The Movie "Gladiator" in Historical Perspective
by Allen Ward, University of Connecticut
The ancient reports of Marcus Aurelius fearing that Commodus was an unsuitable candidate for emperor and that Commodus brought about his death are fictions designed to discredit Commodus and justify his overthrow. Contrary to the picture presented in “Gladiator,” Commodus was in fact joint ruler with his father from the beginning of 177, when Commodus became the youngest of Roman consuls up to that time. From August of 178, they jointly commanded the war on the Danube until Marcus’ death.
Marcus was not quite 59 when he died, perhaps of plague. “Gladiator” does capture his kindly and philosophical nature, but his decrepit frailty, thin beard, and wispy fly-away hair in the movie bear little resemblance to his statues, busts, and portraits on coins, even one depicting him at age 56. They show him as a fairly vigorous man with a full beard and a thick head of curly hair. Of course, official portraiture tends to improve on nature, and Aurelius himself complained of poor health. He also endured war and two winters along the Danube, and if he did contract plague in the second winter, he might even have looked preternaturally aged just before he died and as he appears in “Gladiator.”
Unfortunately, there are no portraits with which to compare the Hero of “Gladiator”, the Spanish general Maximus. He never existed at all. He is a pastiche, a composite portrait of the kind of able men from the provinces who were tangible proof of Marcus Aurelius’ insistence on promoting men because of merit wherever he found them. Like Marcus himself, Trajan, and Hadrian, the character Maximus came from a provincial family in Spain. His longing for home and family in the movie echo sentiments that Herodian attributes to Claudius Pompeianus, whose career as a military officer from the provinces resembled his in many ways. The man who most likely held the supreme field command in the great battle of 179 on which the opening scene is probably based was Taruttienus Paternus, senior prefect of the Praetorian Guard, who was later executed for supposed involvement in the plot of 182.
One wishes that the late Oliver Reed’s last character, the lanista or gladiatorial impresario Proximo were an historical character, but, of course, if he were, his name would be the Latin “Proximus” and not the Italian “Proximo”. Symbolically, perhaps, Latin gets butchered even more when Proximo brings his troop of gladiators to Rome where they enter a building labeled LUDUS MAGNUS GLADIATORES, instead of LUDUS MAGNUS GLADIATORUM. Finally, Proximo wrongly claims that Marcus Aurelius had banned gladiatorial contests and thereby forced him to leave Rome to scratch out a living in hick towns like North African Zucchabar, which, mirabile dictu, really was a Roman colony in Mauretania. In fact, Aurelius had enacted legislation to guarantee the continuance of gladiatorial games in hard economic times.
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