The Death Of The Film Gladiator

“There was once a dream that was Rome. You could only whisper it. Anything more than a whisper and it would vanish, it was so fragile.” (Gladiator). The movie Gladiator can be linked to many historical events in Rome. It demonstrates why people enjoyed watching others fight to the death and showed how that unified Rome by dealing with the daily struggles with death people faced during the reign of Commodus. Despite the movie Gladiator being accurate, the differences in history are salient.

To begin with, the actual movie is about a man named Maximus that was a war general during the reign of Marcus Aurelius. Prior to the death of Marcus, he asks Maximus to become emperor and restore the Republic back in Rome but before Maximus could answer, he suspiciously died in the hands of his son, Commodus. Commodus takes power and orders Maximus to be executed; Maximus is able to escape and make a journey back to his farm where he finds his wife and son murdered. After he buries his family, he gets captured by slave traders and renamed Spaniard. In his new life, Maximus trains to be a gladiator and becomes one of the most famous person to fight in the Colosseum. At the end of the movie, Maximus fights Commodus to gain back his fame, glory and avenge the loss of his family because “Brothers, what we do in life echoes in eternity” (Gladiator). The battle of death takes down the emperor and gives Rome back the Republic. Finally, Maximus is able to return back to his family and “smile at death” (Gladiator).

Furthermore, Gladiator was accurate to Roman history. Marcus Aurelius complained about his health and he was frail at the end of his life because he was dying of the plague. After his death, Commodus became to sole emperor...

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...st Commodus was still true, but all the unsuccessful conspirators were executed instead of left alone. One major inaccurate piece of the movie is who Maximus actually is. There was no general named Maximus. The name is said to come from a provincial family in Spain though, and the person likely to be depicted is Taruttienus Paternus who was an elite body guard for the Roman emperor and later executed for treason and part of the plot to kill Commodus. Ultimately, Gladiator was full of inaccurate events to the history of Rome.

Despite the movie Gladiator being accurate, the differences in history are visible. It demonstrates why people enjoyed watching others fight to the death and showed how that unified Rome during the reign of Commodus. “Ultimately, we are all dead men… We have to decide how to meet death in order to be remembered as men.” (Gladiator).