Of course, Gladiator and its new sequel are based on real events and cultural customs of the Roman Empire. But come on, Ridley Scott… sharks and rhinos in the Coliseum?
“It’s fun, but absurd,” Roman culture expert Shadi Bartsch, the Helen A. Regenstein Professor of Classics at the University of Chicago, tells PEOPLE of the freedom taken by director Scott, 86, and writers David Scarpa and Peter Craig. Gladiator II stars Paul Mescal, Pedro Pascal, Denzel Washington and a returning Connie Nielsen in the sequel to the 2000 historical epic starring Russell Crowe.
“Of course, Hollywood wants everything to be bigger and bolder, and now they can do that thanks to digital technology,” says Bartsch. “So that first scene in the trailer, when the rhino comes in and somebody rides it, and it’s larger than life? I couldn’t decide whether to laugh or scream.”
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But the audience that attributes such a spectacle to the imagination of the filmmakers might be surprised to know that some of the Gladiator IIThe craziest elements are based on historical accuracy. For example, “The Romans brought all kinds of really exotic animals into the amphitheater, not just for the pleasure of watching them get killed, but also because it allegorically symbolized the power and reach of the Roman Empire,” Bartsch explains. “Animals from Asia and Africa really represented the way the Romans completely mastered everything around them.”
What animals were on the list? “We are talking about many dead bears, tigers, lions,” says the professor. “Elephants. Big cats. Ostriches… The more exotic the better.”
Paul Mescal in ‘Gladiator II’.
Aidan Monaghan/Paramount Pictures
And yes, rhinos made the cut — but, Bartsch says, the one-horned Asian species, not the two-horned African rhino depicted in the new film. “They didn’t ride rhinoceroses at all,” she adds, and as for the later view of a rhinoceros head offered on the buffet, it’s probably not true that the nobles ate such creatures.
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“Evidence suggests that dead animals were cut up and given to spectators to take home and eat. But there was no giving the whole rhinoceros to a nobleman so that he could feast.” (There are also accounts of Commodus—playing in Gladiator Joaquin Phoenix — fighting a rhinoceros from a safe distance, she says. The emperor wanted to “show off, in a big way, and the people loved it. Imagine Donald Trump fighting a lion. I’m sure it would have a large audience.”)
Hairless baboons that appear in a smaller arena earlier in the Gladiator II they are a fictional invention, Bartsch continues. “There’s also no record of baboons fighting,” she says, and monkeys in general were “very rare” in ancient Rome. In the film, the companion Caracalla (played by Fred Hechinger) has a pet monkey; in real history, Caracalla had a “favorite lion”.
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And then there’s the epic naval battle, in which Mescal’s gladiator character faces off against ship-based opponents in a water-filled Coliseum. Such practices “were meant to recreate actual battles, and that was part of the fun,” confirms Bartsch. “They had to be scaled-down versions, miniature versions of real boats.”
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But Gladiator IIThe most obvious flight of imagination are the waters and battles full of sharks. “There were no sharks — ever — in the arena,” Bartsch says. “It would be very difficult to transport sharks in the first place, given that they would have to be transported in water vessels.” And while it is true that there were and are species of sharks in the Mediterranean Sea, none liked to “bite people, and in fact, they probably didn’t because they were small.”
Furthermore, the ancient Romans “did not have the concept of a shark separate from a fish. They just knew a bunch of different fish, and one of them was what we were 1732357609 would call a little shark.”
Gladiator II it’s in theaters now.
Categories: Trends
Source: HIS Education