There are many similarities and differences in the movie The Gladiator and in the real Ancient Rome civilization. My task was to pick them out and expand on them. This paper will display the accuracy and possibly the inaccuracies of the film.
In the film, Commodus becomes emperor at age 18; this is true in the Roman history. His father was Marcus Aurelius also true in both. In the movie Commodus kills his father to become emperor but in the real civilization Marcus dies at war. Commodus became a horrible emperor and was based on corruption; you can see this in the movie and in the true Roman society. In the movie, Commodus" sister goes against him and helps put together troops to murder him. This is also true in the Ancient Roman civilization. The sister dies after Commodus discovers her plan to execute him. .
The gladiator games that are portrayed in the movie existed in ancient Roman culture as well. Commodus was really obsessed with these games and actually participated in them. In real life he would come down and give things to those who were to injured or weak to fight back. The Gladiator games are also portrayed accurately. The colosseum was built and in the first couple weeks more than 2,000 fighters died in it. The brutality is accurately depicted in the movie. In some cases if a gladiator won five games he could possibly be set free of slavery, this was sometimes true in the real society. The emperor also did give the signal as to whether or not a gladiator was to be spared. They are unsure what the signal was but in the film they used the thumbs up or thumbs down. .
The film portrays Commodus as being with one woman all the time. This was not true in Ancient Rome. He was said to have had more than 300 women and over 300 young men. His was actually murdered by strangulation not by Maximus. .