Scott says the film is intended as a work of dramatic fiction rather than as a carefully recreated work of near-documentary realism. Photo / Paramount Pictures
Ridley Scott’s latest epic takes his usual sledgehammer to the historical record – but it also sticks curiously close to the facts.
Contains spoilers for Gladiator II.
Nobody goes to see a Ridley Scott film expecting historical accuracy. When his most recent epic, Napoleon, opened at the end of 2023, it was criticised for everything from the 49-year-old Joaquin Phoenix playing the 35-year-old Emperor to a scene in which Napoleon orders the pyramids to be fired upon to hasten the surrender of the enemy forces. Scott dealt with his naysayers in a typically robust fashion, suggesting that they “get a life” and, when it came to historians doubting the film’s verisimilitude, he commented, “Excuse me, mate, were you there? No? Well, shut the f*** up then.”
Even if his new picture, the blockbuster sequel Gladiator II, enjoys the critical and commercial success that it deserves – Napoleon was met with mixed reviews and an indifferent box office – he will still face another round of nitpicking about the film’s more egregious dramatic inventions.
Scott will argue that the film is intended as a work of dramatic fiction (“Are you not entertained?”) rather than as a carefully recreated work of near-documentary realism. Yet even on its own terms, some of the scenes in Gladiator II seem outrageously unlikely, as well as historically illiterate, all of which work against the film’s meticulous recreation of the world of the Colosseum and other iconic Roman landmarks. Leaving aside the perfectly white teeth of stars Paul Mescal, Denzel Washington and Pedro Pascal, there’s plenty for historians to, well, grit their teeth about.
Here, then, are some of the film’s most outlandish myth-making – as well as a couple of moments where, surprisingly, it looks like Scott may have been on the money.
Partly accurate
Just as the first Gladiator picture began with a barnstorming battle sequence – the Roman empire versus the Germanic hordes – so the second one starts off with a magnificently staged set-piece in which Paul Mescal’s Lucius and his wife Arishat are called upon to defend their homeland of Numidia from a full-scale Roman invasion, led by Pedro Pascal’s general Marcus Acacius. It is only a small spoiler to reveal that Lucius and his comrades are soundly defeated and sold into slavery, after a thrillingly choreographed sequence of warfare in the ancient world.
There is some accuracy, at least, in the depiction of the Roman conquest of Numidia, but the timing is wholly inaccurate. Eastern Numidia, which roughly corresponds to modern-day Algeria, was conquered in 46BC, leading to the creation of the province Africa Nova shortly afterwards. The action of Gladiator II is set roughly sometime between 200 and 211AD – we’ll come back to that in a moment – which means that, even in the film’s universe, Numidia would have become a Roman outpost hundreds of years before the opening suggests.
Partly accurate
In the first Gladiator, the saintly Marcus Aurelius is murdered by his jealous son Commodus (Joaquin Phoenix), who assumes the position of Emperor of Rome, only to be justly dispatched himself in due course by Russell Crowe’s vengeful Maximus.
This may use a great deal of historical licence – there is no certainty that Marcus Aurelius was killed by anyone, let alone his son – but Commodus certainly did succeed him as emperor, and eventually was assassinated by the athlete, and slave, Narcissus by being strangled in his bath.
In the sequel, the dream of democracy that appeared to be a possibility with the death of Commodus has come to nothing: Rome is instead ruled by the twin emperors Geta and Caracalla, played by a scene-stealing Joseph Quinn and Fred Hechinger, a pair of dissolute sadists who relish the opportunity to cause as much mayhem and bloodshed as they can, both in and out of the Colosseum.
Although Geta and Caracalla did rule Rome together for a short period, after the death of their father Septimius Severus, a general who served originally under Commodus, in February 211AD. But in reality, they were not twins: Geta was slightly younger, being born in March 189 while Caracalla was born in April 188AD. But as the film depicts accurately, their reign was disastrous, bedevilled by poor relations between the two of them from the beginning.
However, while the film shows both characters being murdered, separately, by Washington’s power-hungry magnate Marcinus, in reality, Geta was killed on his brother’s orders in December 211AD by the Praetorian Guard, and Caracalla continued to reign by himself until his own assassination by a disaffected soldier in 217AD. He was so determined to erase all memory of Geta that he issued a Stalinist damnatio memoriae against all of his brother’s supporters and advisers, ordering that Geta’s name and memory be erased from history, and killing as many as 20,000 people in the process; this included Geta’s friends, personal bodyguard and political advisers.
This also suggests that the film is set in 211AD, with the ascent of the twin emperors to the throne, although this has its own internal problems. When Marcus Aurelius is murdered at the end of the original picture, the date is 180AD, and the character of Lucius is shown to be about 10, which would make him well over 40 at the beginning of Gladiator II.
Yet as the sequel opens, it’s suggested that Lucius has been away from Rome for around two decades, which would make him closer to 30 (and reflects the casting of the 28-year-old Mescal). This blurring of timelines isn’t the film’s most egregious messing around with history, but it’s undeniably noticeable.
Inaccurate
Although Mescal is the film’s nominal star, the stand-out performance is given by the most famous member of the cast, in the form of Denzel Washington.
He plays a character who comes on like a far more powerful, less benign version of Oliver Reed’s slave trader Proximo from the first film, a hugely wealthy and ruthless arms dealer who has set his sights on political influence. Macrinus eventually manages to have himself made second consul of Rome (first consul being Caracalla’s monkey) and comes within an ace of seizing power and declaring himself emperor after he murders Caracalla before being defeated himself.
This is all enormously entertaining in the context of the film, and Washington – reuniting with Scott after 2007’s American Gangster – proves a villain for the ages. Yet of the many nefarious characters who – sometimes very briefly – served as emperor, there was never any slave-turned-arms dealer who had any serious ambition to rule.
The closest comparison that can be made is with Maximinus “The Thracian” Thrax. He came from a humble background, worked his way up through military command posts and eventually assumed the role of emperor through skulduggery in March 235AD, only to be murdered by disaffected soldiers three years later.
Partly accurate
One of the film’s most outrageous and memorable set-piece moments comes when a full-scale naval battle is staged in the flooded Colosseum, much to the delight of the baying spectators.
Even when the scene was teased in the trailer, it looked both spectacular and a piece of Hollywood invention at its most egregious, but in fact, it has at least some basis in fact.
The naumachiae, as they were called, were not staged often, for reasons of cost and complexity, but when they were held, they made for hugely memorable entertainment. We have reasonably accurate records that were kept by contemporary historians of the events precisely because they were such rare and remarkable occasions; it is also likely that the final one was held over a century before Gladiator II is set, in AD80, before the sheer expense of the revels made them impossible to recreate. The Colosseum would be flooded using water diverted from the Tiber, and convicted criminals and prisoners-of-war would be placed in galleons and made to fight to the death.
The historian Cassius Dio describes the spectacle that ensued. “Titus suddenly filled this same theatre with water and brought in horses and bulls and some other domesticated animals that had been taught to behave in the liquid element just as on land. He also brought in people on ships, who engaged in a sea-fight there, impersonating the Corcyreans and Corinthians.”
Scott’s staging of this spectacle is magnificent, but there is at least one twist that is sheer invention. The flooded Colosseum is shown to be full of sharks, meaning that anyone who isn’t killed by sword or arrow is likely to be devoured by the amphibious terrors.
In reality, this is utter nonsense. Not only would sharks not have been imported from wherever Rome had conquered – how on Earth would they have been captured and brought back to the city? – but they cannot survive outside of seawater, meaning that their presence in a few metres of river water would be impossible.
Still, when asked about this particularly egregious piece of Hollywood silliness, Scott was amusingly robust. Although in an interview with Deadline, he said “I think what they did was put in big moray eels which can bite you hard. Whether they had a shark, I don’t know. But I thought, let’s go for the sharks”, a more accurate response came when he said “Dude, if you can build a Colosseum, you can flood it with f***ing water. Are you joking? And to get a couple of sharks in a net from the sea ... Of course, they can.”
Inaccurate
In one scene in the film, Tim McInnerny’s politician Senator Thraex is shown drinking a cup of tea or coffee while reading the morning newspaper. A thoroughly contemporary thing to be doing (although modern politicians would probably be scrolling on an iPhone), and wholly inaccurate. As the University of Chicago classics professor Shadi Bartsch has noted, “They did have daily news – Acta Diuma – but it was carved and placed at certain locations. You had to go to it, you couldn’t hold it at a cafe. Also, they didn’t have cafes!”
The printing press was not invented until 1440, and the first newspaper of any kind did not exist until 1566, when weekly handwritten gazettes were distributed in Venice. Coffee and tea, meanwhile, were unknown to the Romans, although it is just, theoretically, possible that Thraex could be drinking a herbal infusion of some sort, or that he has a cup of hot spiced wine in front of him.
Nobody is expecting Gladiator II to be a documentary, but compared to the broadly accurate first picture, it seems as if fantasy and invention have been the order of the day this time around. Still, if you’re expecting any kind of apology from Scott for his film’s latest round of inaccuracies, forget it. The director recently said “By the time you get to 2024, it’s all speculation”, thereby rubbishing decades – even centuries – of scholarship.
But those queuing up in their millions to be lavishly entertained by his long-awaited sequel are unlikely to nitpick too much.
Gladiator II is in cinemas now.
The Hollywood star is 70 but has no plans to retire from acting.