gladiator

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The long-awaited sequel to Ridley Scott’s Oscar-winning epic “Gladiator” emerges over two decades after the original film captivated audiences worldwide. In Maximus’s tomb “hidden in the basement of the Colosseum” there is a commemorative inscription IN ENGLISH. Also: The thumbs up / thumbs down: this is a Hollywood cliché: in reality, the pollex pressus (life) was shown by making a closed fist, with the fingers gripping the thumb (mimicking a blade closed in its sheath), and the pollex versus (death) involved an open hand, with 4 fingers together pointing downward, and the thumb separated and straight, pointing toward the losing gladiator.

CHRONOLOGY

According to the introduction, Gladiator II is set chronologically 16 years after the events of the first film, thus 16 years after Commodus’s death. Commodus died in 192 AD, indeed killed by a gladiator, who wasn’t Maximus Decimus Meridius but rather Narcissus, his personal trainer, and his death didn’t occur in the arena in front of everyone, but following a conspiracy. However, history teaches us that sixteen years later, in 208 AD, Septimius Severus was Emperor of Rome. But the introduction to Ridley Scott’s new film tells us instead that Rome is ruled by the “twin emperors,” sordid and corrupt characters. The “twin emperors,” we later learn, are Caracalla and his brother Geta (who weren’t twins: Caracalla was the older brother). In reality, the reign of Caracalla and Geta, sons of Septimius Severus, would only begin in 211 AD, upon their father’s death, but by the end of that year Caracalla would have his younger brother killed through deception, with whom he had never particularly gotten along, as reported by the Historia Augusta and Cassius Dio.

FREE NUMIDIA!

After the introduction, the film opens with a battle of epic proportions, showing the Roman fleet descending upon the LAST INDEPENDENT CITY OF NUMIDIA, whose resistance is led by the indestructible Peter Mensah (known as the Persian ambassador in 300, but also Oenomaus “Doctore” in the Spartacus TV series), who plays the leader JUGURTHA. Numidia was indeed conquered by the Romans following the Jugurthine War, actually defeating the Numidian king Jugurtha… but in 105 BC, under Gaius Marius, thus 300 years before the events narrated in the film. Perhaps the Jugurtha played by Mensah is just sharing the name with the historical king of Numidia, but in any case, Numidia ceased to be independent in 105 BC, and anyway the last independent portion of North Africa in Roman times, the kingdom of Mauretania, was incorporated by Emperor Claudius in 42 AD. Therefore, the conflict is geographically and chronologically impossible. We know that Caracalla had conducted campaigns against the Germans, before his final campaign against the Parthians, which ended in his assassination. There was a valid alternative, but probably starting with a conflict in Germania would have reminded too much of the first film.

CARACALLA AND GETA

Caracalla and Geta are probably the characters most mistreated and brutalized by the film. We know very little about Geta, and the information we receive from the Historia Augusta is contradictory: while on one hand he is defined as a modest personality, on the other there are references to his passion for flashy clothes, while Caracalla, both in the Historia Augusta and in Cassius Dio, is presented as a man of abrupt manners, fond of cruel gladiatorial games, accustomed to military life, to venationes in the circus, to hunting boar and lion. Caracalla is not described in flattering terms in the sources: he appears vindictive and bloodthirsty, and not only for having ordered the assassination of his brother, but also for having had his wife Fulvia Plautilla assassinated after repudiating her, for having massacred political opponents and slaughtered the population of Alexandria in Egypt because word had reached him about how much his figure was contested among them. Even the busts we have of Caracalla seem to convey something brutal, with a stubby and wide nose, short curly beard, and a prominent brow ridge that composes his face into a scowling expression.

#gladiator2 #review #historicalanalysis

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