Ridley Scott’s Gladiator
is one of the best movies to come down the pike in a good long time. For two and a half
hours, Rome lives again in all its majesty and infamy. Again and again as I watched it, I
thought to myself, Yes, it must have looked very like this, as the Roman legions
slammed into the Marcomanni (I presume they’re the Marcomanni), the gladiators
marched stolidly into the Coliseum, as the depraved Commodus wandered the halls of his
palace on the Palatine. The performances of the actors live up to the grandeur of the
visuals. Russell Crowe is absolutely perfect as the courageous, moral general Maximus, and
Joaquin Phoenix presents us with a marvelously evil Commodus. It’s great to see Sir
Derek Jacobi back in a toga, some twenty years after I, Claudius. Richard Harris
has only a few scenes in which to delineate Marcus Aurelius, but he makes them count. And
all of the minor characters are marvelous.
Scott has presented us with a story
based on the characters and settings of Rome, 180 A.D, as the last great Roman emperor,
Marcus Aurelius, is succeeded by his dissolute and worthless son Commodus. What many
viewers may not realize is that these characters are used entirely fictitiously. I was
asked, for instance, “Was Commodus really like that?” “No,” I had to
reply, “he was worse.” It’s worthwhile to take a look at the real
history behind Gladiator.
First, a few small errors I noticed.
All of the horsemen use stirrups, which no Roman did. This was probably less a historical
slip than a safety issue. Secondly, I’m not entirely sure if at the time the film is
set the Coliseum was known by that name. It very likely was still referred to as the
Flavian Amphitheater, which is indeed its proper name. Some of the battle tactics were
dubious; the Roman infantry should have held its line better when they hit the barbarians,
and they failed to throw their pili—the short javelins they
carry—before contact with the enemy. The normal Roman tactic was the hurl the pilum,
draw the gladius, the Spanish short sword from which we get the term gladiator,
and cut the enemy to pieces, something the Roman legions were wonderfully good at
for about 700 years.
Now, the historical setting. Richard
Harris is a marvelous Marcus Aurelius, but he looks far too old—Marcus was only
around 60 when he died, on campaign somewhere in Germany. Marcus was the last in a line of
truly great Roman emperors, Nerva, Trajan, Hadrian, Antoninus Pius, and Marcus himself. Of
this period of Roman history, Edward Gibbon, the greatest of historians, aptly wrote,
“If a man were called to fix the period in the history of the world during which the
condition of the human race was most happy and prosperous, he would, without hesitation,
name that which elapsed from the death of Domitian to the accession of Commodus.”
Marcus was a courageous, intelligent, and noble man who spent the greater part of his
reign campaigning against the German barbarians, a war Rome unfortunately never won (it
has recently been suggested that modern history might have been considerably less
sanguinary had Rome been able to civilize the German tribes). His one fault was his
indulgence of his family. He was tolerant of his wife’s infidelities and of his
son’s obvious worthlessness. In Gladiator, Commodus travels to Germany in
the hope that his father will proclaim him his heir. In fact, Commodus had been made
co-emperor four years before Marcus’ death (of natural causes—he caught a plague
while on campaign in Germany). Historians since have puzzled over Marcus’ choice of
his son as heir. Since the death of Domitian, the Roman emperors had practiced a system of
choosing an heir by adoption, giving them the opportunity to select the best man available
to take the job. Thus Marcus and Lucius Verus, co-emperor for the early part of
Marcus’ reign, had been adopted by the emperor Antoninus Pius, just as Antoninus had
been adopted by Hadrian, Hadrian by Trajan, and Trajan by Nerva. Michael Grant has
suggested that no suitable adoptive heir was available to Marcus. Gibbon comments dryly
that Marcus “sacrificed the happiness of millions to a fond partiality for a
worthless boy.” Whatever the reason, when Marcus died, Commodus became sole emperor.
One gets the impression from Gladiator
that Commodus ruled about twelve weeks, but in fact he ruled for twelve increasingly
horrible years. Gibbon argues that “Nature had formed him of a weak, rather than a
wicked, disposition,” but I am inclined to disagree here with Gibbon. Commodus was a
thoroughgoing monster, perhaps the most totally evil of any of the Roman emperors. He
makes Nero, Domitian, and even Caligula look pretty good by comparison.
During the first three years of his
reign Commodus reigned fairly mildly, keeping most of his father’s advisors in place.
Then, an assassination attempt appears to have turned him completely paranoid, and he
turned against the Senate and killed many of its most distinguished members, along with
their entire families and their retainers. He also murdered members of his own family.
When he wasn’t having people executed, he entertained himself with a succession of
concubines and slaves of both genders. One of the more amusing charges against him, in the
Augustan History, is the scandalized comment, “It was seldom that he did not
call for every kind of cooked vegetable for a banquet, to provide continuous luxury.”
But Commodus’ favorite diversion
was gladiatorial combat. Unlike earlier emperors who had merely viewed the games, Commodus
decided that his height of ambition was to be a gladiator. At first he practiced his
skills only on animals. Gibbon records that Commodus able to behead moving ostriches with
arrows. A panther would be released, to leap on an unfortunate victim in the arena, and
before it could do so Commodus would kill it. This was startling enough, but the Roman
people were horrified when Commodus actually entered the games as a gladiator. It is
recorded that he fought over seven hundred successful bouts. He even wanted to be
addressed, not by his own name, but by that of a famous gladiator he admired.
Finally, after twelve years of
increasing terror, Commodus was the victim of a plot prepared by his favorite concubine.
She fed him poison, and when it failed to kill him, he was strangled to death by a
wrestler.
Pertinax, a virtuous man who likely
would have made a good emperor, succeeded Commodus. Unfortunately, the Praetorian Guard
were disappointed at the amount of money he paid them, and had him murdered. They then
offered the position of emperor to the highest bidder. It is from the reign of Commodus
that Gibbon dates the beginning of the decline and fall of Rome, and we cannot disagree.
It is sad to compare the hopeful ending of Scott’s film with the truth.
Suggested reading:
The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Vol. 1, by Edward Gibbon
The Lives of the Later Caesars (also known as the Augustan History)
History of Rome by Michael Grant