The Real History Behind Ridley Scott’s ‘Gladiator II’ and Life as a Fighter in the Ancient Roman Arena

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-real-history-behind-ridley-scotts-gladiator-ii-and-life-as-a-fighter-in-the-ancient-roman-arena-180985494/

The Gladiator franchise’s characters are a blend of fact and fiction. The four emperors depicted in the films—Marcus Aurelius, Commodus, Caracalla and Geta—are all based on real Roman rulers. Lucilla, the daughter of Marcus and sister of Commodus, did have a son named Lucius Verus, but he died young and couldn’t have been the secret child of a general turned gladiator, as Maximus himself is fictional.

Hollywood films like Gladiator and Gladiator II tend to present their lead characters as tragic heroes doomed to fight to the death at the whims of an emperor in no-holds-barred battles against men and wild beasts alike. In truth, says Coleman, a strict set of rules enforced by a referee governed gladiatorial bouts, and just 5 percent of gladiators died in violent combat. The majority of matches ended in a draw, with both fighters earning a reprieve at the discretion of the spectators.

“Gladiators were very expensive because they had [to undergo] special training,” Coleman says. “They had to be kept alive and well fed. … They [were] a capital investment, so it wasn’t in their owners’ or trainers’ interests for them to be killed.”