Gladiator‘s opening battle scene and Coliseum fight are rated by a historian, who gives the film good marks for accuracy, despite one “inauthentic” detail about Maximus. Ridley Scott’s 2000 epic grossed $465 million worldwide, reviving the sword-and-sandals genre while propelling star Russell Crowe to an Academy Award for Best Actor. Crowe won’t be on-board for the upcoming sequel Gladiator II, but Scott will be back in the director’s chair, guilding a mostly-new cast including Paul Mescal, Pedro Pascal and Denzel Washington.

As audiences eagerly await Gladiator II’s release on November 22, a historian recently revisited the original movie with an eye toward grading its realism, and gave the movie mostly high marks. In a video for Insider, Michael Taylor broke down Gladiator’s opening battle and Coliseum fight scenes, and found some fault with the weapons deployed by the Romans, while also pointing out the inaccuracy of Maximus’ battlefield behavior. Overall, he gave the film 7-out-of-10, in spite of its flaws. Check out his remarks below (around 6:25 of the clip):

The sort of giant stone throwing catapults…would probably not be deployed in a field battle. The Romans might use catapults like that…in a siege scenario, because when you’re fighting a battle you want artillery that you can really easily reposition as your forces move across the battlefield. The Romans do have field artillery that…can be used in a battle, but it’s smaller.

Flaming arrows might be used again in a siege scenario, if you want to shoot them to light the roof of a tower on fire or light buildings say behind a wall on fire. They don’t do you any good in a pitched battle. If you hit a guy with an arrow his problem is that he has an arrow sticking out of it, not that the shaft is on fire. Hollywood needs light. Flaming arrows provide that for the spectacle of the scene.

If you plan to advance over a battlefield you don’t necessarily want to set it on fire before your own forces move into it. In terms of what incendiary devices are available to the Romans, they have things like putting charcoal in a pot and then those burning embers pop out when the pot breaks upon impact. They do seem to use a variety of petroleum products that might burn one thing.

One thing that is inauthentic is Maximus leading the charge himself. Roman generals almost never charge. They tend to position themselves right in the center of the battle where they can control things and have the maximum situational awareness. So for Maximus to charge with the calvary, note that he loses his ability to command the battle. He’s out there wrestling with a German and it’s his subordinate who’s in the center with the infantry, who is actually in the best position to exert any kind of command and control over that situation.

The Romans basically do not use chariots in any kind of tactical way aside from the ceremonial chariot, so there would have been no chariots. I would say that is a decent formation, but if you’re under any kind of calvary attack or chariot attack, it seems one of the best things you can do is present a relatively dense formation that prevents any one or two people from getting picked off.

I’d say I’d be inclined to give it around a seven.

Gladiator Has Long Been Criticized For Historical Inaccuracy

Historian Taylor singles out numerous inaccuracies in Gladiator’s depiction of Roman battle tactics, reiterating an oft-noted point about catapults being siege weapons that would never be deployed in a pitched battle, while also taking the film to task for Maximus’ bad generalship. Despite these and other problems, Taylor is generous in giving the film a grade of 7-out-of-10.

Had Taylor gone further in his criticism of the film, he might have noted a big Gladiator inaccuracy regarding the emperor’s thumbs-up/thumbs-down gesture, used in the arena to indicate whether a victorious gladiator should or should not end his foe’s life. He might also have noted how the film overplays the importance of Christianity in the time-period being depicted. Indeed, the entire character of Maximus is an invention, and the film takes big liberties with the biographies of real-life figures Marcus Aurelius and Commodus.

Gladiator is a fictional film at the end of the day, and can be forgiven for the many liberties it took with history in the name of entertainment. At least according to one historian, the film deserves praise for getting a lot of things right, though he is quick to point out what he considers glaring inaccuracies along the way.

Source: Insider