Ridley Scott is no stranger to historical epics… and creative licence. When the veracity of his 2023 biopic Napoleon was questioned by French critics, the ever-fiery Scott retorted back with the three blunt words: ‘Get a life.’
And his latest, Gladiator II, has already drawn the ire of historians. Details like a rhino ridden by a gladiator and sharks munching on unlucky combatants in the Colosseum have been raising eyebrows among academics.
What is the storyline of Gladiator 2 and is it true to history?
However, the film’s historical consultant and script researcher Alexander Mariotti feels that nitpicking is unjustified for a fictional tale like Gladiator II.
One of the world’s leading experts on gladiatorial combat and Roman military history, and @thegladiatorguide on Instagram, he points out that the movie’s characters are inspired by historical figures rather than direct representations: ‘Debating the number of horns on a rhino is like looking at Shakespeare’s literature as history. Julius Caesar is entertainment just like Gladiator II.’
At the same time, even some of Gladiator II’s seemingly anachronistic touches are rooted in fact. So, did the games in the Colosseum have a master of ceremonies? Did newspapers exist back then? And did gladiators partake in rhino rodeos? Mariotti enters the arena.
1. Were there sharks in the Colosseum?
‘No. There were no fish tanks back then, so there was no way to physically bring them in,’ says Mariotti. However, he adds that crocodiles were documented to have been in the water, and naval battles are indeed the stuff of history books.
‘When the fire of Rome destroyed the city in AD 64, Emperor Nero had built a large artificial lake,’ explains the historian. ‘They had this incredible drainage system attached to the aqueducts into the river. The Colosseum was built on the site of the artificial lake and it could drain the water in and out.’
2. Were baboons used in the arena?
Move over tigers, Gladiator II releases a feral troop of baboons on Paul Mescal’s hero Lucius Verus. ‘The Romans brought all kinds of exotic animals with them,’ says Mariotti. ‘The Colosseum was a gateway for audiences to encounter such creatures, from panthers to lions to ostriches to bears to baboons.’ And two-horned rhinos? ‘There’s evidence of a Roman coin that depicts a [one-horned] rhino. But you didn’t have gladiators riding rhinoceros.’
You didn’t have gladiators riding rhinos
Animals were used as part of complex staged hunts and sometimes for executing lower-class citizens. The hunted animals would be cooked and distributed among the poor. A recently excavated sewer beneath the Colosseum revealed the bones of an ostrich, a bear, a wolf and a boar – all probably turned into grub for the plebeians.
3. Did spectators throw fruit at gladiators?
An early scene of gladiatorial combat shows the fighters being pelted with veg by dissatisfied punters – a real scenario, explains Mariotti, that sometimes swapped mouldy cabbage for stones and rocks. ‘We have a mention of hooliganism during a gladiator match from Pompeii in AD 59. A riot broke out and the spectators started throwing stones at each other.’
4. Was opium common in ancient Rome?
In Gladiator II, ‘the devil’s breath’ is an opiate dispensed to a wounded Lucius by Alexander Karim’s gladiator-turned-medic, Ravi. Such substances, including opium, mandragora and belladonna, were commonly used anaesthetics in Ancient Rome, although the name itself is anachronistic. Mariotti suggested dropping it, pointing out that ‘the devil’ is a creation of the Abrahamic religions that had yet to be founded. Scott went with the cooler-sounding option.
5. Was the siege of Numidia a real battle?
Paul Mescal’s Lucius is dragged into the arena when the Roman army invades his home in Numidia, a province on the North African coast that would share borders with modern-day Algeria, Tunisia and Libya. Such a siege did happen, albeit in a different timeframe. ‘These conquests date back from 118 BC to 105 BC when the Numidian prince, Jugurtha, was captured and executed,’ says Mariotti. ‘That’s almost 300 years before the events of Gladiator II, which is set in the 2nd century AD.’
6. Was there an MC at the Colosseum?
Bake Off host Matt Lucas appears in blue eye shadow and fine robes as the Colosseum’s master of ceremonies in Gladiator II. So, fact or fiction? Mariotti leans towards the former. ‘The Roman history collection Historia Augusta mentions Emperor Gallienus [having] heralds to relay information during fights. If someone had a good enough voice, you can imagine it reverberating through amphitheatres that had incredible acoustics.’
7. Were high-profile ‘traitors’ executed in the arena?
Gladiator II also shows the Colosseum as a site for political executions. While such punishments were meted out in the arena, Mariotti notes that it was unlikely that high-ranking Romans would suffer them. ‘The criminals punished inside the Colosseum were from lower classes, like bandits and rebel leaders,’ he says. ‘Roman traitors were mostly thrown off a steep cliff called Tarpeian Rock.’
8. Were there newspapers in ancient Rome?
In what’s best described as a doomsday scenario for historians, Gladiator II features a Roman nobleman reading a morning newspaper in a café. The café is a blatant anachronism, but the concept of a Roman newspaper isn’t as far-fetched as it might appear. ‘The Romans had the world’s first newspaper, the Acta Diurna,’ says the historian. ‘It wasn’t obviously printed but it could be carved on stone for the public. It’s possible for a high-ranking man like Macrinus [Denzel Washington’s slave-turned-power broker] to have access to daily news.’
9. Was Imperial Rome as multicultural as the movie implies?
The film’s diverse ensemble accurately reflects Ancient Rome’s multicultural nature. ‘Romans were multilingual and cosmopolitan,’ says Mariotti. ‘You could get citizenship in the Roman Empire – civitas in Latin – whether you were an Egyptian, a Celt, a Numidian, or a Carthaginian, and so on. You had 60 million people living in the Roman Empire and you are talking about people from the north of Scotland to the north of Africa.’
Fittingly, Mariotti himself is of Scottish and Italian descent. As his official website reads: Alexander Mariotti, like all good Romans, has an eclectic background.’
Gladiator II opens in UK cinemas on Friday, and US theaters on November 22. Read our review here.
