Lucy Lawless   Role: Lucretia (lu-cree-shuh]   John Hannah   Role: Quintus Batiatus








 
 

The beautiful and self-possessed wife of Batiatus, Lucretia is her husband’s foundation, always supportive of his dreams, however wild the direction they threaten to grow. Though conscious of the role she’s expected to play as a proper Roman woman, the ideas she and her husband cultivate and the company they are prone to keep means Lucretia continually stretches the bonds of propriety. Though initially reluctant to carry some of their schemes through to the end, Lucretia will discover that when the moment most needs it, she has a true talent for manoeuvring the levers of power.
 

 







 
 


Batiatus is one in a long line of gladiator owners in his family, and at the time of the prequel, with his father away attempting to regain his health, has newly come to inhabit the role. Bold and impulsive where his father is restrained and conventional, Batiatus wishes to seize more for himself, to rise beyond his father’s station. With his wife Lucretia ever by his side fueling his ambitions, Batiatus schemes beyond his reach.




 

Jeffrey Thomas  

Role: Titus Batiatus

  Peter Mensah   Role: Oenomaus [en-uh-may-us]








 
  Father to Batiatus, Titus is frail and ill of health yet still looms large as a commanding, paternalistic voice of discretion in his son’s life. Titus is a man of tradition, a proud
master of gladiators who is devoted to the old ways and disapproving of his son’s departure from them. His conservative instincts are triggered by the audacious initiatives
of Batiatus and Lucretia, throwing them all into greater and greater conflict, which threatens the house he’s given everything to build.




 
 







 
 

Oenomaus is who we already know as Doctore. But at this time he is not yet the rigid disciplinarian who will come to reign over the ludus as the gladiator trainer. He is not far
removed from the status of top gladiator at the House of Batiatus, having only recently survived his fight with the legendary Theokoles. He longs to return to the sands of the arena and reclimb the peak he feels is rightfully his, but he is yet a slave like so many others and bound to the notions of his masters. He finds himself caught in the middle of much turmoil, his status seized between the generational conflict within the house, between old loyalties and new responsibilities.

             
Dustin Clare   Role: Gannicus [gan-uh-cuss]   Manu Bennett   Role: Crixus
 


A true physical specimen, fearless in the arena and possessed of a thirst for the fleeting pleasures of life, Gannicus is the gladiator a girl’s mother doesn’t want her to bring home. Newly promoted to the top position at Batiatus’s ludus, Gannicus is best friend to
Oenomaus and his wife Melitta, forming an unlikely triangle of loyal friendship

   

The future Champion of Capua is at this time a newly purchased recruit enlisted into Batiatus’s gladiator school. Crixus revels in the opportunity put before him, to become a gladiator, to reap the glory that he’s always longed for. But to attain it, he’ll have to start
at the bottom of the gladiator food chain and fight the titans above him.
 

             
 Nick E Tarabay   Role: Asher    Lesley-Ann Brandt   Role: Naevia
   Having just arrived with the new batch of recruits, along with Crixus, Ashur is swept up in the grueling fight to survive and prove himself worthy enough to secure standing as a gladiator. When it quickly proves difficult for him to advance on pure physical ability
alone, he must call on his more devious gifts in order to assure his place.
Read AUSXIP Interview with Nick
      Naevia is new to Batiatus’ villa, and soon learns that the position of female slave is vulnerable to both her masters’ bidding and the random turn of fate.


Read AUSXIP Interview with Lesley-Ann

             
Craig Walsh-Wrightson   Role: Solonius   Temuera Morrison   Role: Doctore
  The future rival of Batiatus, Solonius is at this time a friend, trying to do what he thinks best in attempting to navigate a path between Batiatus’s bold enterprises and his own
position at the foot of Capua's elite powerbrokers.


 
    Gladiator Trainer
             
Jaime Murray   Role: Gaia   Marissa Ramirez   Role: Melitta
  A long time friend of Lucretia, Gaia arrives unannounced in Capua, bringing along her taste for certain vices. On the prowl for a new husband, endowed with beauty, sexual adventurousness and an artful mind, she lends her assets to the cause of her friends, stoking their schemes.
 
    Personal slave to Lucretia and wife to Oenomaus, the lovely and dedicated Melitta struggles to balance the small portion of freedom she's attained within the villa. Subjected to the careless whims of her masters, she finds herself caught up in a web of desire and betrayal that threatens to tear apart her fragile place in
the world.
             

Stephen Lovatt

  Role: Tullius   Antonio Te Maioha   Role: Barca
 
Tullius is the man that Batiatus would like to be. He sits at the head of Capua’s elite class, steeped in money and rank and fearing no other’s ambition. This is the man who holds the proverbial keys to the kingdom and he has no interest in loosening them from his grip without extracting a painful cost from those beneath him.

 
   

Barca is one of the most accomplished gladiators in the Batiatus stable, prized by his master for his prowess inside the arena and his skill and discretion in the service of less noble missions outside of it. Despite the brutality of a gladiator’s way of life, Barca exhibits a capacity for deeper feeling rare among his brethren.
 

Gareth Williams   Role: Vettius   Josef Brown   Role: Auctus
  Vettius is a young upstart lanista benefitting from the patronage of the powerful Tullius. This relationship enables him to fight his gladiators in the best position in the games, to the exclusion of Batiatus' gladiators. Vettius' proximity to Capua's influential class, and his unearned posture of superiority, makes him a target of Batiatus' ambition.     Gladiator and Barca's lover.
             

Jessica Grace Smith

  Role: Diona   David E. Woodley   Role: Petronius
  Naevia's best friend and slaves in the house of Batiatus     Character description coming soon