Playmobil do a huge range of excellent History sets! Quite a lot of them are discontinued but the pieces are pretty easy to find on EBay if you just want "Romans" or "Vikings" etc and aren't too bothered about a specific original set with all the exactly correct pieces...
I acquired a Roman amphitheatre set-piece and a biscuit tin full of assorted History figures and we took it to an actual Roman theatre in St Albans to play with. This site was probably used more for plays than gladiatorial death-matches but it was still useful in picturing the ring of sloped seating around a central pit etc in more famous and blood-soaked locations.
The Playmobil Emperor and his wife enjoyed a full programme of Roman events, starting with a chariot race, then some professional gladiators trying their various different weapon combinations against each other, then a match between some enslaved Egyptian and Celtic warriors (the most promising to be trained up as future gladiators) and finally two unrepentant Christians to be thrown to the lion. There was a slight diversion from the pre-arranged programme when one of the Celts refused to do what he was told and ended up getting thrown to the lion early, meaning that the lion was then too full to want to eat a Christian later, so the gladiators had to perform some executions instead (the Christians refused to fight back).
We were on site for an hour and a half and could happily have stayed longer, although without the Playmobil a visit to the site alone would probably have only lasted as long as it took to walk around the ridge path and back, and glance into the next field - maybe twenty minutes.
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