Gladiator: Its Faults with Roman History

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When watching the movie Gladiator, one is sees the Roman culture and how it was portrayed at the time. The main historical features that stuck out were the details of the Roman military and the accuracies of a gladiator. Throughout the movie these two features are viewed multiple times by the audience. By viewing this movie and through research these one can see that even though it is a great movie, Gladiator, has some inaccuracies about these historical features.
The origin of gladiatorial games started with hand-to-hand combats which were performed at memorial games with in Rome (Brown, 2007, pg.1). From this the gladiatorial games continued to grow and grow in popularity as well as entertainment. The potential of gladiatorial battles started and soon were not just done at funerals but for all kinds of celebrations and occasions (Brown, 2007, pg.2).Due to these games becoming so huge all around Rome, amphitheaters were beginning to be built across new cities and old cities were attempting to add them. With the amphitheaters being built more and more people came to see these games, and thus gladiatorial battles became a way of entertainment.
During the Roman ages gladiators were used as entertainment for The Republic as well as the citizens of Rome. Most of the time the gladiators were slaves and sometimes prisoners who have committed crimes. Also there were times where some enlisted into the combat voluntarily as free or freed men (Brown, 2007, pg.4). According to Wolfgang Neubauer (2014), “it was a prison; they were prisoners, and lived in cells, in a fortress with only one gate out” (pg.1). Something that is seen in Gladiator is the gladiators traveling from town to town which is inaccurate.
When becoming gladiators the me...

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...perial Army. War in History, 20(1), 7-31.
Gilliver, K. (2007). Display in Roman Warfare: The Appearance of Armies and Individuals on the Battlefield. War in History, 14(1), 1-21. . Http://web.a.ebscohost.com/. Web. 14 Mar. 2014. .
Mueller, Tom. "UNEARTHING the COLOSSEUM'S SECRETS." Smithsonian 42.1 (2011): 26-33. Http://web.a.ebscohost.com/. Web. 14 Mar. 2014. .
Vergano, D. (2014, February 25). Gladiator School Discovery Reveals Hard Lives of Ancient Warriors. National Geographic. Retrieved April 1, 2014, from http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/02/140225-gladiator-school-discovered-roman-austria-archaeology-science/

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