The story begins with an unnamed Thracian's involvement in a unit of Roman auxiliary in a campaign against the Getae (Thracian tribes that occupied the regions of the Lower Danube, in what today is Bulgaria and Romania, ancestors of Romanians) under the command of the legatus, Claudius Glaber.
Noting well the Thracian's fierce raw talent and popularity with the masses, Batiatus purchases him for training within the walls of his ludus under the tutelage of Oenomaus, a former gladiator and fellow slave who is known to the gladiators as 'Doctore', meaning instructor.