of enthusiasts as far back as 1998, and unleashed three years ago by former soldiers looking for gainful employment after a decade or more of real military service, RACE provides a real-time glimpse of what this outpost might have looked like 1,900 years ago. And three years of struggles, doubts and a two-month closure – as well as a launch that coincided with the triple terrorist attacks on Amman in November 2005 –it is now not only turning a profit, it is the biggest regular live show of any kind in the Middle East. 

 

But Ben Hur is why we’re here. The death of the square-jawed, gun-loving, deeply earnest Heston has filled every television schedule with endless re-runs of the landmark movie, whose three-plus hours of revenge and religious redemption has, in the popular mind, been distilled into a 20-minute chariot race. Part in homage, part in getting out of he office for a few hours to relive some childhood fantasies, we decided to come and pay a visit to the only men alive who know roughly how it feels to be a 1st Century Roman in Judea. 

 

One man who seems as delighted as anyone with his new role is Firas – or Firax, to give him his stage name  – who served for more than a decade in Jordan’s special forces. A boulder of a man, he also was a body-builder and had worked in a nearby gym before grabbing the chance to be a gladiator – “dragged from a Gerasa dungeon”, as the loud-speaker narration has it. The on-stage posing of his earlier sporting pursuit clearly comes in handy for the shameless muscle-flexing he provides the minute a tourist or a camera comes within three feet. “How about one like this,” he says, wielding a sword for optimum bicep bulging. “Or this,” as a melon-sized fist clenches the handle to reveal a road-map of distended veins on his forearm. “He is a real exhibitionist,” says Adam al-Samadi, the presenter of the show, who is happy to leave the fighting, mock or otherwise, to the others. 

 

As one of the principal gladiators, Firas not only gets to show off his gym-swollen body but display a menace that borders a little too closely on the authentic. His sword fights with other “undesirables” are longer and more intense than the others, and the metal clashes with genuine fervour. And he has the scars to prove it. “This one is the newest,” he says, pointing out a jagged scar on his right index-finger, the result of an opponent’s blunt-edged sword crashing past a parry and onto his knuckles. “You can see that in almost exactly the same place I have two or three older ones. And then there’s my head…”

 

He parts his hair to reveal a soft white bump, proving that however much training or rehearsals a former soldier can engage in, sword fighting is never entirely risk-free. “I was hit here by accident,” he recalls, “and I didn’t even know I was cut until I tried to wipe away what I thought was sweat from my head. My hand and shoulder was suddenly covered in blood and I had to quickly exit the scene!”

 

For the full version of this article, see NOX 22.