Do you like sites about gladiators?

September 19, 2013 4:17 PM

Do you like sites about gladiators?
I've been working on this for some time, due to a general dissatisfaction with the readers available on Roman spectacle and their costs. So I created a reader on Roman spectacles (with a shorter one on Greek spectacles to follow) with short introductory information, and a website to host it. The website is still being added to but I'm at the stage where I would love to have the opinions of people outside academia as to their impressions and what they'd like to see changed.

As it stands this is also functioning as a class website for a second year university class on gladiators and the design reflects that. But I'd really love to make it also a general use site, of value to those interested in ancient spectacles, and hence would love feedback on the site and the reader on Roman spectacles. What could I add? Is the layout confusing? Do I require too much background knowledge? Are there hideous typos everywhere?

Role: creator, writer

posted by lesbiassparrow (3 comments total)

I like it! At first I found the navigation a bit confusing - I'd say, try to get the horizontal bars that appear when you hover over a navigation link to appear immediately above the text, if possible. I'd also say add more pictures, even if they aren't directly relevant to the page you're viewing, just so that my eye has somewhere to wander over while I'm paused trying to absorb the last couple of paragraphs I've read.

The level of background knowledge required is okay for me, but I went to a liberal arts college that included a fair amount of material on Classical antiquity in the core curricula.
posted by XMLicious at 5:53 PM on September 19, 2013

I like it too! I would suggest adding more information about the types of venues: amphitheatres, circuses, stadia, etc. Some pictures would be cool too, to demonstrate the differences. Overall though, nice job!
posted by cvp at 6:23 AM on September 21, 2013

Thanks - I'm slowly adding some images and more information as the course progresses and I'll be adding more links and bibliography for those who want more scholarly information. But I'll try and add even more - as a literature trained person I tend to end up writing more and forgetting the importance of images, so it's a good reminder.
posted by lesbiassparrow at 4:44 PM on October 6, 2013