How (not) to reform an empire
So, Gladiator II
turns out to be an intriguing cross-over between Training Day[1], The
Return of the King (“What say you?”), and yes, even the “original gladiator”,
1960’s Spartacus (“I did it; no, I did it!”).
The plot is almost
identical to that of the 2000 original which starred the iconic Russell Crowe
as Maximus, the Roman general-turned-gladiator.
In the sequel, Lucius, who turns out to be the love-child of Maximus and
Lucilla (daughter of emperor Marcus Aurelius), picks up his father’s mantle and
takes on the empire (and its 2 wicked co-emperors) in an attempt to return Rome
to a just republic under the “guidance” of the senate, thus fulfilling his “grandfather”
Marcus’ dream.[2] However, history – whether Roman or not – demonstrates
time and time again that tyrants rise as they impose order on the chaos which
results from a power vacuum.[3] Which is preferable – endless civil war and
its resulting devastation…or stability under the rule of (usually) one person
with absolute power?[4]
Macrinus, a
character who – along with Marcus Aurelius, Commodus, “Caracalla”[5]
and Geta – is (loosely) based on a historical figure, has a telling line. Towards the end of the movie, as he reveals to
Lucilla his plan to take the imperial throne (as Bondesque villains always do),
he boasts, “The only truth in my Rome will be the power of the strongest”. This Darwinian-Nietzschian realpolitik
is precisely how the empire worked, and the ultimate symbol of its irresistible
and seemingly inevitable power was…the cross.
In an earlier scene, Macrinus tells emperor Caracalla that crucifixion should
only be applied to thieves and Christians[6],
but not aristocratic traitors – only death in the colosseum[7] is
good enough for them.
The film ends,
following the murders of the two emperors by Macrinus, with two Roman armies
facing off just outside the walls of Rome.
A century after these fictional, cinematic events, two Roman armies
actually did meet outside Rome – one was led by Constantine and the
other by Maxentius. Their forces met at
the Milvian Bridge in the year 312 to – as usual – settle the question of who
would be the next sole emperor. The
night before the battle, as the story is told by the Christian historian
Eusebius (a contemporary of these events), Constantine had a vision of the
cross with the words In Hoc Signo Vinces (In this sign, Conquer)
inscribed around it. At any rate,
Constantine did indeed win the battle and take over control of the empire. A year later, Constantine did the unthinkable
– he granted religious freedom and imperial protection to the Christians. These social pariahs, these subversive subjects
who consistently refused to ascribe divine honours to the emperor and who had
been intermittently persecuted for the three previous centuries, now found
themselves the beneficiaries of imperial patronage and would soon constitute
the official religious establishment of the empire (as of 380).
So, as hard as it
is for historians to explain, within three centuries, the ever-more-numerous followers
of the Jewish peasant who had been crucified as a rebel against the imperial
order had taken over the socio-religious dimension of the very empire that had snuffed
out their founding figure, the man from Nazareth.
Historian Edward
Gibbon, in his 1776 The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire,
laid the blame at the door of the Christians, due to the “fact” that Christianity
had weakened the empire and robbed it of the martial, muscular stance that it
had habitually taken vis-à-vis the Mediterranean world.[8] Contemporary Classical historian Tom Holland,
in his new book Pax, turns the tables on Gibbon’s tired thesis, arguing
rather that Christianity permitted the empire to endure as long as it did, by
providing social cohesion throughout the topographically divided, sprawling
territories of the Roman world. In the
end, after the “Barbarians” had dismantled the political order of the western
empire[9],
it was the “society” of converted slaves and other riff-raff who unwittingly
became the founders of a new civilization under the rule of a crucified-and-risen
Lord[10]. St. Paul, in the first decades of this dissident,
non-violent movement, had described the crucifixion of Jesus as a demonstration
of God’s “wisdom” and “power”[11]. Christianity took the ultimate symbol of
imperial might and deconstructed it, transforming it into the sign of the
victory of the victims of the empire.[12] (Historical) truth is weird.[13] Please pass the popcorn.
[1] Whether he’s playing a corrupt cop in contemporary L.A. or a ruthlessly
ambitious slave trader in 3rd-century Rome, Denzel’s villain side is
always the same…
[2] Need I point out that Julius Caesar was a senator when he killed a million
Gauls and enslaved a million more in the typically senatorial way of raising
funds for his bid at out-maneuvering his rival Pompey and appropriating absolute
power? After Octavian (aka Augustus) had
won the civil war which followed Caesar’s assassination, the empire was “official”
(27 B.C.). Having a senatorial, republican
style of government is no guarantee of justice and the realizing of “the dream
of Rome”…then again, what was “the dream of Rome” during the Punic wars? Certainly not to bring republicanism to Carthage…
Btw, the lines of Virgil that are quoted to Caracalla by the movie’s hero came
from the pen of the same man who had hailed (in verse) Octavian’s accession to
the throne of Rome as the dawn of a Golden Age…not exactly your go-to guy if
you’re looking for a stoic zinger.
[3] Cf. Napoleon and “republican” France, Hitler and post-Versailles
Germany, Stalin and revolutionary Russia, etc.
[4] To take a more recent example, was Iraq better off under Sadaam
Hussein or under the rule of ISIS?
Hussein did manage to defeat Iran, just saying…
[5] It was a nickname, like “Caligula” (real name=Gaius); his imperial
handle was Marcus Aurelius Antoninus (though that’s not what you would have
found on his birth certificate, if he had had one).
[6] A reference to Nero’s persecution of Rome’s Christians after the Great
Fire of AD 64 (during which both St. Peter (crucified) and St. Paul (beheaded) were
purportedly martyred)?
[7] Cf. Prime Video’s Those about to Die series for the story of
the construction of the Flavian amphitheatre (aka the Colosseum) by Vespasian,
Nero’s successor and like the later Severus (father of Caracalla & Geta), the
father of two sons who would succeed him as emperor (Titus & Domitian).
[8] This is a similar charge to the one that St. Augustine answered in
his City of God (AD 426).
[9] The fall of the western Roman empire is traditionally dated to the
year 476. Rome had been sacked by Germanic
tribes for the first time in 410 (which had prompted the critiques that
Augustine refuted).
[10] Latin: Dominus, a title claimed by all the Roman emperors.
[11] Cf. 1 Cor. 1.18-31.
[12] Much to the chagrin of Nietzsche, who lamented 19th-century
Christian values as so much “slave morality”.
[13] Cf. Tom Holland’s 2019 Dominion if you really want your hair
blown back. And go see Gladiator II.
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