This is the first story in my upcoming collection Noteworthy Battles. Other stimulating showdowns include Ulysses S. Grant v. Robert E. Lee, Stalin v. Hitler, John F. Kennedy v. Lyndon Johnson, Hillary Clinton v. Monica Lewinsky, Ernest Hemingway v. F. Scott Fitzgerald, and many others. Noteworthy Battles will be published in the spring of 2026.

Oh, I suppose you could accuse me of planning to kidnap Caesar and Mussolini, but ethical considerations are irrelevant. My historic task is to bring them together in the ideal place to wage war against each other. I don’t want to risk the still dangerous adventure of time travel just to offer either of these charismatic heathens the opportunity to turn me down and then execute me. No, I move fast into Roman nights and, as they sleep, use needles and tubes to hook them to the most marvelous computers yet created and bring first Caesar and then Mussolini into the year eighty-one A.D. when the new Colosseum is updated for our needs.

After the esteemed warriors have been medically examined and allowed to eat and sleep for a day in their spartan cells, I send two guards to escort each man into my office. As the guards stand at attention inside my door, I rise and introduce the combatants and with gusto say, “Welcome to Rome.”

“This isn’t my Rome,” says Caesar. “What is the meaning of this violence?”

“Who are you?” Mussolini demands.

“I’m the promoter of this existential battle between the two of you, and delighted to report that you’re both still box office. Romans are daily battling each other to acquire tickets that cost the twenty-first century equivalent of a million dollars apiece.”

“I refuse to be treated like a slave,” says Caesar. “I won’t fight.”

“Nor will I,” Mussolini says

“You’ll obey my rules or suffer your historical fates.”

“You don’t know our fates any more than we do,” says Caesar.

“I know yours, Caesar.”

Looking disgustedly at Mussolini, he says, “I doubt it. You appear to be a peasant.”

“Caesar,” I say, “the Duce and billions of others know about your ignominious end. And I, of course, know about his horrific passing. Don’t worry about what you don’t know. You’ll soon be going to war.”

“I demand to know my fate,” Mussolini says.

“I’ll give each of you a historical summary of your lives. You can study in your cells until the main event which begins in three hours. But don’t waste too much energy on scholarly pursuits.”

At the appointed time indicated on my glistening wristwatch, I lead my twelve finest gladiators to the cells of Caesar and Mussolini, order their doors be opened, and state, “This way, gentlemen.”

Neither dignitary moves. I’m an impatient man and quickly tell the gladiators, “Get them,” and they rush in and pull them out of their cells and I lead a solemn phalanx through stone tunnels and finally onto the world’s grandest stage where a roar envelops us. Mussolini, short and muscular, thrusts his jaw and nods his shaved and shining dome while Caesar, a little taller and leaner than his opponent, briefly places a hand on his head to ensure his hair is still brushed forward to cover encroaching baldness.

In the preceding weeks, as part of the ticket package, my staff and I publicly provided much oral and written information about the two leaders, and the enlightened legions have chosen their favorites, chanting, “Hail, Caesar, Hail, Caesar” or “Duce, Duce, Duce.”

After ordering my gladiators to station themselves in a pen on the opposite side of the Colosseum, I pause and examine faces in the throng before I turn to the combatants, point at two cages, and by microphone announce, “Get in your cages. Caesar, the one on the left is yours. Mussolini, the other is yours. Get in.”

They don’t respond, so I march to my private box in the third row and remain standing as I shout, “Turn loose the beasts,” and from individual cages nearby a rhino storms in, followed by an elephant, a lion, and a crocodile, and the two men hasten inside and shut the barred doors.

With gusto I point to four men who’ve committed unspeakable crimes, and shout, “Throw them in,” and several guards wrestle and shove them onto the battlefield.

The elephant ignores the barbarians being chased by other beasts and seems not to notice when the lion catches his prey from behind, a huge paw on each shoulder pulling him down, and bites off part of his head. The man running from the rhino stops and turns, an unwise choice, though I suppose it wouldn’t have mattered as two tons of muscle launch him fifteen feet where he lies dead and misses the lion’s next kill as well as the crocodile running with astonishing speed before opening an enormous mouth to envelope a human face.

Remember the cheers you’ve heard at big fights and football games, then forget them. Our fifty thousand spectators resound like a thunderstorm, but their excitement will soon fade if the elephant keeps lazing around, feeling invincible, while the lion and crocodile devour their meals and the rhino searches for vegetation. Turning to my dozen shielded and sword-bearing stalwarts, I order, “Pair up, open the gate, and attack.”

The rhino steamrolls the first man and outruns the second before trampling him. The elephant grabs the frontal assailant, using his trunk to lift and repeatedly smash the man into a stone wall surrounding the battlefield. His partner attacks from behind and, with several sword strikes, slashes the elephant’s left rear leg, igniting a ten-ton-trumpet. Other gladiators note this tactic and attack their beasts from front and rear. The lion and rhino easily dash away from traps and ignore the men until they try another futile assault. The crocodile merely pivots between attackers, shooing them away.

“What say you, Romans?” I ask over the loudspeaker.

“Caesar, Caesar, Duce, Duce,” they demand.

“We still have combatants engaged before us.”

“Death,” they shout, thrusting thumbs down.

I look at the men and demand, “Finish them.”

The poor elephant, already limping, is soon bleeding from all four legs and lying on his massive side as three gladiators slash and stab him. That thrills the crowd and so does the lion killing two more gladiators before others surround and hack the beast into eternity. The loudest eruption occurs as a huge African gladiator administers a vertical sword strike through the crocodile’s head. The damn rhino, evidently the most formidable beast on earth, continues to trample those unable to evade him and would have sustained his offensives but tires and stops running.

As four great beasts lie on the hot Colosseum dirt, I shout, “Are you ready for the main event?”

From around the Colosseum, Romans thunder, “Yes… No more preliminaries…This isn’t what we paid for.”

I see the gladiators as brave servants and over the microphone tell them, “Well done,” and then I pronounce, “When the battlefield is cleared, we’ll proceed…”

Gladiators and guards lead a few large horses pulling carts and everyone works fast to drag away limbs and corpses. Julius Caesar and Benito Mussolini, despite what they witness, play stoic leaders, the Duce brandishing his chin and Caesar disdaining everyone. I march onto the field and say, “Gentlemen, please leave your cages.”

As instructed both men march to the epicenter of the Colosseum and stand five paces apart. Equidistant from the combatants and two paces back, I raise my right hand, look at each, and slice the air.

“All Romans are shamed by your arrogance and incompetence,” says Caesar.

“A pity, Caesar, that your bloodlust so quickly alarmed opponents who plotted to remove you. Despite living in a time of exceptional armies and leaders – Hitler, Stalin, Roosevelt, Churchill – I alone controlled this city and the Italian nation for two decades.”

“Then you and Clara Petacci were shot and hung by your feet upside down prior to being cut down and stomped into the land you had so shamed and tormented.”

“Spare me, Caesar, you who condoned spectacles such as we’ve witnessed today.  I desired to be a great conqueror, for Rome as well as myself, and attacked Ethiopian savages to found an empire.”

“In fact, Mussolini, you lacked the skill to defeat even a slice of France when Germany was throttling the rest of the nation, and then you were routed by the Greeks two millennia after their greatness. You’re synonymous with threatening the strong and attacking the weak.”

“Enough of your impudence,” the Duce declares, charging Caesar and grunting as he butts him in the jaw, planting him on his rear. Caesar spins, leaving vacant ground for Mussolini’s dive, and braced by his shoulder and bicep counters with a kick to the side of the Duce dome. Mussolini struggles up and clenches his fists, edging in, looking to strike, and throws a right Caesar blocks with his left and a left Caesar parries with his right before the Roman kicks Mussolini in the groin, gouges his right eye with long left fingers, right hooks the sinking Duce to the left temple, and clinching both hands hammers the back of his neck, driving him into the ground where he kicks the bald head once before I push Caesar away and begin to count, one, two, three…to ten, and raise Caesar’s right hand.

“Romans, what say you?”

“Death,” they shout, thrusting thumbs down.

“Finish the show,” I say, and the gladiators encircle us.

George Thomas Clark on Amazon