Gladiator II - Just Why?

To say Gladiator 2 was a sequel no one asked for is an understatement.

The first Gladiator was fun, had some respect for historical accuracy, and was a pretty accurate reenactment of the Rome tactics and gladiatorial games of Marcus Aurelius' time.

 Gladiator 2, not so much.

To say it had so many blatant historical inaccuracies it would hurt a classicist's soul is accurate. Verily, it did.

Horrendously bad, it was. 

It begins with a Roman fleet attacking Numidia under the Emperors Caracalla and Geta sometime between 209 and 211 AD. The leader of Numidia at the time is named Jugurtha.

The problem is the Roman Republic's War with Jugurtha took place in 118 BC, prior to the Roman Empire, and Numidia had been under Roman domian and control since then.

This does let them get some DEI credit for the film though portraying Jugurtha as Black, rather than North African Berber so there's that. 

And no, the Roman generals at the time of Geta and Caracalla were not known to run ahead of their formation fighting enemies one-on-one.  Not how it worked.

It gets progressively, and dare I say diversely, worse from there.

Denzel Washington plays Macrinus, as the master of gladiators. He does a fine job chewing the scenery and basically portraying himself out of Training Day. He's an enjoyable actor, but it kills the history of the period all the more, but again awesome diversity DEI credit.

The real Macrinus was the commander of the Preaetorian Guard  and as far as is known was not involved in the death of Geta, but was involved in killing Caracalla and becoming Emperor for a short period before being killed himself.

Oh, and Macrinus, while from North Africa, wasn't Black, but again DEI cred.

Geta and Caracalla are portrayed as effeminate half-wit twin poofs.  Again for DEI credit I suppose, when the historical record is rather different. 

Also, they weren't twins with Caracalla being 11 months older. They were both active on military campaigns and Caracalla was held to be quite the military strategist and campaigner. They did hate each other though and far more than is portrayed in the movie.

Caracalla also never had a pet monkey.  Lawdog is likely happy to know that.

Gladiator 2 even literally jumped the shark by having sharks in the Colosseum during the nautical battle scene.

While Rome did stage a Naumachia in the Colosseum at least once, the Romans did not capture sharks and have them swimming around the Colosseum during such battles.

Hilariously and painfully the naval battle itself was announced as a remake of the Battle of Salamis and described as a battle between the "Trojans and the Persians".

The Battle of Salamis was between the Greeks and the Persian  - in 480 BC. The Trojan war was much, much earlier, in the 12th or 13th century BC between the Greeks and the Trojans.  

The movie then continues with more and more historical inaccuracies.

There's even people sipping coffee and reading newspapers during the movie. 

Coffee didn't come to Rome as a beverage before the 17th century AD,  and newspapers weren't invented until the 1400s AD - over a thousand years after the events in the film.

I mean you can take license with historical events, but asking the audience to disbelieve a thousand years worth of an anachronism is asking for a bit much. 

In short, if you haven't seen Gladiator 2 yet,  I recommend you disbelieve it ever existed.  Instead you can have a much better and more enjoyable use of your movie-watching time by watching Gladiator again.

Rome IV - The Vatican

We then walked back to the bus and drove on to our next stop.

We passed the Tiber, which is rather low this year:

 

We then reached the Vatican parking lot - a very large underground parking garage setup for tour buses of all types.

We then walked to St. Peter's Square. Unfortunately, it was still a hot enough walk that another lady in our tour group dropped out before even reaching the square. I really cannot recommend visiting Rome in August. If you do, stay hydrated.

 We had apparently missed the Pope's appearance by a few hours that day.

The square is impressively large.

 

We also saw some of the walls of the Vatican, click to embiggen and see the many inscriptions on the wall.

 

We saw a few Carabinieri about:

 

And a nice display by the Italian Army by the Vatican wall:

A street vendor saw me looking the vehicle over. and offered to sell it to me for 100 Euro.

I said "If you've got the keys, and it runs you've got a deal".

He didn't, so we both got a laugh out of it.  

There are a ton of street vendors both within and without the Vatican area selling all sorts of stuff - mainly religious items and hats for protection from the sun. Unfortunately, there's lots of pickpockets about as well so you need to watch your wallet.

We then got some free time and the options were to hang around the Vatican, or take a rather long walk over a bridge to a shopping area.  The family's answer may surprise you - they were fried so further long walks and shopping was out.

So we stayed around the Vatican and went to a find a place for lunch.

First we went to the Caffe San Pietro which has been operating since 1775. Yes, 1775.

 

It's a cafeteria-style restaurant but it unfortunately was packed and not even standing room only, so we headed out to try and find somewhere else to eat.

We wandered about and with some Apple Maps help did manage to find a restaurant somewhat nearby with a table available and then had a real Italian lunch.  The place was rather packed, but we had a most delightful lunch of real fresh Roman-style pasta that was amazing.

We then headed back to the Vatican, bought a few gifts in the many gift shops in the area for some Catholic friends of ours, and then went to the pickup point and tried to find some shade and then got on the bus and headed back for the long drive to the port.

Rome III - The Colosseum and Constantine's Arch

We continued walking along the Forum until we reached the Flavian Amphitheater.

Yes, thew Colosseum is not actually the Colosseum, its the Flavian Amphitheater.

It became misnamed as the Colosseum as a true colossus - a giant statue of the Emperor Nero, the Colossus of Nero, was located here after he was deposed it was changed to represent the Sun God and become the Colossus solis - so People on their way to see the statue were off to see the Colossus, and the name then got applied to the Flavian Amphitheater itself. It was built by Vespasian and completed under his son Titus.

With a capacity of 80,000 spectators the amphitheater is truly a colossus.

The multiple levels are neat to see:

 

Roman numerals identify the various entryways into seating areas, much as stadium entries are marked today.

A papal sign marks the Colosseum:

By the time we reached the Colosseum however, one of the ladies in our tour group had had enough of the sun and almost collapsed. We helped find her a place to sit in the shade and brought her water to drink and she recovered after a bit.

We then admired the Arch of Constantine: 

Built to commemorate Constantine's victory over Maxentius at the Battle of Milvian Bridge, the inscription on top of the arch can still be easily read 1707 years after it was dedicated.

Constantine was the first Roman Emperor to convert to Christianity, which made for a logical transition on our way to our next stop.

Rome II - The Way To the Forum

In Rome, history surrounds you, and being an aficionado of Ancient Roman history, this was awesome.

Leaving the Trevi fountain, we walked to the Forum.

 

 

Lots of ongoing archaeological activity was happening at the forum:

Things keep being discovered every day, as the ancient city is mainly buried under the dust and debris of history.

Many statues were on display along the Forum's edges. 

Julius Caesar:

 Augustus, as of course, there had to be a statue of Augustus, the first Emperor of Rome, who found Rome made of bricks and left it made of marble. 

Not all were Emperors that would be readily recognized by many:

I mean the Nerva that guy. 

Yes, that's a statue of the Emperor Nerva Caesar Augustus, who was emperor from September 96 AD to December 98 AD. He succeeded Domitian, who was the second son of Vespasian and was emperor after Vespasian's elder son Titus died.  Nerva then adopted Trajan to succeed him as emperor, which leads us to:

Trajan's Column!  After viewing pictures of it only in books it was amazing to see it in person.

The column commemorates Trajan's victory in the Dacian Wars.

The entire column is caved with images from the campaign.

The column provides exquisite detail of the Roman Army in the first century AD.

Interestingly, the very top of the column is not original.

It used to have a statue of Trajan on top, but the statue was removed in the middle ages, and then  adorned by Pope Sixtus V in 1587 with a bronze statue of Saint Peter which has been there ever since.

It was a really amazing feeling to be able to see Trajan's column in person. Truly a highlight of the visit to Rome.

Then we strolled down the Forum to our next stop.

Rome I

The next morning the ship docked at Civitavecchia, the old port of Rome.

We boarded a bus and headed to Rome, which was about an hour away.

It was going to be a hot day in Rome, over 95 degrees F in the shade, and there pretty much was no shade.

We walked until we reached our first stop, the Trevi fountain.

The fountain, completed in 1762 is rather famous, starring in multiple movies including Roman Holiday. 

Very crowded, but we made our way down and did the traditional coin toss with the right hand over our left shoulders into the waters of the fountain.  The single coin over the shoulder allegedly means we will return to Rome some day.  All four of us scored with hits in the fountain, which is really hard to miss, but a few tourists managed it.

Coins worth about 3,000 Euros are thrown into the fountain each day, or over 1.5 million dollars a year.

The papal coat of arms surmounts the fountain:

Lots of fountains and water fountains in Rome, with lots of free water to drink as you wander to cool you off.

By the second fountain, I decided to douse my hat to cool off.  By the third fountain, the hat was almost completely dry.  It was that kind of hot day.

Such a hot day called for reinforcement to the water:

Gelato!:

The real Italian stuff, wonderfully creamy and tasty and just the thing to help you cool down.  I highly recommend the classic Limone flavor, but the others were awesome too.

So we continued our walk through Rome admiring the huge Palazzo Inail:

The building is absolutely huge.

Then we walked on to see some ancient Roman sites.