Are You Not Entertained?
"Gladiator" and Stoicism
Nearly a quarter century after it first premiered in theaters, the sword-and-sandals epic Gladiator remains a touchstone for American popular culture. It’s the movie that rocketed Russell Crowe to stardom and spawned numerous memes that persist to this day. Perhaps most importantly, though, Gladiator has become intertwined in popular imagination with both the ancient philosophy of Stoicism and its modern revival. That association largely comes down to the presence of the Emperor Marcus Aurelius—one of the few ancient Stoics whose writings come down to us over the centuries—as a character early on in the film, as well as several pseudo-Stoic aphorisms that crop up throughout.
With the release of a sequel—unimaginatively titled Gladiator II—this Thanksgiving, the link between director Ridley Scott’s cinematic portrayal of ancient Rome and Stoic philosophy looks like it will only grow stronger. But how real is the connection between the narrative we see on our screens and the actual philosophy of Stoicism? In other words, just how Stoic is Gladiator?
It's an important question to answer given the film’s enduring influence and its intellectual pretensions. Entertaining as its drama and action are, after all, the movie takes significant liberties with history. It’s no knock on Gladiator as a movie to note that Marcus Aurelius probably died of the plague that ravaged the Roman Empire during his reign, for instance, or to point out that his son Commodus ruled the empire for over a decade before he was strangled to death in his bath—not slain during a gladiatorial bout in the Colosseum. The same goes for the film’s gestures toward philosophy: it takes nothing away from the movie itself to note that it doesn’t get Stoicism quite right. All the same, though, it does make an examination of the movie’s overall philosophical accuracy worthwhile.
That assessment can best be done with a look at just how closely four of the film’s main characters hew to Stoic tenets, starting with the philosopher-emperor himself: Marcus Aurelius.
Marcus Aurelius: A Blurry Portrait of the Philosopher-Emperor
Compared to the actual Marcus Aurelius who wrote the philosophical journal we know today as the Meditations, the Marcus Aurelius we meet in Gladiator comes across like a blurry, pixelated version of an otherwise well-known image. Actor Richard Harris conveys both the physical frailty and cerebral charisma we’re told Marcus had toward the end of his life quite well, but the film itself does not present us with a particularly accurate portrait of Marcus as a practitioner of Stoic philosophy. It’d be foolish to insist a Hollywood blockbuster dwell too much on historical or philosophical accuracy at the expense of a compelling narrative, but far too often the Marcus of Gladiator expresses philosophical sentiments different from those the real, historical Marcus repeated to himself in the Meditations.
In a private conversation shortly after the movie’s opening battle scene, for instance, Marcus notes his advanced age and rhetorically asks Russell Crowe’s Maximus how he’ll be remembered by posterity: as a tyrant, a philosopher, or the man who resurrected Rome’s republic. But as the Meditations makes abundantly clear, the actual Marcus would not have been so concerned himself with what history might say about him—or would have at least recognized that how future generations thought about him and his reign was well beyond his own control.
Indeed, this historical Marcus repeatedly reminded himself in his journal that he’d be forgotten by history—just like his predecessors and so many other noteworthy figures from the ancient Greek and Roman worlds, all destined to be forgotten with the passage of time:
Words familiar long ago are now archaisms; so also names that were on everyone’s lips long ago are now the equivalent of archaisms: Camillus, Caeso, Volesus, Dentatus, a little later Scipio and Cato, the Augustus, the Hadrian and Antoninus. Everything is transient; everything quickly becomes the stuff of stories, and then is quickly buried by complete oblivion… In any case, what is it to be remembered forever? Nothing but vanity. (4.33)
He later takes pains to tell himself:
See how many people there are who don’t even know your name, how many of them will soon forget you, and how many of them will very soon forget you, and how many of them may be praising you now but will very soon be denouncing you. Recognize that neither memory nor fame nor anything else at all has any importance. (9.30)1
It's likely Marcus wrestled with concerns about his legacy and how future generations might remember him, or at least encountered such sentiments regularly as he went about his day-to-day duties as emperor. After all, they troubled him enough that he reminded himself multiple times in the Meditations not to succumb to this specific temptation. But that makes the tete-a-tete between the fictional Marcus and Maximus in Gladiator all the more jarring: it doesn’t seem likely that the historical Marcus would have expressed such thoughts openly or used them as an explicit rationale for his political decisions, even with a close advisor.
Still, there are some grains of truth to some of Gladiator’s otherwise historically and philosophically inaccurate plot points. It’s hard to believe that a scheme to give supreme imperial power back to the Senate would have occurred to Marcus or anyone else by that point in Roman history; by the end of his reign, the empire had been a going concern for two centuries. Still, the historical Marcus did possess good relations with the Senate, and in the Meditations he also sympathized strongly with the likes of Cicero and Cato—both of whom paid for their opposition to Julius Caesar with their lives—as well as the Stoic Opposition to the mad emperor Nero.
Likewise, Marcus did not, as Gladiator states, ban gladiatorial games outright and shutter the Colosseum. But he did express a clear distaste for bloodsport in the Meditations, writing that “productions that are put on in the amphitheater and such places exasperate you because it’s merely the same show over and over again” (6.46). He compared gladiatorial games unfavorably to the mixed martial arts of the pankration, saying the latter offered a better metaphor for the practice of philosophy: “A gladiator lays his sword aside and takes it up, but a pancratiast is never without his hands and all he has to do is make fists of them” (12.9). According to our surviving sources, moreover, the historical Marcus also took steps to reduce the cruelty of the games.
Other aspects of Gladiator’s fictional Marcus come closer to the mark. Characters like Maximus and Oliver Reed’s Proximo—more on him in a moment—attribute certain aphorisms to Marcus that, while not found in the Meditations and incongruent with its style, do bear at least a faint resemblance to the underlying spirit found in the writings of the historical Marcus. “So much for the glory of Rome,” the film’s Marcus wryly tells Maximus after surveying a desolate battlefield at the start of the movie. It’s a scene that derives much of its power from Harris’s sterling portrayal, less a statement of cynicism than a weary acknowledgment of reality. But it also accurately reflects the reminders the real Marcus gave himself in the Meditations about transience and impermanence of all things—not least life itself.
All in all, then, Gladiator gets some rather big things wrong about Marcus Aurelius and his philosophy of life. But with the help of an excellent performance by the late Richard Harris and some smaller, more subtle, and more accurate details, the film creates a passable enough fictional portrait of the philosopher-emperor.
Deeply Flawed Stoics: Lucilla and Proximo
Ironically enough, characters in Gladiator other than Marcus Aurelius better express and manifest Stoic ideals through their words and actions throughout the film. Lucilla, the daughter of Marcus, and Proximo, the ex-gladiator turned gladiator school manager, both hew closest to the tenets of Stoic philosophy—but both characters also manage to severely compromise that philosophy as well. Proximo, for one, chooses to make his living from the bloodsport the historical Marcus found so distasteful, while Lucilla (played by Connie Nielsen) makes an excruciating judgment call to betray the plot against her brother Commodus (a deliciously villainous Joaquin Phoenix) to save the life of her son.
Of all the characters in Gladiator, it’s Lucilla who adheres most closely to Stoic principles. She plays her roles as daughter and sister of the emperor as well as she can under circumstances that grow increasingly precarious as the film proceeds. She resembles no real-life Stoic so much as Seneca, the statesman, writer, and philosopher who served in Nero’s court, though she owes her own role at court to birth rather than imperial preferment. Lucilla finds herself trapped in an impossible situation—a depraved brother who murdered her father and presents a constant threat to her own son.
Like Seneca, she does her best to tame and moderate Commodus before eventually plotting to overthrow him. She intercedes between Rome’s Senate and Commodus early on in the film, and when her brother proposes dissolving the body she tells him to leave the Roman people their traditions. More importantly, she gives Maximus the moral wake-up call he needs, reminding him that she once knew him to be a man of principle rather than a single-minded seeker of revenge. Lucilla only falters as the film reaches its climax, forced by her brother to make the agonizing choice to give up her co-conspirators to save the life of her son. It’s hard to fault Lucilla’s decision here, compelled as she is to choose between her roles as a mother and as a leader of the political opposition.
Proximo, for his part, makes no bones about his profession: as he tells Maximus when initially refusing his entreaty to join the conspiracy against Commodus, “I’m an entertainer.” He knows he’s immersed in a sordid, bloody business, one that did not find favor among Marcus Aurelius or any of the other Roman Stoics; indeed, he complains that Marcus “shut us down” and forced the gladiatorial games out to the provincial sticks. But he remains philosophical about his own line of work and navigates his own circumstances as best he can.
Take Proximo’s remarks to his new gladiators—Maximus among them—before their first battle. They’re quite Stoic in nature, especially given the source and his equanimity toward bloodsport: “Ultimately, we’re all dead men. Sadly, we cannot choose how—but we can decide how we meet that end, in order that we are remembered… as men.” For Proximo and the Stoics alike, it is not death itself that matters but how we conduct ourselves when we die. Or as the Stoics maintained, death is simply a fact of life and not a matter of moral or ethical concern—but how we face death is the highest of such concerns.
Likewise, Proximo’s admonition to Maximus that “we mortals are but shadows and dust”—a more or less accurate allusion to aspects of Stoic philosophy as a whole as well as an echo of a particular passage in the Meditations:
Continually remind yourself of all those highly dissatisfied men who pushed the boundaries of fortune in one way or another—in terms of fame, perhaps, or catastrophes met with, or enemies made. And then ask yourself: where is it all now? Smoke and ashes, the stuff of stories or not even that. (12.27)
Ultimately, Proximo joins the plot against Commodus, frees Maximus, and pays for it with his life. He might deny it, but Proximo retains a sense of honor and a moral code despite his obvious flaws. Indeed, when death comes for him, Proximo faces it exactly as he instructs his gladiators earlier on in the film: as a man, a self-controlled individual who acts as he should knowing full well the risks and dangers inherent in his chosen course. He lives his philosophy in that specific moment, practicing what he preaches as praetorians cut him down.
It's easy to dismiss Proximo as a Stoic given his self-serving shortcomings and failings. But he nonetheless comes across as equally sincere and, perhaps more importantly, aware of them. That’s more than a lot of us can say.
Maximus: The Prodigal General
By contrast, Maximus—Gladiator’s protagonist—doesn’t conduct himself as a Stoic throughout much of the film. He may be a devotee and surrogate son of Marcus Aurelius, but it’s far from clear what (if any) philosophy of life Maximus follows at the start of the movie. Whatever it may be, however, it’s not likely Stoicism given his preoccupation with posterity: “What we do in life,” he famously tells his troops at the start of the film, “echoes in eternity.” But it’s also a preoccupation that the historical Marcus repeatedly warned himself to disregard and avoid.
Maximus does possess a strong sense of duty to both Marcus and Rome—indeed, he’s prepared to forgo a return home to his family in order to fulfill the emperor’s dying wishes—but it doesn’t appear to come from a conscious or particularly coherent philosophy of life. Moreover, his drive for vengeance against Commodus certainly doesn’t accord with Stoic philosophy and indeed contradicts several passages in the Meditations itself. Betrayed by Commodus, then enslaved and required to fight in the gladiatorial arena, the prospect of retribution motivates Maximus for much of the film. When Lucilla asks him to help overthrow Commodus, Maximus surprises her by making it plain that revenge is all he seeks. Or as he tells Commodus on the floor of the Colosseum, “I will have my vengeance, in this life or the next.”
Still, with Lucilla’s help Maximus does come around to a wider, more philosophical perspective on his own situation and renewed concern for Rome. He joins the plot against Commodus, but he never quite gives up on his quest for vengeance, instead placing it in the service of a higher purpose and greater cause—what Maximus calls “the last wish of a dying man.”
In the final analysis, Maximus is hardly a Stoic—much less a Stoic role model. But as Commodus tells Maximus just before the film’s climax, “it’s a striking story” nonetheless.
It’s difficult to call Gladiator or any of its major characters “Stoic” in any real sense. Lucilla comes closest but falters in the end, while Proximo shows glimmers of a Stoic-influenced worldview. That’s true of the film as a whole, where traces of Stoic philosophy (or something vaguely resembling it) appear scattered across its two-and-a-half-hour runtime. These traces peek in and out at times and in specific moments, but do not amount to a coherent philosophical narrative within the film itself. Like any other movie, certain story and character beats in Gladiator can serve to make points about or illustrate aspects of Stoic philosophy. But that’s a far cry from the film itself embodying these principles, either in whole or in part.
That certainly doesn’t stop Gladiator from being an enormously entertaining film, one that’s seeped into American popular consciousness and inspired a number of its viewers to pick up a copy of the Meditations or look more closely at Stoicism and ancient philosophy more generally. Those who do will very quickly see where the movie gets things right and where it gets them wrong. Gladiator may not be steeped in Stoic philosophy itself, but to the extent that it’s stimulated interest in the subject of ancient Greek and Roman philosophy it’s definitely been salutary—and it’ll certainly be interesting to see whether Gladiator II has similar results.
Are we not entertained? Yes, yes we are.
Similar sentiments can be found in 6.18: “What a way to behave! They’re reluctant to praise any of their contemporaries, who are actually here with them, but they attach considerable importance to being praised by future generations, whom they’ve never seen and will never see. This is pretty much the same as being upset because earlier generations didn’t compose eulogies for you!”