“Wherever they go they leave destruction, and call it peace”.
So says Lucius Verus (Paul Mescal) towards the beginning of Gladiator 2, calling his Numidian comrades to arms against the approaching Roman fleet of Marcus Acacius (Pedro Pascal).
An educated Roman would have recognised these words. Or rather their Latin equivalent: ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant (“They leave desolation and they call it peace”). They come from a biography called Agricola written by the senatorial author Tacitus (56-120 CE) about – and named after – his father-in-law. Tacitus attributes these words to another warrior who has rebelled against Rome. Not a blue-blooded exiled princeling leading an African breakaway city-state against Pedro Pascal et al, but a Caledonian (Scottish) chieftain named Calgacus.
Calgacus’ speech is actually quite brilliant, and worth repeating in part, not least for its resonance regarding recent Western interventions in parts of the Middle East.
These plunderers of the world, after exhausting the land by their devastation, are rifling the ocean: driven by greed, if their enemy be rich; by ambition, if poor; unsatiated by the East and by the West: the only people who behold wealth and indigence with equal avidity. To ravage, to slaughter, to usurp under false titles, they call empire; and where they make a desert, they call it peace.
Tacitus, Agricola, 30
This is remarkably subversive stuff, especially when you consider that it was written by a wealthy Roman senator who had benefitted extensively from Roman colonialism. It is also utterly fictitious. Tacitus had no way of knowing what Calgacus said to his troops, even though it was his father-in-law, Gnaeus Julius Agricola, whose legions were lined up on the plain across from them – ardently addressing his own outnumbered comrades to convince them the day would be theirs.
(Spoiler alert: it was).
But this speech, and the sentiment it conveys, does tap into a trope that was trendy among the Roman elite: casting a noble savage who had risen against Rome as a spokespiece to criticise the decadence that now beset it.
Even in Tacitus’ time, the Romans were acutely aware of the blight of Roman imperialism. They placed the rot at the heart of Roman politics, and the blame not with the well-meaning generals on the frontlines of foreign lands (Gnaes Julius Agricola, in Tacitus’ case; Marcus Acacius in Ridley Scott’s) but with the capricious rule of the emperors and the servile senators who supported them. Tacitus wrote about Tiberius, Caligula (though this is now lost), Nero, and Domitian. Ridley Scott picked up the mantle first with Commodus (Joaquin Phoenix) and now with Caracalla and Geta (Fred Hechinger and Joseph Quinn).
That their representation is not historically accurate does not really matter (though I will be writing about this in due course). The point is that Tacitus and his aristocratic contemporaries would have appreciated and identified with the story. Gladiator 2 is, at its core, a film about an outsider whose values better reflect the “dream” of Rome” than those of any around him, be they crazed emperors, snivelling senators, or the deliciously Machiavellian figure of Denzel Washington’s Macrinus (“that’s politicssss”).
Tacitus’ contemporaries would have been cheering on Marcus Acacius, a real Roman conqueror, and willing his rebellion against the tyrannical twins to succeed – albeit with the spilling of as little Roman blood as possible. Yet they would be ambivalent about blood being spilt in the arena, watching on with the same detachment to suffering as we do Britain’s Got Talent or the X Factor. The important thing was that it appeased the mob, keeping them at bay through bread and circuses.
They would not have wished for the restoration of the Republic. That idea died after the assassination of Caligula when the Praetorian Guard forced their man Claudius onto the throne, making it quite clear to any starry-eyed senators that they would not go without a paymaster. But they would have been content with a humble conservative and decorated military man on the throne – something Pedro Pascal’s General Acacius could accommodate nicely.
I’m not sure where Paul Mescal’s Lucius Verus fits into a story tailored to ancient audiences. They would have probably been happy for him to perish alongside his warrior bride in Numidia, his speech railing against Roman tyranny having already served its purpose. Besides, roving warriors with a bone to pick and a legitimate claim to the throne usually spelt bad news for the pax romana (Roman peace) as Rome’s dozens of civil wars attest. They would have been bewildered by Lucius’ mother, Lucilla (Connie Nielsen), a woman hailed as “queen” (a concept alien to the ancient Romans) who was gravitating around the centre of politics despite having no blood ties whatsoever with those in power.
I wonder how they would have felt about Macrinus. Conflicted, I imagine. No doubt his character showed considerable talent and ambition, but he was also a lowly libertus (former slave) who had risen well above his station. The Romans were fundamentally classists, status snobs, and the social class to which he was born would have mattered even more than the colour of his skin or his conspicuous(ly American) accent.
Yet **spoiler alert** they would have been impressed by the manner of his death, going out honourably in single combat and thus sparing the loss of thousands of Roman lives.
Where Gladiator 2 falls short for me, as it would for any ancient audience, is in its anachronistically utopian vision of Rome.
In the speech Lucius delivers after slicing up Macrinus, he describes Marcus Aurelius’ dream of Rome as “a city for the many and a home for those in need”. Romulus might have founded Rome as an asylum, welcoming anyone who was anyone to bolster its nascent population. But the idea that at the height of the Roman Empire the capital was either welcoming or accommodating for the wandering dispossessed is frankly for the birds.
Lucius invites Rome’s legionaries to put down their arms, to stop the bloodshed, “to rebuild this dream together”. Yet if Roman history teaches us anything it’s that when Roman swords weren’t pointing outwards, towards foreign enemies, they were pointing inwards at imperial pretenders and the private armies in their pay. The inconvenient truth is that the price of Roman peace was plunder from foreign powers. Which is precisely where Gladiator 2 starts. Beneath the city walls of some faraway land, when a Roman fleet appears just over the horizon.
🏛️ Visiting Rome? Hire me as your guide and let me show you around!
