Gladiator begins with the roman General Maximus leading his army to victory against the germanic tribes. After the battle, the emperor, Marcus Aurelius, tells Maximus that he believes that his son, Commodus, is unfit to rule and wants Maximus to succeed him. Maximus asks for time to consider his offer, which Aurelius understands. In the meantime, he goes to tell Commodus of his intentions, who, instead of being understanding like Aurelius expects, kills Aurelius on the spot. Commodus declares himself the new emperor to the public, and asks for Maximus’ loyalty, which he refuses to give. Commodus puts Maximus under arrest and sends his men to go to Maximus’ home and kill his family as punishment. Maximus is put to death but in secret, and Maximus is able to fight his way out and escape his captors. He manages to make it back to his home and bury his family, but collapses from his injuries. Some slavers find Maximus and take him away, where he is sold to the gladiator trainer Proximo.

Maximus fights in local tournaments and shows and gains popularity. When Proximo takes his gladiators to Rome to fight in the Colosseum for Commodus’ special event, Maximus wears a mask to hide his identity. Proximo’s gladiators, including Maximus, are told to fight in a reenactment of the Battle of Zama on the side of the Cartheginians, who historically lose. However, Maximus leads his friends to victory, and Commodus enters the arena to offer his congratulations. He asks Maximus to remove his mask, which he reluctantly complies to. Commodus reels at seeing Maximus alive but is not able to demand he be killed on the spot because of the crowd. Maximus swears he will get his revenge. Commodus tries to kill Maximus by giving him increasingly more difficult gladiator fights, but Maximus wins them all while also becoming even more popular among the Roman people.

This whole movie has not been very historically accurate, but the ending is especially ridiculous. After Maximus is convinced to try to take Rome by force in a conspiracy from Commodus, the plan is leaked by Lucilla’s son and Commodus’ nephew, and Commodus successfully prevents the conspiracy. Instead of handling this in private like a rational being, Commodus challenges Maximus to a duel in the Colosseum to try to regain the favor of the people, which would just never happen realistically. Commodus stabs Maximus in the back before the fight to gain the upper hand, but even still, Maximus prevails. Maximus ultimately succumbs to his wounds, but he is able to call for the gladiators to be freed and Senator Graccus to become the new emperor in Commodus’ place, ultimately completing the goals of the conspiracy. Ultimately, the movie felt more like a story that the writers wrote and then framed in the context of Rome for popularity rather than taking real inspiration from history.

    After taking three college-level courses about Roman culture, language, and history, Rome: Rise and Fall of an Empire, a documentary series produced by the History Channel, was rather underwhelming. Most of the content was historically accurate, drawing extensively from the writings of Plutarch, and including interviews with a range of classics professors from universities across America, but it was not made for serious students of Rome. The first episode focuses on the decade-long battle between the Romans and the Cimbri in the late second century BCE, and the second episode studies the gladiator revolt led by Spartacus in the 70s BCE. Actors move through scenes of military camps and battles while a narrator leads the viewer through the story, occasionally broken up by a few sentences from an expert.

    Every few minutes, the show would mention some concept about Rome; glory in battle, resistance to the new, the cursus honorum, political corruption, or the like. Each time, the description of the concept would be shallow and incomplete. Since the first few episodes (and judging by the titles, the rest of them as well) focus on militiae over domi, everything was viewed through the lens of foreign military campaigns. Additionally, the show glossed over the important fact that many gladiatorial fights were not to the death, after playing up the lengthy, rigorous training and the expense of maintaining a fighter. I know that this is better in the context of a TV show meant for a casual and easily distracted audience, but I could not help feeling a bit disappointed. 

    However, the show did manage to give me a new perspective on some particulars of Rome. Throughout Roman Revolutions, I noticed how often Roman armies would suffer a terrible defeat at the beginning of a war, before turning the tide in later battles and eventually securing victory. In the first episode, one of the experts pointed out a key reason why this happened, which I had not considered before. This reason was the yearly re-election of the consuls, combined with Roman resistance to novi homines occupying positions of power, even if qualified. The responsibility of military leadership thus fell on consuls who were often inexperienced in matters of war, and it is these untested officials who would lead the first Roman army to defeats, as Gnaeus Papirius Carbo did in 113 BCE, and as the praetors Glaber and Varinius did in 73 BCE.

    I was also pleasantly surprised by my ability to fill in the gaps left by the show. In the second episode, when the narrator mentioned Pompey’s victory over some “dangerous rebels in Spain,” I instantly remembered the key details of the Sertorian Revolt. In the previous episode, I recalled our in-class discussions about the extent to which Marius’ reelection to the consulship was a paradigm shift for Roman politics, which was briefly touched on by the show, but not explored in detail. Roman Revolutions has provided me with an excellent base of knowledge, and has prepared me well to understand and think critically about content relating to Rome.

The film Cleopatra is an interesting story that follows a large sum of Cleopatra’s life up to the point of her untimely demise. The first part of the film covers Cleopatra and Julius Caesar’s relationship. With the help of Caesar, Cleopatra is named queen of Egypt. Cleopatra starts to plan for a future with Caesar. She fantasizes about the two of them ruling the world together. Cleopatra and Caesar ultimately marry, and Cleopatra gives birth to their son. After returning to Rome, Caesar becomes the dictator. He extends an invite for Cleopatra to join him in Rome. Shortly after this Caesar is assassinated. When his will is read, however, it recognizes Caesar’s adopted son to be his heir rather than his and Cleopatra’s son. Cleopatra leaves Rome to return to Egypt.

Eventually Antony and Cleopatra begin an affair. This affair is ruptured when Antony must marry Octavia to prevent political unrest. Cleopatra is furious and eventually Antony divorces Octavia and marries Cleopatra. This sparks controversy and through a series of events Rome declares war on Egypt. At the end of this war Antony is tricked into believing that Cleopatra has killed herself, which he responds to by ending his own life. Cleopatra’s son is killed during the war. Eventually, Cleopatra is then offered by Octavian that she might rule Egypt but now as a province of Rome. The film ends with Cleopatra, with the the help of her assistants, taking her own life.

Despite some obvious dramatization, this film did a great job of showing some of the absurdities of Roman politics. I had no idea how deep Cleopatra’s involvement in some of these later Roman political moments was. I also had no clue what the actual relationship dynamic between Caesar and Cleopatra was before this. I feel as though it can sometimes be undersold as a brief affair in which Caesar spent a bit of time in Rome, but it was ultimately a fling. This film showed that that was very much not the case. Because our class mostly covered the time period up to this point, I also didn’t know much about Mark Antony. It was very interesting to learn about his involvement/relationship to all of these moments in history. I had also somehow missed in history that Cleopatra took her own life. I feel like this movie filled a lot of gaps in my historical knowledge about this era, while also being very entertaining.

This past week, I have watched the first couple of episodes of Season 1 of HBO’s Rome. The show begins with an insight into the relationship between Gnaeus Pompey Magnus and Gaius Julius Caesar. In the first episode, we are also introduced to Lucius Vorenus and Titus Pullo. We see Pullo disobey Vorenus and get publicly shamed, something that I believe we learned about in class as punishment. Caesar is depicted as winning the long war against the Gauls as his daughter, and Pompey’s wife dies during childbirth. Cato the Younger then pushes to strip Caesar of his powers, yet it is Pompey who comes to defend him, even though secretly, he too is worried by Caesar’s powers. We then see Vorenus dragging Pullo along on a mission to retrieve the Aquila, as he thinks it is bound to fail. Later in the first episode, I see another reminder of something from class, which is the idea of omens. After Octavian is rescued by Vorenus and Pullo, he says that the theft of the Aquila is actually a blessing for Caesar.

One thing I found interesting in the first couple of episodes is the idea of friendship, or amicitia. Friendship in the show, between Pompey and Caesar, and even Vorenus and Pullo to an extent, is shown to be complex and has many motivating factors, like that which we learned in class. Pompey talks about Caesar as his friend and defends him against Cato, yet it is a façade. He cannot actually jump the gun and reveal his true feelings fearing how this might end up affecting him. With Vorenus and Pullo, we see Pullo disrespect Vorenus and Vorenus consequently punishing Pullo, yet Vorenus frees him and brings him along for the rescue mission, showing that there is a sort of contract within the friendship. It was interesting how Caesar and Pompey were putting on an appearance of friendship, while both were secretly plotting to attack the other. Whoever breaks the friendship, however, might end up having less political sway because they are viewed as attacking first. This theme of appearance versus reality fits in line with exactly what we had learned in class and shows the intensely political nature of many of these relationships.

Richard Lester’s A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Forum, depicts the a slave named Pseudolus and his attempts to become a free man. Pseudolus has been trying to buy his freedom for quite awhile, until he sees the perfect opportunity to get his freedom by helping his master Hero, obtain the girl of his dreams. Hero promises Pseudolus his freedom if he can help Hero marry a woman named Philia, who lives next door in the house of Lycus, which is a house of courtesans. Pseudolus is able to improvise a plan to help young Hero, as his parents are out of town and cannot control the actions of either Hero or Pseudolus for the time being. The pair discover a roadblock in their plan, when Lycus informs the pair that Philia has just been sold to a heroic Roman captain who is coming to retrieve his new wife in a matter of hours. The pair decide to lie to Lycus and declare that a plague took over her country of Crete and that she the plague. They say they can look after her until the captain arrives and Lycus agrees. At first, Philia is reluctant to marry Hero and wants to honor her contract, but then the two fall in love, and Pseudolus and Hero hatch a plan to flee with Philia and to marry in secret. When soldiers of the captain visit Lycus, they declare the bride must be ready in an hour and if she is not, then his house will be ransacked and the rest of his women will be taken. Pseudolus decides to trade places with Lycus, to try and better his and Hero’s chances of fleeing with Philia. Once the captain of arrives, Pseudolus does his best to stall until Hero can return with mare sweat to create a sleeping potion for Philia. Eventually, Pseudolus uses another slave, Hysteria, as a decoy of a dead Philia to try and trick the captain that his bride has died. The captain is at first fooled, but Hysteria “rises from the dead” after the captain declares he will cut the bride’s heart out in honor of her. Pseudolus, Hero, Philia, Hysterium, Lycus, and another women Gymnasia all try to flee Rome and lead the captain and his soldiers on a chase through the countryside.

Eventually they are all caught and brought back to Rome, but it is revealed that both the captain and Philia are the long-lost children of Hero’s next door neighbor, Erronius. Erronius had been a long journey to find where his children went, but once he returns home, he is able to see that the captain and Philia are his children. In the end, everyone is happy, as Hero gets his bride, Pseudolus is now a free man, and even the captain gets 2 new brides. The movie is played out as a comedy and musical and was very enjoyable to watch.

Monty Python’s “Life of Brian” explores Jerusalem during Roman occupation through the story of one resident named Brian. The movie offers a ludicrous yet somewhat compelling picture of what the Roman Empire looked like in the early first century CE. There are Roman names, architecture, customs, speech, and even some traces of Epicureanism are present.

The film opens with newborn Brian’s cradle being visited by the 3 wise men who soon realize they have mistaken Brian for a newborn Jesus Christ. In fact, Brian’s life follows a somewhat similar path to Jesus’ and they both end up meeting the same fate. Next, Brian is seen as an adult with his mother attending one of Jesus’ sermons, however he is too far away to hear anything. After attending a stoning of a heretic, Brian spots several members of the rebel group known as the People’s Front of Judaea (not to be confused with the Judaean People’s Front). This scene and the whole story of the People’s Front of Judaea is analogous to the constant revolts we learned about during the republic in Italy, Spain, and Gaul.

After a poorly planned abduction of Pontius Pilate’s wife goes awry, Brian lands in front of Pontius Pilate himself, set for a certain death. Brian pleads that he is a Roman citizen because his father was a Roman centurion. This made me think of the phrase “Civis romanus sum” as it was uttered by Cicero in the trial of Verres and the utmost importance that both fatherhood and citizenship had during the Roman Republic. However, Brian escapes death because his guards are incapacitated by laughter after learning of Pilate’s friend “Biggus Dickus”. After our lesson on the importance of Roman names, I understood that Dickus must be a (unfortunate) family name with Biggus as his given name. Though Biggus is certainly an unfortunate given name with Dickus as the family name, at least the father was kind enough not to give his son the name Smallus. 

Brian escapes captivity via an impersonation of a religious prophet; however, he soon gains a (accidental) religious following who views him as a messiah. After being chased around and stalked by his prodigious following, Brian is recaptured by the Romans. His religious status must have made the Romans even angrier seeing how Rome reacted to the Bacchanalian affair, and anything that could be viewed as private or subversive. Brian is forced to carry a cross and is crucified; however, the occasion does not dim the spirit of his fellow convicts who proceed to cheerily sing a song named “Always look on the bright side of life”. This is the attitude of the Epicureans who did not fear death, instead suggesting that since death cannot touch us in life, there is nothing to fear. In fact, a line in the song embodies the epicurean spirit as it reads “I mean, what have you got to lose? / You know, you come from nothing / You’re going back to nothing / What have you lost? Nothing.” The film ends with the condemned happily embracing the spirit of Epicurus as they enter the twilight of their lives.