“The Christian Martyrs Last Prayer” by Jean-Léon Gérôme (1824 – 1904). Credit: Courtesy of Walters Art Museum, Wikimedia CommonsView full size image

The enormous arena was empty, save for the seesaws and the dozens of condemned criminals who sat naked upon them, hands tied behind their backs. Unfamiliar with the recently invented contraptions known as petaurua, the men tested the seesaws uneasily. One criminal would push off the ground and suddenly find himself 15 feet in the air while his partner on the other side of the seesaw descended swiftly to the ground. How strange.

In the stands, tens of thousands of Roman citizens waited with half-bored curiosity to see what would happen next and whether it would be interesting enough to keep them in their seats until the next part of the “big show” began.

With a flourish, trapdoors in the floor of the arena were opened, and lions, bears, wild boars and leopards rushed into the arena. The starved animals bounded toward the terrified criminals, who attempted to leap away from the beasts’ snapping jaws. But as one helpless man flung himself upward and out of harm’s way, his partner on the other side of the seesaw was sent crashing down into the seething mass of claws, teeth and fur.

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Cristin O’Keefe Aptowicz is a New York Times best-selling nonfiction writer and poet, and the author of “Dr. Mütter’s Marvels: A True Tale of Intrigue and Innovation at the Dawn of Modern Medicine” (Avery, 2014), which made seven national “Best Books of 2014” lists, including those from Amazon, The Onion’s AV Club, NPR’s Science Friday and The Guardian, among others. Aptowicz contributed this exclusive article to Live Science’s Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights.