Gladiators 2 spoilers follow.

is Gladiator II historically accurate? It’s the question on everyone’s lips – not out of genuine academic interest, for the most part, but because it’s so easy to predict exactly how director Ridley Scott will react.

To quote his feelings about the historians who picked apart last year’s Napoleon: “Get a life”.

Unfortunately for Scott, history buffs cannot be harmed by the accusation that they lack hobbies. We are already aware of this and we will disassemble Gladiators 2 anyway.

What Scott doesn’t understand is that most classicists, at least from personal experience, are absolutely delighted by the existence of these films because it opens the doors wide open for them to sit down non-classicist friends and rant, at length, about their daily thoughts on the Roman Empire .

So, get comfortable, because here are some basic things you should know about Scott’s latest venture into the past. And watch out, there are big ones spoilers Forward.

No.

But here a clarification is needed. After labeling Scott’s film “total Hollywood bullshit,” Dr. Shadi Bartsch of the University of Chicago said. The Hollywood Reporter that the Romans probably didn’t even know what a shark was. This is demonstrably untrue.

Several Roman authors, including the admiral and naturalist Pliny the Elder, wrote about sharks, and they were depicted in art, including a mosaic from Pompeii from the second century BC. of a decorative scene for marine life.

It’s highly unlikely that the little guys would have been swimming around the Coliseum though, but we shouldn’t be too hard on Scott. Gladiators 2 deserves great credit for having the guts (and budget) to finally portray what we’ve never seen on big screens before: naumachiaeor large-scale mock battles, where criminals and prisoners of war would be placed on ships and forced into battle.

The naumachiae mostly seem to have been re-enactments of famous historical engagements – in the film it is the Battle of Salamis, fought between the Greeks and the Persian Empire in 480 BC. Emperor Nero, according to Roman historian Cassius Dio, staged a naval battle “representing Persians and Athenians”.

We usually hear of specialized pools being dug to accommodate these shows, but several authors, including Dio, describe the Colosseum itself being flooded by both the emperor Titus and his successor Domitian to present naumachiae.

And what about the other creatures our hapless hero Lucius is forced to fight and, at one point, shock? There is no mention of gladiators riding around on rhinoceroses, but they were indeed brought to Rome and exhibited to the public, and there are stories of them being pitted against elephants, bulls, and bears.

All manner of animals were captured for display, and staged hunts were also the norm, although you’ll mostly hear of men pitted against lions, panthers, elephants and crocodiles. A rhinoceros and a fleet of baboons is certainly a more fantastical flourish, but it’s not an entirely laughable idea.

Bartsch’s interview with The Hollywood Reporter zeroed in on a particularly blatant anachronism, where Macrinus is sipping tea in a cafe while reading the morning paper. That kind of rapid production and mass distribution of written material would require a printing press, which was not invented until 1440 AD.

But, as Bartsch points out, the Romans had the Acta Diuma, daily official grants carved on stone or metal and presented in public places, which had much the same function.

There was no tea, coffee or chocolate in the Roman Empire, but the Romans partook in something called calda, or ca’lida, which consisted of hot water mixed with wine, probably with some spices in it.

So, even if that rules out the existence of the cafe, it is important to note that the Romans had places to buy, essentially, fast food: the thermopolium, which had a long counter facing the street and would sell hot, ready-to-eat dishes such as fish, stews and pastries. You can see these in person if you visit Pompeii or Herculaneum.

Gladiators 2 also correctly depicts the use of a wax board, as Lucilla unearths and looks wistfully at some of Lucius’s old schoolwork.

Made of wood and covered with a layer of wax, these were reusable and portable writing surfaces that you could cut into with a pointed pencil and then easily wipe off. And, as shown, they were used by the students for their exercises.

It might hurt to learn it Gladiators 2s MVP Dundus, Emperor Caracalla’s beloved pet monkey, has not existed in history.

However, they were a popular pet species, and the scene in which a mad Caracalla promotes Dundus to the esteemed position of consul must be a reference to the Roman historian Suetonius’ claim that the emperor Caligula was so fond of his horse Incitatus that he tried to make him consul.

It’s a wild story. But it’s important to remember that ancient historians tended to be gossipmongers (and also had personal, vested interests), and that many of these scandalous anecdotes about “crazy, bad” emperors may actually have been the work of embittered rivals and successors who have for the purpose of coloring the historical record.

Geta and Caracalla are two of these so-called “mad, bad” emperors, but Scott’s depiction of them is rather broad. What is true is that their father, Septimius Severus, had intended for them to rule after his death, but that their rivalry was so intense that it quickly culminated in the assassination of Geta, probably on Caracalla’s orders. Caracalla then ordered his brother’s name erased from memory.

But Caracalla’s reputation was not that of a monkey-obsessed, syphilis-afflicted, petulant brat, but of a cruel and ruthless military man. Senators despised him because of the favoritism he showed the army, raising their annual salary and increasing their social status, while spending all his time on military campaigns. Ironically, he would eventually be assassinated by one of his disgruntled soldiers.

And while Scott’s vision of the Roman Empire is deliberately aligned with the Western European one audiences in Christian empires are likely more familiar with, fueled by ideas of white supremacy, it obscures the much more complicated reality of how the Romans viewed race and identity.

Septimius Severus was actually born in Leptis Magna, in present-day Libya, while Geta and Caracalla’s mother, Julia Domna, was a Syrian noblewoman.

At the beginning of Gladiators 2Lucius defends an unnamed city in Numidia from a Roman attack ordered by Marcus Acacius, where we see his wife fighting alongside several other female archers.

It is unclear who these women are supposed to be, but it is notable that Scott already included female archers in the first film, as gladiatrikes or female gladiators, who existed but were rarely depicted or written about.

There are many stories of women and violent female leaders standing up to the power of the Roman Empire.

You’ve probably heard of Boudica, queen of the ancient British Iceni tribe. But Scott’s fixation on the specific image of the female archer seems inevitably to come from a single source: the legendary Amazons, who some claimed cut off one of their breasts to draw their bows more effectively, and only associated with men to reproduce.

They are prevalent in Greco-Roman myth, but archaeological evidence has pointed to a real source for these stories, as more and more tombs in Eurasia discover female warriors among the Scythian, Sarmatian and Hittite peoples.

Yes and no. A Macrinus succeeded Caracalla, but he shared next to nothing with Denzel Washington’s Macrinus, and he certainly didn’t have his hands chopped off by Paul Mescal.

(An important side note: the Roman Republic was not restored at the end of Commodus’ reign, nor was it at the end of Caracalla’s. There really was no “Dream of Rome”.)

The fact that Macrinus is a former slave who took power may no doubt be a reference to the fact that the real Macrinus was the first emperor not of the senatorial class, having been born in modern Algeria to an equestrian family of Amazigh origin. .

He was not an arms dealer, but served under Caracalla as a praetorian prefect of civil affairs. And he had him assassinated and actually succeeded in succeeding him as emperor. But then, as Scott would surely argue, where’s the fun in that?

Gladiator II is out now in UK cinemas and will be released in US cinemas on November 22nd.