Corrected entry: As the scene is ending with Marcus in the dungeon chained after his recapture, the next scene starts with the crowd chanting his name. A man cheering in the crowd comes into view in the bottom right corner wearing an olive green T shirt and a big radio headset. (02:15:45)
Corrected entry: In the scene where there is a team fight in Morroco, watch when the first man to come out get wacked round the face with the spiked ball. He sprays the blood out of his mouth.
Correction: Dude, I think after getting whacked round the face with a mace, you'd spray blood.
Corrected entry: When Maximus's master is purchasing the slaves he tells the guy that he will give him 2 for the slaves and 4 for the beasts (or the other way around) and then tells him that it is 5000.
Correction: This is bulk buying - individually they're priced at 2000 and 4000, but because he's buying both, and is an "old friend", he wants a discount.
Correction: Actually, he noted that the guy had previously sold him giraffes that wouldn't mate. So he was recouping his losses and exploiting their business relationship by offering less than the actual value of the future gladiators and animals.
Corrected entry: When Maximus is walking through the parted crowed of other gladiators, all of them are yelling, " Spaniard" except one guy right in front.
Correction: So, the guy doesn't yell. It could be a character choice, maybe he does not like Maximus, or maybe he is mute or a million things.
Corrected entry: When Maximus nails Tigris' foot to the ground, he bends over and blood pours from the mouth of his mask, is there some connection with the foot and mouth? Was the dreaded "Foot and Mouth" disease present then?
Correction: He'd just been hit in the face by Maximus' shield.
Corrected entry: At the start of the first battle when we see Maximus riding on a horse, he comes across a Germanian about to stab a soldier. He rides along and cuts the guy's hand off. If you slow this part down, it's not blood that comes out the wound but what looks like bits of wood. (00:09:55)
Correction: If you need to slow it down, it isn't a mistake.
Corrected entry: Rome was not on its peak during Marcus Aurelius as the film claims, but during emperor Trajanus.
Correction: Rome is generally considered to be at its peak during the reigns of what were referred to as the Five Good Emperors, of which Trajan was the second, who did indeed extend the Empire to its greatest size. Marcus Aurelius was the last of these 'Good Emperors' and thus is still considered to have presided over Rome during its peak period.
Corrected entry: During the first battle, Maximus has a dog with him, and it runs into battle with the men. What happens to the dog? If it isn't important, then why did they even bother to have it in the first place?
Correction: Dogs were used to find a route through fire - so the cavalry wouldn't end up in a burning circle. If you listen to the director's commentary on the DVD version, he said they were going to have the dog killed in the tent when the soldiers took Maximus to kill him, but took out the scene because they thought it was too depressing.
Corrected entry: Cicero lived at the same time as Julius Caesar (the 1st century BC), not during the 2nd century AD as the film claims.
Correction: There is never any suggestion that the Cicero who appears in the film is intended to be the historical individual of the same name. Cicero was a family name shared by hundreds of people.
Corrected entry: After the battle against the Germans, Maximus lets out a cry of victory: "Roma victor." This is supposed to be Latin, but, they got the grammar all wrong. "Roma" is feminine, so it should be "Roma victrix". Amazing how a mistake is still possible as there are only about three sentences in Latin in the entire movie and a lot of specialists were supposed to have been working on it.
Correction: The grammar is correct. "Victor" should not be understood as a noun here, but as an adjective. Not "Rome [is] the victor", but "Rome [is] victorious." The adjective "victor" is not inflected for gender in the nominative singular.
Don't think that's right. That would be "Roma vicit" or "Roma victrix (est). " The original correction was correct.
I think he says "Roma victa" not "victor." Conquered, not victorious.
Initial post set a problem of grammatical incorrectness, not of usage. Which word Romans would use in this very case, I don't know. Which one would sound more appropriate or more awkward to them, not the matter. Only, again, grammar's correct. "Roma victor" isn't more alien to Latin than "nemo malus felix": subject, adjectival predicate and implicit copula.We're people arguing about 1 word (woe is us!), let's at least be precise when it comes to determining our argument's object: grammar, not usage.
Correction: From "Il vocabolario della lingua latina " Castiglioni Mariotti: there no example at "victor, oris" wich could be used like noun or adjective, but at "victrix, icis" I read a real latin phrase "victrix Asiae Roma" wich means Roma winner of Asia, so I think the right way to celebrate victory is "Roma Victrix"
Correction: Roma is feminine so it's victrix. That is 100% the correct grammar in Latin.
Correction: According to Google translate, "Rome is the victor" translated into Latin is, you guessed it, "Roma victor." The correction below is correct, but for the wrong reasons. Victor, as it is used in the movie, is a noun.
Google translate is absolutely not a valid citation. If it happens to be correct, it was by accident. Cite a source, please.
Corrected entry: In the scene where the two senators are quarreling about the note about the gladiators, we can read: "gladiatores violentia." This is an encroachment on Latin grammar. Since gladiator is a male word, a corresponding adjective should be male too. Also, violentia is a noun. The correct form would be 'gladiatores violenti = violent gladiators' or 'gladiatores violentae = gladiators who fight like girls' depending on which school of thought you ascribe to (the latter being the claim that it is an informal use of Latin, insulting the gladiators by slighting their masculinity, accusing them of an effeminate form of fighting.).
Correction: It's a flyer advertising gladiators and violence: two distinct promises, however intrinsically related, as indeed the violentia is to be expected from the gladiatores. But I can see no indication that there was any intention of building a complete sentence; it's the just two nouns thrown together with a picture, and however anachronistic the flyers be in the movie, it's a kind of semantic construction that would have worked just fine for Romans then as it does for us today.
Corrected entry: At the beginning of the film when the soldiers get told to "ignite" as in light their arrows, for a second before it cuts away you can actually see some aren't lit, and the camera quickly goes to a far away shot. (00:07:40)
Correction: I don't see why this is a mistake. It's perfectly realistic that some arrows just won't ignite. The archers will then fire them unlit, because they don't have all day to wait for them to catch the fire.
Corrected entry: At the end fight there are rose petals falling all over the coliseum. But how did the rose petals get in the middle? Did mother nature decide to rain rose petals?
Corrected entry: In the real gladiatorial games of ancient Rome, the emperor didn't make the gesture of "thumbs up" (kill) or "thumbs down" (live) That was the job of a referee, even though it isn't as dramatic. Also, the thumbs down sign usually didn't mean death for the defeated gladiator, but instead he would face a flogging.
Correction: There is no conclusive evidence to suggest that this was the case. The thumbs up or thumbs down issue has been argued by top historians for a long time. The emperor always had final say (sometimes with the crowds help). The referee's or Lanista as they were called usually just carried out the emperors wishes.
Corrected entry: The Emperor tells Maximus that his son "squealed like a girl when they nailed him to the cross". But we've seen that he was trampled by the horses, so: what did they crucify him for and how could he have squealed? The Emperor could be just lying, but anyway he says "nailed him to the cross" and there was no such a cross (what we see looks like they were hung).
Corrected entry: The forest in the opening battle scenes is man-made and not the natural, wild forest that would have covered Germania at this time. The trees are all in nice straight lines, there are no low hanging branches and no tangled growth on the forest floor. If this were a natural forest the Roman cavalry would not be able to gallop through it and weave effortlessly between the trees as is depicted.
Correction: We can't fairly say what a given stretch of forest in that part of Europe 2000 years ago would look like. It could even be second growth forest, the original, denser primordial forest having been heavily cut by the tribes that obviously live there, and likely have for centuries.
Correction: Note that you can find out where that stretch of woodland was just by looking it up. With a quick search on Google we discover: that the forest was Bourne Wood, Surrey, UK. The whole area was set to be deforested, so Ridley Scott approached the Forestry Commission and offered his own way of deforestation...by burning it down with pyrotechnics as part of the Roman artillery bombardment.
Corrected entry: In the first battle against the Germanians, after the Roman army shoots their arrows, if you look hard enough, you'll notice all the soldiers aren't "real" people. Some of them are obviously mannequins and they just stand there.
Correction: I have looked but I can see no evidence that they have used mannequins, or see any soldiers that look like mannequins in the battle.
Corrected entry: In the scene where Maximus is pounced on by the tiger while fighting Tigris, if you look close enough you notice that the tiger lurches for Maximus's hand. If you look even closer, you can see Maximus holding food in his hand so the tiger would jump on him. (01:42:00)
Correction: This is not true, Maximus may be holding something that looks like food, but there would be no reason to. Using real tigers, and allowing them to pounce on the actor would be extremely dangerous, so they used model tigers. If you have the DVD, look at the 'still picture' gallery, and you can see a few shots of 'Maximus' with model tigers on top of him.
Corrected entry: When Maximus is in the arena with the tigers, the tigers have chains around their necks, and several men on the end of the chains to control how close the tigers get to the gladiators. But why don't the tigers just turn around and attack the men holding the chains? It seems unlikely that they'd know which humans to attack and which ones to leave alone.
Correction: The chains go through metal rings (which you can easily see) for exactly this reason - if the tiger wants to get close to the person holding the chain he has to drag against them pulling the chain. Only a loose chain would allow the tiger to run towards the leash holders by making it go slack.
Corrected entry: In the first battle scene against the Germanians, right after Maximus gets dismounted, he is lying on his back and an enemy soldier takes a swing at him with an axe. Maximus blocks it by holding the sword handle with his right hand and putting his left hand on the top of his sword blade. With the amount of force the axe came down with, blocking like that would surely cut off one's own hand.
Correction: Holding the blade of a sword is a perfectly valid technique. It would not cut off one's own hand because it would require a slicing motion to do so. As the force of the axe goes down, the blade might nick the hand, but not cut it off - a pulling motion along the blade would be required for that.
Correction: That is a woman wearing some form of toga not a shirt. And the "headset" is a headband/hairstyle holding her hair back - the "earpiece" isn't even over her ear.