I have no idea if this is accurate historical fiction...somehow I doubt it. The story is actually not too bad though. It is somewhat unbelievable that a young slave boy could handle himself so well in his first major battle with no training and be one of 3 of 40 standing at the end.

This is not what bothered me though. The most irritating aspect is the language of the characters. It is not that of times. I doubt very much that anyone said "just kidding" in Roman times or "Go f### yourself" as well as other 20th century cliches. At times the author uses Latin in their speech and translates it...which is great as I took Latin once upon a time and it was fun trying to guess the translation. But it was this constant use of 20th century cliches that spoiled it for me. ( )