GLADIATOR: FILM AND HISTORY

GLADIATOR: FILM AND HISTORY. Edited by MARTIN M. WINKLER. Oxford: Blackwell. 2004. Pp. xii, 215.

BECAUSE OF ITS POPULARITY, many who teach Roman history have introduced Gladiator into their syllabus. Similarly, those who teach film studies have also come to include this movie, especially as it relates to earlier "toga movies." For those not expert in one field or the other, Martin Winkler's Gladiator: Film and History is there to guide.

The book contains ten articles, followed by translations of the three major ancient sources dealing with the life of Commodus (Cassius Dio, the Historia Augusta, and Herodian). All the articles were written by classicists and address various themes relating either to the production and impact of Gladiator or to the historical time period in which it is set. Though many of these scholars have written in the past about film and the ancient world, one wonders why a specialist in film studies was not asked to contribute. The articles fall into two broad categories: first, the production and impact of the movie and second, its historical setting. I shall begin with the latter.

Allen Ward ("Gladiator in Historical Perspective") satisfies the historian's itch to scratch and describes many of the movie's historical inaccuracies. Ward's article is not all nit-picking, however, and he does recognize that cinema is not history. Yet given his concluding remarks, it is too bad that film-makers do not look more closely to the historical record. Ward posits what could have been a fascinating story, proceeding from known historical knowns (as opposed to the known unknowns which form the basis for much of the movie!): Dio relates the story of Sextus Quintilius Condianus who, upon learning that he...