Maximus: A Tragic Hero

Heroes nowadays consist of people who fight for justice and those whose stories are not so tragic. Well, throughout our past history, the stories of heroes were very tragic and sometimes emotional. These stories were made that way due to a man named Aristotle. Aristotle was an ancient Greek Philosopher who had created many ideas and philosophies, even in literature. One of his most famous contributions to literature are his ideas about a form of story-writing called tragedies. Aristotle had basically developed the foundations as to how a tragedy should be played out as well as traits that the protagonist of the story should have. The most important thing that a hero must have in a tragedy are these five traits: One, they must have wisdom or
In this story, Maximus receives a fate greater than what he deserves. Not only was he framed for the murder of an emperor, brought into slavery, but he discovers that his family was killed, burned, and crucified. Maximus had realized that he is in the situation he is in because of Commodus who was the main antagonist of the story. Commodus had caused all of these problems for Maximus. Another common trait that Maximus shows is that he is intelligent enough to be able to learn from his mistakes. In doing so, it makes the character seem to have his wits about him and it shows that he has some experience. A final common trait that I think that he represents is that he is the leader of his own army, this is considered a trait in aristotelian tragedies because when the hero suffers from something, his men suffer with
Out of these five traits, in my opinion, I believe that Maximus represents three out of five of them. The first trait that I believe Maximus represents is that he has wisdom He has shown this through his skills of being a high ranking general in the Roman Legion Army as well as being appointed to become the next caesar by the former emperor of rome. The second trait that I believe he shows is an Anagnorisis which is that the hero realizes that his change of fortune was brought about by his own actions. This is shown by Maximus deciding to fight as a Gladiator within the arena and to defy the emperor by every means possible. By doing so he finally gets to meet the emperor himself which lets him get closer to completing what he wanted to do in the first place. The third and last trait that I believe that Maximus had was that he had received a fate that he didn’t deserve. Maximus was framed for the murder of his emperor, he had discovered his wife as burned, killed, then crucified, he was brought into slavery and was forced to fight as a gladiator, he ends up losing a lot of his close friends, he kills Commodus which is good, but he eventually dies.
Maximus was a roman martyr whose choices had depicted the fact whether or not he was a true tragic hero. Throughout the story he had shown many reasons and had done many things that help prove he was a