Gladiator's Commodus

Character-wise, Gladiator is historically unsound. There is little historicity in the film’s antagonist, Commodus. Scott clearly misread descriptions of Commodus’s physique and appearance. According to a Roman civil servant, Commodus was, at the time of his father, Marcus Aurelius’s, death, in the prime of youth… his hair, naturally blond and curly gleamed in the sunlight as if it were on fire (History of the Roman Empire, 2007, chapter 7). Gladiator’s Commodus, however, has short, straight hair the colour of mud. The film presents Commodus as older than he truly was at the time of Marcus’s death. When his father died, he was 19; Gladiator suggests a man in his early thirties. Moreover, the film fails to recognise Commodus’s co-reigning with Marcus for …show more content…
Commodus’s death, too, is presented erroneously. Commodus and Maximus duel in the arena; Commodus is stabbed in the throat, and he dies. Though Commodus did fight in the arena, it was not the place of his death. Rather, he was choked in a bathtub by his gladiatorial mentor, Narcissus; a plot devised by his sister Lucilla. There is no historical character who is Maximus; we just made him up (Gladiator: The True Story, 2011). So stated Gladiator’s writer and producer, David Franzoni. Maximus Decimus Meridius, the film’s protagonist, is entirely fictitious. Seemingly an amalgamation of historical figures, Maximus is referred to as the “Spaniard”. Yet, Spain was not founded until 1492. The area now known as Spain was, to the ancient Romans, the Iberian Peninsula. Maximus, therefore, should have been the “Iberian”. On the verge of death, and now Emperor of Rome, Maximus tells Quintus to free [Maximus’s] men and that Gracchus is to be reinstated. But it was not Maximus who succeeded Commodus; it was man named Pertinax. Gladiator’s antagonist, Commodus, is presented in a way contradictory to historical sources; Maximus, the protagonist, is