Movie Gladiator vs Real Life

Comparing Real Vs. Movie Commodus In the movie “Gladiator”, Emperor Commodus is portrayed as an unstable and neurotic sadist who killed his own father for the throne of the Roman Empire. Real history has no solid proof that Commodus, while unstable, killed his father Marcus Aurelius. He was actually made co-emperor at the age of 5 (Heritage). However, the sexual relations he had with his sibling is in fact true, but it was not with the sister Lucilla as shown in the movie, but rather with another sister. Lucilla did plot to kill her brother, which is a similarity between the movie and real history. Once Commodus found out about her plot, he exiled her and later executed her along with his wife Crispina who did not appear in the movie. While in real life, Lucilla is executed, she ends up outliving her brother in the film (Cavazzi). The length of time that Commodus was in power in the film does not reflect reality. He in fact ruled for 12 years after his father’s death (Cavazzi). Much like in the movie, Commodus enjoyed gladiator fights and willingly participated in some of them. However, the people were not impressed with his fighting and started losing support and respect for him. Both in the film and in reality, Commodus would never fight fairly. For example, in “Gladiator”, Commodus stabs Maximus before their fight giving himself an advantage. The real Commodus would fight in Gladiatorial games with the finest weapons, while his opponents would barely be given any weapons (Cavazzi). Instead, he would fight against amputees and inexperienced fighters, making sure that he would always win (Ancient Standard). His death, although not at the hands of a fictional Maxiums, was at the hands of a gladiator, Narcissus, who was chosen to assassinate him by strangling him in his sleep by those closest, such as his Mistress (Heritage). He was viewed as one of the worst emperors of the Roman Empire.

Sources
Cavazzi, Franco. N.p.. Web. 19 Sep 2013. .