The Movie "Gladiator" in Historical Perspective
by Allen Ward, University of Connecticut
Except for a love of the games, there is not much that is historical about “Gladiator’s” version of Commodus. In the movie he appears to be in his mid-to-late twenties, is of average build, has dark hair, and fights with his right hand. In reality, he was only eighteen and a half when Marcus died, had a very strong physique, sported golden blond hair, and fought with his left hand. Moreover, he was not single, as the movie represents him. In 178, at the age of sixteen, he had been married to Bruttia Crispina, and it was not until after the conspiracy of 182 that he divorced her for adultery and executed her.
The picture of Commodus as a man starved for paternal affection, lusting after his sister, and finally murdering his father to avoid the ultimate rejection of being passed over for as his father’s successor has some support in the often tendentious and sensationalistic sources. The Life of Commodus in the notorious pastiche of fact and fiction known as the Historia Augusta takes pornographic delight in depicting the drunkenness and sexual excesses that every ancient rhetorical hack stereotypically ascribed to a tyrannical ruler. Ironically, Lucilla is the only sister with whom he is not accused of incestuous relations, but the filmmakers are to be commended for not focusing on the biographer’s unreliable charges to make “Gladiator” into another cheap sexploitation epic of Roman Imperial orgies.
One might argue that the serious nature evident since boyhood and the self-control of a Stoic philosopher, which was clearly demonstrated at the death of Commodus’ twin brother, would not have made Marcus Aurelius a very warm or demonstrative parent. Nevertheless, the picture that emerges from his correspondence with his beloved teacher Cornelius Fronto and from his own Meditations is one of a kind, sympathetic, and affectionate man. Indeed, it is hard to imagine that he had at least fourteen children with his wife of thirty years simply out of a grim sense of Stoic duty.
The idea presented in the movie that Marcus had decided to pass over Commodus and restore the old free Republic is ludicrous. Nobody, not even the real senators who plotted against Commodus, wanted to restore what people today think of as the Republic. The office of emperor was a recognized necessity. The main source of friction between the emperors and a number of senators was the question of how that office should be filled. Leading senators wanted to be able to choose a mature man of experience and proven merit from their ranks. The soldiers, however, always favored hereditary succession by birth or adoption, and without dynastic loyalty, it was too easy for an ambitious general to use his soldiers to contest the choice of a new emperor other than himself.
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