--- title: What 'Gladiator II' Captures About American Politics description: The sequel tracks a shift in the politics of the Roman empire—one with echoes in this moment. canonical: https://time.com/7203365/gladiator-ii-american-politics/ author: TIME article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2024-12-20T16:00:00.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-05-11T04:51:45.104Z article:section: History og:title: What 'Gladiator II' Captures About American Politics og:description: The sequel tracks a shift in the politics of the Roman empire—one with echoes in this moment. og:url: https://time.com/7203365/gladiator-ii-american-politics/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt73e8fe1604e3fbd3/698b24e19862f579a989d37c/gladiator-ii-pedro.jpg?branch=production&width=3840&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 675 og:image:alt: gladiator-ii-pedro og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: What 'Gladiator II' Captures About American Politics twitter:description: The sequel tracks a shift in the politics of the Roman empire—one with echoes in this moment. twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt73e8fe1604e3fbd3/698b24e19862f579a989d37c/gladiator-ii-pedro.jpg?branch=production&width=3840&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # What _Gladiator II_ Captures About This American Political Moment by [Jeffrey E. Schulman / Made by History](https://time.com/author/made-by-history/) ## Jeffrey E. Schulman / Made by History Dec 20, 2024 4:00 PM UTC  Denzel Washington as Macrinus, Pedro Pascal as General Acacius and Connie Nielsen as Lucilla in Gladiator II Denzel Washington as Macrinus, Pedro Pascal as General Acacius and Connie Nielsen as Lucilla in Gladiator IIParamount Pictures by [Jeffrey E. Schulman / Made by History](https://time.com/author/made-by-history/) ## Jeffrey E. Schulman / Made by History Dec 20, 2024 4:00 PM UTC After grossing almost $400 million, _Gladiator II_ will become available to streaming audiences on Christmas Eve. This sequel to Ridley Scott’s 2000 epic substitutes the brother emperors Caracalla and Geta for the original’s Commodus, modeling them not only on him, but on a host of Rome’s other reputedly bloodthirsty despots like Caligula, Nero, and Domitian. These emperors’ grandiosity and disregard for social norms may resonate with audiences in the wake of Donald Trump’s victory in the 2024 presidential election, but so do their appeals to the common people and the hostility they aroused in Rome’s educated elite. Although both movies capture the image of tyranny described by hostile intellectuals, only the new one holds another clue about important social changes driving politics then and now: the film includes characters of different races. Whatever the reasons for the casting decisions, the Roman empire really did house people of innumerable ethnicitiesin provinces ranging from Scotland to Arabia. Indeed, _Gladiator II_ accurately shows that by the movie’s day (211 A.D.) the Roman ruling class had become multi-ethnic, a transformation that—perhaps surprisingly for today's audiences—would usher in more conservative politics. Thus the movie is set in a world resembling the modern United States, as a multi-racial, populist, conservative coalition began to sideline the ruling elite. The Roman empire in the century after Caracalla also offers valuable insights—and warnings—about what Americans can expect from the beginning of a new political era. When the first emperor Augustus ended the Roman Republic at the turn of the first century A.D., nearly all senators, governors, and the like hailed from Italy. By A.D. 97, about a century before the _Gladiator_ movies take place, Trajan from Spainbecame the first non-Italian emperor. A series of fellow Spaniards, Gauls (Frenchmen), North Africans, and Syrians soon followed. This was not the result of bottom-up social change, but rather reflected how provincial elites assimilated into the ruling class. For example, in A.D. 48 when the emperor Claudius took pains to justify including a small number of prominent Gallic Romans in the senate, he emphasized the Gauls’ longstanding support for the empire and how well they already had integrated into its elite. **_Read More:_** [_What Gladiator II Gets Right and Wrong About Real Fights in the Colosseum_](https://time.com/7178676/gladiator-movie-historic-acccuracy/) Even wealthy provincials who didn’t reach the senate could enter the small bureaucracy created by the early emperors, but needed to find established mentors who often (but not always) came from the same city or region. Thus Trajan’s father enjoyed the patronage of the emperor Vespasian, an Italian, but also followed in the footsteps of prominent Spaniards like the philosopher and courtier Seneca. His ready adaptation to elite values meant posh Roman authors would not brand Trajan a tyrant but later proclaim him the “best emperor.” Though initially smooth, by the third century A.D. when the _Gladiator_ movies take place, this assimilation gave way to a breakdown of social class barriers. Commodus, villain of the first _Gladiator_, was succeeded as emperor by Pertinax, the son of a former slave. When Pertinax abandoned a career as a teacher and joined the army, frontier wars had hollowed out the ranks, allowing his exceptional talent to catch his superiors’ attention. While broadly accepted at the time, Pertinax’s rise was a harbinger of sharper tensions that accompanied the collapse of social barriers, which would erupt under _Gladiator_ _II_’s co-villain Caracalla. Though a product of the empire’s integrated elite—his parents, the emperor and empress, came from prominent families in North Africa and Syria respectively—Caracalla loathed the old aristocracy and favored working-class constituencies like the army, even granting Roman citizenship to all the empire’s free inhabitants. This removed one of the last obstacles preventing poor provincials from governing the empire. By the late third century, most emperors and many of their top officials rose from the rural peasantry through the ranks of the army. They soon confronted spiraling crises. Constant civil wars and reigns that sometimes lasted only months made it difficult to defeat foreign invaders. By the middle of the century, the Goths killed the emperor Decius, the Persians captured his near-successor Valerian, and the empire broke into three parts. The new eliterose to the occasion. By the early fourth century, they had reunited the empire, restored the frontiers, and slowed the rapid turnover of emperors. The government accomplished this by a mass increase in army personnel and a fortification program, funded by raising taxes and expanding the bureaucracy to support the larger state apparatus. The number of salaried imperial officials increased from a few hundred in the early empire to more than 30,000. **_Read More:_** [_How_ Gladiator II _Connects to the Original_ Gladiator](https://time.com/7178474/gladiator-2-connections-original/) Meanwhile, Romans came to favor socially conservative values that emphasized personal austerity, perhaps partly due to the democratization of political culture. Many experimented with fasting, sleep deprivation, and vegetarian diets while frequently taking vows of celibacy. By A.D. 450, an emperor and empress even contracted a chaste marriage. Showing little patience for their predecessors’ rumored sexual depravity left most of Caracalla’s successors to prioritize repelling constant invasions. Their efforts put off the fall of the western empire for centuries. Although the values that overtook ancient Rome brought much needed seriousness, Romans still paid a severe price. While early imperial aristocrats saw provincials as subject nations with their own cultures, their working-class replacements considered Romans a single people and expected all to share the same values. These demands fell hard on minorities, particularly Christians. While pagan Romans always technically prohibited Christianity, Trajan makes clear in a famous exchange of letters that the Roman elite of his day remained content to leave the Christians mostly unbothered. The empire’s third century ruling class felt otherwise, and thrice authorized pogroms of the empire’s largest religious minority. Fragments of the debates about authorizing the persecutions show courtiers much more concerned with policing ordinary life than their predecessors. The emperor Decius even required all Romans to show a certificate as proof they had sacrificed to the pagan gods.  And while Romans might have needed to expand the army, expanding state intervention in the economy brought serious consequences. A law meant to stop inflation by fixing prices for everything sold in the empire failed in spectacular fashion. The expansion of the bureaucracy bankrupted small cities when the scions of elite families left for prized government jobs in the imperial capitals. In a moment resembling the aftermath of the 2024 presidential election, the end of _Gladiator II_ captures the beginning of this process, when cheering soldiers outside Rome celebrate their overthrow of the old ruling class. This would mark the onset of a more conservative political consensus, one that helped the empire confront its challenges, but ultimately came at the cost of freedom. _Jeffrey E. Schulman is a Ph.D. student at Groningen University, working on the political history of the Roman Empire._ _Made by History takes readers beyond the headlines with articles written and edited by professional historians._ [_Learn more about Made by History at TIME here_](https://time.com/6317798/introducing-made-by-history-for-time/)_. 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