109 Fun Facts About Gladiator

Who directed the 2000 film Gladiator?

Ridley Scott. He signed on after producers showed him a single 19th-century painting of the arena, telling them he did not care that he knew nothing about the story yet.

What is the full name of Russell Crowe's character in Gladiator?

Maximus Decimus Meridius. He says it only when Commodus orders the masked gladiator to show his face, then vows vengeance for his murdered wife and son.

Which actor played the emperor Commodus in Gladiator?

Joaquin Phoenix. His sneering emperor earned an Oscar nomination, and Jack Gleeson later said he modelled Game of Thrones' Joffrey on the performance.

In Gladiator, Connie Nielsen played which character, the sister of Commodus?

Lucilla. The real Lucilla joined a plot to assassinate her brother in AD 182; it failed, and he had her banished to Capri and then executed.

How did Gladiator finish Oliver Reed's scenes after his death?

A body double with his face digitally attached. Reed's trainer had been meant to survive, so the script was rewritten to give him a death scene, and the film is dedicated to Reed.

Which character did Oliver Reed play in Gladiator?

Proximo. The gruff trainer was once a gladiator himself, released by the old emperor, and he teaches Maximus that the best fighter is the one the crowd loves.

Richard Harris played which role in Gladiator?

Marcus Aurelius. Harris's dying emperor asks Maximus, not his own son, to succeed him and hand power back to the Senate, and Commodus murders him for it.

Who played Juba, the gladiator who becomes Maximus's closest friend in Gladiator?

Djimon Hounsou. His Juba gets the last scene, returning to the Colosseum at night to bury the figurines of Maximus's wife and son at the spot where his friend died.

David Franzoni got the idea for Gladiator from which 1958 book about the Roman games?

Those About to Die. Franzoni came across Daniel Mannix's book in Baghdad during a 1972 motorcycle trip, some 25 years before he finally wrote the script.

Gladiator's opening battle in Germania was actually filmed in a forest in which country?

England. The battle was shot in Bourne Wood, Surrey, where the Forestry Commission wanted a stretch of woodland cleared, so the director offered to burn it down on camera.

Gladiator's Colosseum set was built inside a fortress on which Mediterranean island?

Malta. The set stood inside Fort Ricasoli, a harbour fortress that was rebuilt as Troy for the 2004 film, and Oliver Reed died on the island before the shoot was over.

In Gladiator, what nickname does Maximus fight under before Rome learns his real name?

The Spaniard. His farm is in Spain, though the family scenes there were actually picked up in Italy while the director was scouting his next film, Hannibal.

Hans Zimmer shared credit for the Gladiator score with which singer-composer?

Lisa Gerrard. She and Zimmer shared the Golden Globe for the score, yet the Oscar nomination for the very same music named Zimmer alone.

Gladiator's battle music drew a 2006 lawsuit alleging it copied 'Mars, the Bringer of War' by which composer?

Gustav Holst. The foundation that guards his music and his publisher sued Hans Zimmer over the echoes of 'Mars', though Zimmer had himself said the score spoke the same musical language as The Planets.

Russell Crowe's Best Actor win for Gladiator came at the expense of which fellow nominee?

Tom Hanks. He was nominated for Cast Away; Gladiator won five Oscars that night, Best Picture included, yet none went to its director or its writers.

Which actor plays Senator Gracchus in both Gladiator and its 2024 sequel?

Derek Jacobi. His Gracchus is arrested for plotting to smuggle Maximus out of Rome, and the dying Maximus uses his last orders to have the senator reinstated.

Who beat Gladiator's director to the Best Director Oscar in 2001?

Steven Soderbergh. He was nominated twice that year, for Erin Brockovich and Traffic, so in winning for Traffic he beat himself as well as Gladiator's director.

According to Maximus in Gladiator, what we do in life echoes in what?

Eternity. He says it to his cavalry before the opening battle, right after joking that any man who finds himself riding alone in green fields is in Elysium and already dead.

Gladiator finished 2000 as the second-highest-grossing film worldwide behind which title?

Mission: Impossible 2. Tom Cruise's sequel took about $546 million worldwide, but it was the runner-up, Gladiator, that went on to win Best Picture.

Which director approved the pitch for Gladiator after asking its writer just three questions?

Steven Spielberg. He asked whether it was about ancient Roman gladiators, set in the Colosseum, fighting to the death; three yeses later he told David Franzoni to go and write it.

Mel Gibson says he turned down the role of Maximus in Gladiator because he was busy making which film?

The Patriot. Gibson says he was tied to the Revolutionary War epic, so the part went to Russell Crowe and the two films ended up as rival blockbusters of the same summer.

In Gladiator II, Lucius faces a champion who charges into the Colosseum riding which animal?

Rhinoceros. The director had wanted one in the first film, but a computer-generated rhino cost too much in 1999, and it became a running joke that any sequel would get it.

Which line does Commodus scream at his sister after threatening her son's life in Gladiator?

"Am I not merciful?" He has just uncovered her part in the plot against him, and his idea of mercy is to let her and her son live so long as she gives him an heir.

Russell Crowe adapted Gladiator's 'Strength and Honour' from the Latin motto of what?

His high school. Wanting a soldierly farewell, Crowe tried the old motto, 'Veritate et Virtute', on the director in Latin, glossed it as 'Strength and Honor' and was told: say that.

How does Commodus rig his final duel with Maximus in Gladiator?

Stabs him before the fight. He has the wound hidden under Maximus's armour, yet Maximus still disarms and kills him before dying of the injury himself.

Which 1872 painting of an arena crowd turning its thumbs persuaded Gladiator's director to sign on?

Pollice Verso. One look at Gérôme's arena scene was enough: the director said it showed the Roman Empire 'in all its glory and wickedness' and he was hooked.

Which line does Maximus shout in a provincial arena before he ever reaches Rome?

"Are you not entertained?" After winning a fight at Zucchabar, he hurls his weapon away and spits on the ground, asking the crowd if this is not why they came.

How did the real Commodus die, unlike in Gladiator?

Strangled by a wrestler. The plotters first tried poison on New Year's Eve, but he vomited it up, so they sent the athlete in to finish the job, in his bath by one account.

One ancient account says the emperor murdered by Commodus in Gladiator really died at Vindobona, now which modern city?

Vienna. The film has him smothered in a tent on the German front; Aurelius Victor puts his death at Vindobona on the Danube, while Tertullian says Sirmium, in modern Serbia.

What did the real Commodus rename after his own twelve names and titles?

The months of the year. They became Lucius, Aelius, Aurelius, Commodus and so on through Amazonius and Invictus, and he ordered that Rome itself be called Commodiana.

In Gladiator II, a deranged young emperor names which pet as a consul of Rome?

A monkey. The scene echoes the old story that Caligula meant to make his horse a consul, and the director says the jab at modern politics was intentional.

Who plays the grown-up Lucius in Gladiator II (2024)?

Paul Mescal. Spencer Treat Clark played Lucius as a boy in the original, and the sequel reveals that the grown man is the son of Maximus.

What is the name of Denzel Washington's scheming character in Gladiator II?

Macrinus. The real Macrinus was Caracalla's praetorian prefect, is alleged to have prompted his murder, and became the first emperor who had never been a senator.

Gladiator opens with Maximus's vision of the afterlife as an endless field of what?

Wheat. Maximus is a farmer at heart: before the first battle he tells his men that in three weeks he will be home harvesting his crops.

Which musician wrote a rejected Gladiator sequel in which Roman gods bring Maximus back to life?

Nick Cave. In his draft, working title Christ Killer, Maximus lives on forever, leading tanks in the Second World War and ending up at the modern-day Pentagon.

Historians objected to which animals appearing in Gladiator II's flooded-arena naval battle?

Sharks. Romans really did flood arenas for mock sea battles, but historians know of no ancient writer who mentions hauling such creatures in; the director's reply was 'Were you there?'

Which actor plays the Roman general who conquers Lucius's home at the start of Gladiator II?

Pedro Pascal. His weary general is pure invention, unlike the film's emperors; Pascal called him a very good general, 'which can mean a very good killer'.

The word 'gladiator' comes from the Latin gladius, meaning what?

Sword. The same Latin word gave us gladiolus, literally 'little sword', the name Pliny used for the plant because of its blade-shaped leaves.

Which general cut down the fugitives of Spartacus's beaten army and then claimed the credit for the victory?

Pompey. Marching home from Spain, he met the survivors and wrote to the Senate that another man had won the battle, but that he himself had rooted out the war.

The word 'arena' comes from the Latin for which material, spread on the amphitheatre floor to soak up blood?

Sand. Latin harena meant sand before it meant the fighting floor that was strewn with it, and in Spanish arena is still the everyday word for sand.

A retiarius fought with a weighted net, a dagger and which main weapon?

A trident. The retiarius fought almost naked, with no helmet or shield, relying on speed to snare his armoured opponent in the net before spearing him.

Which heavily armoured gladiator, whose name means 'pursuer', was matched against the net-throwing retiarius?

Secutor. Fully armed where his opponent was almost naked, he had to chase the net man down, and is thought to owe his name to that pursuit.

In mosaics of gladiator fights, who is the third man standing beside the fighters with a long staff?

A referee. He oversaw the bout and, once a man was beaten, held back the winner's blow while the games' sponsor, usually heeding the crowd, decided whether the loser lived.

Spartacus, the gladiator who led a slave revolt against Rome, was born in which region?

Thrace. Appian says he had once served as a soldier with the Romans before he was taken prisoner and sold as a gladiator, the trade he then turned on them.

Spartacus and about 70 other gladiators escaped in 73 BC from a training school near which city?

Capua. Plutarch says 78 men broke out armed with cleavers and spits snatched from a kitchen, then seized a wagonload of gladiators' weapons on the road.

Early in the revolt, Spartacus's followers took up a defensive position on which mountain?

Vesuvius. Besieged near the summit, the rebels wove ladders from wild vines, climbed down the cliffs on the unguarded side and fell on the Roman camp from behind.

Which Roman commander defeated Spartacus in the final battle of the slave revolt?

Crassus. Among the richest men in Rome, he first restored discipline by decimation, putting to death by lot one in ten of the troops blamed for earlier defeats.

After Spartacus's revolt was crushed, 6,000 captured rebels were crucified along which Roman road?

The Appian Way. The crosses carried only his followers: Spartacus himself fell in the last battle, and his body was never found.

The Colosseum was inaugurated in AD 80 by which emperor?

Titus. He opened it with a hundred days of games, and Cassius Dio says some nine thousand animals were killed and the arena was even flooded for a sea fight.

Officially the Flavian Amphitheatre, the Colosseum probably got its popular name from what?

A giant statue of Nero nearby. The bronze colossus was hauled upright to its spot beside the amphitheatre on Hadrian's orders, a move said to have needed 24 elephants.

Who operated the velarium, the huge retractable awning that shaded Colosseum spectators?

Sailors. Working acres of awning by rope and mast was a job for men used to rigging, so hundreds were drafted from the fleet at Misenum and barracked nearby.

For centuries after the games ended, Romans treated the ruined Colosseum chiefly as what?

A quarry. Its stone and marble were carted off quite openly to build churches and other buildings around Rome, until the popes declared the ruin a Christian sanctuary.

Which gladiator school was linked to the Colosseum by an underground passage?

Ludus Magnus. The 'Great School' was the biggest of four built around the amphitheatre, with a practice arena whose seats let Romans come and watch the gladiators train.

Gladiators were nicknamed hordearii, meaning eaters of what?

Barley. Bone tests on gladiator skeletons point to a diet of grain and beans with very little meat, which the team that tested them believes built a layer of fat to cushion them against cuts.

The physician Galen served as doctor to a troop of gladiators in which city of Asia Minor?

Pergamum. It was his home town, and the gladiators' surgeon went on to Rome, where he became physician to the imperial court and treated Commodus himself.

Archaeologists identified the first known gladiator graveyard in which ancient city in modern Turkey?

Ephesus. Many of the more than 60 men buried there had old wounds that had healed well, a sign that gladiators were prized assets given costly medical care.

Around AD 200 the emperor Septimius Severus banned which kind of fighter from the arena?

Women. Cassius Dio says they fought so fiercely at one contest that the crowd began joking about ladies of rank, and female combat was forbidden from then on.

Despite the feasting myth, the vomitoria of a Roman amphitheatre like the Colosseum were what?

Exit passages for the crowd. The name means a place that spews people out, and the idea of a room for vomiting between courses is not recorded before the 1800s.

According to legend, Emperor Honorius banned gladiator fights after spectators killed whom for trying to stop one?

A Christian monk. The church historian Theodoret names him Telemachus, an ascetic from the East who stepped into the arena to part the fighters and was stoned by the crowd.

In 325 Constantine stopped condemned criminals becoming gladiators, sending them where instead?

The mines. His order called bloody spectacles unwelcome in a time of peace, yet years later he granted the town of Hispellum the right to stage gladiator shows.

A gladiator given a rudis, a wooden training weapon, had earned what?

His freedom. The poet Martial describes an emperor sending a rudis to each of two fighters, Priscus and Verus, after they battled to a standstill and yielded together.

Which emperor marked his conquest of Dacia with 123 days of games involving some 10,000 gladiators?

Trajan. Cassius Dio says Dacia's king hid his treasure under a diverted river until a captured companion gave the secret away.

Which Roman staged 320 gladiator pairs in 65 BC as funeral games for his father?

Julius Caesar. He was already deep in debt, and the band he gathered so alarmed his rivals that they passed a law capping how many gladiators anyone could keep in Rome.

A brawl with visiting fans from Nuceria in AD 59 earned which town a ten-year ban on gladiator shows?

Pompeii. Tacitus says taunts turned to stones and then steel, and a fresco found in one of the town's houses still shows men fighting in and around the arena.

Films show thumbs down, but classicist Anthony Corbeill argues which gesture really doomed a defeated gladiator?

Thumb pointing up. He reads the extended thumb as the hostile sign, while a thumb pressed out of sight against a closed fist was the crowd's plea for mercy.

Commodus once beheaded which bird in the arena, then waved its head at the watching senators?

Ostrich. Senator Cassius Dio, who was sitting there, chewed laurel leaves from his garland so that the emperor would not catch him laughing at the threat.

In an inscription, Commodus boasted of being the only fighter of which kind to defeat 12,000 men?

Left-handed. Cassius Dio, quoting the number from memory, says he took great pride in it; left-handers were billed as a rarity because their angle of attack threw opponents off balance.

The Colosseum was begun in the early AD 70s under which emperor?

Vespasian. He built it over the lake of an earlier emperor's pleasure palace, returning the land to the public, and paid for it with booty from the Jewish War.

In Gladiator, Commodus brings which undefeated champion out of retirement to fight Maximus?

Tigris of Gaul. Tigers are set on Maximus during the duel, yet he wins and then defies the emperor's order to finish his beaten opponent.

Gladiator shows Roman cavalry riding with which piece of horse tack that Rome's real horsemen never used?

Stirrups were unknown to Roman cavalry, who gripped a horned saddle instead. The film used them anyway because riding the Roman way takes extra training and skill.

Which actor's own company produced the 1960 epic Spartacus, in which he starred as the rebel gladiator?

Kirk Douglas made the film through his own company and removed its first director three weeks into shooting. He replaced him with Stanley Kubrick, his director on Paths of Glory.

Roman medical writers recorded people drinking the blood of a slain gladiator as a cure for which illness?

Epilepsy sufferers drank the blood, or ate the liver, of a slain fighter. Once the games were banned, executed criminals took the gladiator's place in the remedy.

Gladiator II opened in US cinemas on the same day as which hit musical, a clash likened to Barbenheimer?

Wicked moved its date forward to avoid Moana 2 and landed on the Roman epic's opening day, a pairing nicknamed Glicked. The musical won the weekend.

The building of the Colosseum was paid for with treasure Rome's legions took from which city in AD 70?

Jerusalem's Temple was stripped when the city fell, and an inscription found at the amphitheatre says it was built from the general's share of the booty.

The real Commodus, an emperor who fought as a gladiator, had himself portrayed across the empire as which hero?

Hercules was the role Commodus chose because it let him claim Jupiter, king of the gods, as his father. He fought as a gladiator every afternoon of his last games.

What became of Spartacus's remains after the rebel gladiator's final defeat by Rome's legions?

They were never found, though ancient writers agree Spartacus died in the battle. His crucifixion in the 1960 film is Hollywood's invention.

A day at the Roman arena opened with beast hunts and closed with gladiators; what usually filled the midday break?

Public executions of condemned criminals filled the lunch hour, some staged as fatal re-enactments of Greek and Roman myths. Seneca despised the crowd's appetite for them.

Gladiator was nominated for all four of these Academy Awards; which one did it win?

Best Visual Effects went to a team that built only about a third of the Colosseum and added the rest by computer. The film lost for its cinematography and editing.

Gladiator's Best Picture Oscar came one year after which other DreamWorks film won the same award?

American Beauty won five Oscars the year before, after DreamWorks campaigned hard to avoid a repeat of Saving Private Ryan's Best Picture snub.

Gladiator's plot echoes The Fall of the Roman Empire, a 1964 epic starring which Italian actress?

Sophia Loren was paid $1 million to play the emperor's daughter, the part Connie Nielsen took in Gladiator. Both films follow Commodus from his father's death to his own downfall.

A winning Roman gladiator received an award from the games' sponsor and which other token of victory?

A palm branch went to every victor, and a man carried it into the arena in the opening procession. Outstanding fighters might also get a laurel crown and money from the crowd.

In Gladiator, Russell Crowe improvised Maximus's speech about his farm by describing his own home in which country?

Australia was where Crowe's own home lay, and he described it on camera instead of reciting details of a fictional place. Maximus's homesickness was partly an actor's.

In Gladiator, the dying emperor asks Maximus to rule as regent and restore which form of government to Rome?

The Republic is the old emperor's dream in the film, though nothing suggests the real man wanted it back. He had made Commodus his co-ruler three years before he died.

At the end of Gladiator, what does Juba bury in the Colosseum at the spot where Maximus died?

Figurines of his family, the murdered wife and son he hoped to rejoin, go into the ground that night. By then his friends and allies had carried him out of the arena with honour.

The scenes of Maximus's farm in Gladiator were filmed in the Val d'Orcia, part of which Italian region?

Tuscany's Val d'Orcia, a valley of cultivated hills south of Siena, supplied the farm. The English Patient had been shot there a few years earlier.

Gladiator's producers put Russell Crowe top of their list for Maximus after his breakout in which 1997 crime film?

L.A. Confidential was the breakout that put Crowe first in line, though Antonio Banderas and Mel Gibson were also considered for the general.

For Gladiator's opening battle, the director won permission to do what to a stretch of forest due for removal?

Burn it down is what the forestry authority allowed, since it planned to clear that section of woodland anyway. The blazing treeline behind the battle was real.

Gladiator II opens with a Roman army conquering which North African kingdom, where Lucius has made his home?

Numidia falls in the opening scenes: the hero's wife is killed in the assault and the survivors are shipped to Italy as slaves.

In Gladiator II, the exiled Lucius has grown up far from Rome under which adopted name?

Hanno is the name he lives under until his mother recognises him in the arena. She had sent him away as a child to keep him from rivals for the throne.

The twin emperors of Gladiator II are based on which real brothers, the sons of Septimius Severus?

Geta and Caracalla really did share the throne, though they were not twins. The partnership lasted less than a year before one brother had the other murdered.

Spencer Treat Clark played young Lucius in Gladiator and, in the same year, Bruce Willis's son in which film?

Unbreakable cast him as the boy convinced his father is a superhero. He came back to the part as an adult in the sequel Glass.

The Roman gladiators known as andabatae stood out for fighting in which unusual way?

Blindfolded fighters called andabatae are so rarely mentioned that the best-known reference is a joke in one of Cicero's letters to a friend.

Commodus murders his father in Gladiator, but the real emperor may have died in which epidemic of his reign?

Antonine Plague, probably smallpox or measles, raged through the empire for much of his reign and may have killed him on campaign in AD 180.

The 1960 gladiator epic Spartacus helped end the Hollywood blacklist by openly crediting which screenwriter?

Dalton Trumbo, one of the Hollywood Ten, was named in public as its writer. President Kennedy then crossed a picket line to see the film.

Which English actor auditioned for Commodus in Gladiator, only to lose the part to a rival's knockout audition tape?

Jude Law read for the emperor before a rival's tape settled the matter. Jennifer Lopez reportedly auditioned too, for the part of Commodus's sister.

The earliest gladiator type was modelled on warriors of which Italian people, beaten by Rome in the 4th century BC?

Samnites lent their name after Rome's Campanian allies dressed arena fighters in captured Samnite armour out of hatred. The type probably faded once Samnium became an ally.

After a duel at a senator's party in Gladiator II, Lucius betrays his Roman schooling by reciting which poet?

Virgil's Aeneid is the poem he quotes, and the slip makes his owner suspect that this prisoner of war is no ordinary foreigner.

Which Latin title did the owner of a gladiator troupe hold, a trade Romans ranked alongside pimps and butchers?

Lanista was a title that carried social disgrace, yet the man held lawful power of life and death over every member of his troupe.

Which emperor added the hypogeum, the network of tunnels and animal pens beneath the Colosseum's arena floor?

Domitian built the hypogeum after the opening games. Once it was in place, the arena could no longer be flooded for the mock sea battles ancient writers describe.

Ancient writers record the salute 'morituri te salutant' only once, addressed by doomed fighters to which emperor?

Claudius heard it from captives and criminals sent to fight a mock naval battle on a lake, and is said to have replied 'or not'. It was probably a plea, not a routine salute.

Which type of Roman gladiator took its name from a Greek word for a type of fish?

Murmillo comes from mormyros, and the helmet could carry fish imagery. Ancient authors say he regularly fought the net-man, a fisherman chasing his catch.

The poet Martial described the duel of Priscus and Verus at the Colosseum's opening games; how did it end?

Both men won: each was declared a victor, a rare result. Martial's poem about it is the only detailed description of a gladiator fight to survive.

Which fellow gladiator led the slave revolt beside Spartacus before breaking away and dying near Mount Garganus?

Crixus took about 30,000 followers with him when he split from the main army, and two-thirds of them fell at his side. His name means 'one with curly hair'.

In Gladiator, slave traders carry the wounded Maximus to Zucchabar, a real Roman town in which modern country?

Algeria is home to Miliana, the town that stands on the site of Zucchabar. Rome made it a colony under Augustus, in the province of Mauretania Caesariensis.

Maximus's first Colosseum fight in Gladiator restages which battle against Carthage, with history's losers winning?

Zama was Rome's victory over Hannibal, so Maximus and the other gladiators, cast as the Carthaginians, were meant to lose. They won, and the crowd took his side.

In Gladiator, Maximus plots to slip out of Rome and rejoin his loyal legions camped at which port?

Ostia was as far as the plan got on paper: Commodus's soldiers killed his aide Cicero at the meeting point and took Maximus prisoner before he could leave.

Maximus rides home to a farm near Roman Turgalium in Gladiator; by what name is that town known today?

Trujillo, in Extremadura, is the modern town identified with Turgalium. Its most famous native son is the conquistador Francisco Pizarro.

In the first-draft script of Gladiator, the hero later renamed Maximus was called what, after a real athlete?

Narcissus was the hero of David Franzoni's first draft, a real figure from the last days of Commodus. Rewrites replaced him with an invented general.

Which Roman general, married to Connie Nielsen's character, leads the opening invasion in Gladiator II?

Acacius once trained under Maximus and has grown sick of conquest. Sent into the arena himself, he surrenders rather than fight his wife's son.