Corrected entry: How did Maximus get the horse he rides in the "Battle of Carthage"? We never see him cut the ropes/chains and the horse obviously didn't grab a sword and cuts the chains off itself.
Corrected entry: Maximus states the number of his troops incorrectly a couple times. In the German fight, he says something to the extent that he has 4000 troops plus another 2000 making 5000 altogether. At the end of the battle, he says 2000 died, but when talking to Gracchus later he says he has 5000 men waiting for him.
Correction: First of all 2000 4000=6000, not 5000. If he lost 2000, he would have had 4000. His army could have easily received 1000 reinforcements.
Corrected entry: The daughter of Marcus Aurelius could not be called "Lucilla" because Roman women were named after the female form of their father's nomen (second or clan name). Since "Aurelius" is the emperor's nomen, his daughter's name should be "Aurelia" (female form of the nomen) not Lucilla. She can be named Lucilla if her father's nomen is Lucius.
Correction: This is correct, however since all daughters by the same father would therefore have the same name, daughters were often given nicknames to distinguish them from the others (much nicer than Aurelia Prima, Aurelia Seconda & Aurelia Tertia). I have no idea how many daughters Marcus Aurelius had, but even if he had only one, 'Lucilla' could conceivably be her nickname.
Correction: The real, historical Lucilla was indeed an Aurelia: her full name was Annia Aurelia Galeria Lucilla Augusta. Annia is the feminine form of Annius, her father's birth nomen, Aurelia the feminine form of her father's nomen that he received when adopted by Antoninus Pius, Galeria is a (feminine) cognomen, and Lucilla is a diminutive of the female form of the name 'Lucius' (borne by both her first husband and her brother Commodus as a praenomen). Augusta is the female form of 'Augustus'.
Corrected entry: Throughout the film, the main character is referred to as Maximus. However, as his name is Maximus Decimus Meridius, there is no way that anyone in the army, even the highest officers, would have called him by his first name. The higher officers may have referred to him as Meridius, but only his family and very close friends would have adressed him as Maximus. However, in several places in the film, his junior officers refer to him as Maximus.
Correction: "Maximus" is probably his last name. His first name is most likely to be "Decimus", the only name he is given in the film that was actually a Roman first name. The Romans didn't consider names as fixed as we do, and regularly left bits out and mixed up their order, resulting in the "Maximus Decimus Meridius" statement in the arena, which could never have been an actual Roman name in that order.
Corrected entry: During the Battle of Carthage, there is a female gladiator cut in half by a passing chariot. Watch carefully before she's bisected, and you'll see she's leaning forward inside her chariot trying to release the chariot from a wounded horse, which oddly is still moving. However when she's cut in half, she's kneeling on the ground, not in the chariot. It happens very fast, but if you have it on DVD you can clearly see the error.
Correction: This is wrong, the black woman that is shown trying to free herself from the chariot while its still in motion is another woman, the driver of the chariot, she is not the woman that gets cut in half. After the woman gets cut in half you can see that the chariot looses control and the black woman in the chariot is trying to take control before it crashes.
Corrected entry: In one of the scenes after the first big battle, there is a horse in the background. You see it stand up. If you look closely, there is about 5 feet of chain, attached to its leg, holding it to a nearby tree.
Correction: It is not a chain. The horse is standing on a branch of the nearby fallen tree, and when it lifts its foot, the branch springs up, making it look like it's something attached to the horse's leg.
Corrected entry: When Maximus arrives in Rome there are no scars on his shoulder. There should be after his sword cut and removing his tattoo.
Correction: You *can* see the scars. They're just under the edge of his sleeve, and can be glimpsed when he moves.
Corrected entry: In ancient times busts of philosophers or emperors were coloured to look lifelike. The busts you find in Marcus Aurelius's tent are all blank.
Correction: Not true. Many busts remained the color of the material from which they were chiseled from (mostly marble). It was up to the artist or at the request of the person for whom the bust is being made whether or not color will be added to it. Plus, there is no telling how old or new those busts were. Perhaps Marcus Aurelius preferred them to be colorless, or they had not yet been colored.
Corrected entry: Maximus received his wound (which runs horizontally across his deltoid) from a clash with a praetorian guard but Maximus was wearing steel plated shoulder guards at the time which didn't seem to be punctured from the clash. After the clash, Maximus reaches under his shoulder guard and draws blood on his fingers. How did he get this wound?
Correction: When Maximus drew his arm up to hack at the praetorian with his sword, he exposed much more of his arm. The wound was inflicted when his arm was exposed.
Corrected entry: When Maximus is running through the tunnel to escape watch carefully, at one point some fire drops off his torch and starts to burn the wall. This shows the wall was made of plastic.
Correction: No, this shows that whatever dropped onto the wall (probably a kerosene) was flammable.
Corrected entry: At the parade with Commodus in the chariot there is a part when Commodus is riding toward the camera. Look behind him at the horsemen and you can see one struggling to keep his horse in a straight line.
Correction: Perfectly believable that a horse is acting up - not really a mistake.
Corrected entry: The Pretorian troops were ordered to kill Maximus. Maximus gets away and then appears in the coliseum, which startles Commodus. Didn't Commodus ever wonder why his troops never came back to confirm Maximus was actually executed?
Correction: In the "Deleted Scenes" on the DVD you can see the scene which would have explained this. Commodus presides over the execution of the two Roman soldiers who found the dead Praetorians. They explained that they thought the Praetorians had been killed in a barbarian raid and that they assumed that Maximus had been killed and his body carried off.
Corrected entry: The very first scene is a winter battle. Romans did not fight in winter. In winter supplies and logistics were too hard to manage at the same time as expanding an Empire. Everyone stayed at home (or guarded frontiers).
Correction: If they felt there was a large advantage to be gained by attacking in winter the Romans would advance, for example, Julius Caesar advanced against Vergentorix during the Gallic campaigns to catch him off guard.
Corrected entry: The Emperors' box was on the second level (first tier) in the colosseum, and he would never be so close to the fights as he could have been hit by a stray arrow, spear or a gladiator could have just walked up and stabbed him.
Correction: The hierarchal society in Rome was ruled by class, status and rank in power, who were seated closer to the action - despite the dangers, hence the Roman Emperor and Senators were on the first tier, as portrayed in the film.
Corrected entry: In the battle against the Barbarians, Maximus and the other Roman officers wear helmets that have the crest going front to back. Greek helmets' crests went front to back - Romans' crests went right to left.
Correction: The crest on a roman helmet depended on the kind of officer. Higher officers (legates, tribunes) had "Greek helmets" - crest front to back. Centurions had their crest left to right. Maximus is a higher officer, so he would have had a Greek style helmet.
Corrected entry: When Maximus asks how long the messengers had been gone, the guy replied in hours. The concept of the 24 hour clock had not yet been thought of - it was thought of by a group of monks who needed to know when to start their morning prayers in the 1330's.
Correction: The Romans divided the time from dawn till dusk into 12 "hora" (hour) (length depending on the season). They divided the night into 4 "vigilia".
Corrected entry: The legionaries all draw their swords across their bodies, the swords being in hilts on their left, but Roman soldiers actually carried swords on their right, and twisted their hands round to draw them.
Correction: Not necessarily. The sword on the right side is something which was typical for the earlier days of Rome. by the time Marcus Aurelius was emperor, Roman troops wore their swords on the left. Not to mention that cavalry and officers always had the sword on the left.
Corrected entry: Probably no big deal for the purposes of the movie, but Commodus ruled for 12 years after Marcus Aurelius' death (180-192 AD), not the one or two years that was portrayed in the movie.
Correction: This is not a documentary. The filmmakers merely took names from Roman history and made up a story using those names for the characters.
Corrected entry: The tattoo Maximus has, the so-called 'mark of the legion', is wrong. In the time of Marcus Aurelius, the legionnaires were given an identification tag made of bronze or lead. The tattoo was introduced decades later.
Correction: There was also at no point in Roman history a general called Maximus Decimus Meridius, nor was Emperor Commodus killed during a gladiator battle in front of a crowd (in reality he was strangled in his sleep by a man named Narcissus). Rome did not return to a period of republicanism as it does at the end of the film, either, nor was there a senator Gracchus to lead the new Roman regime. The film script purposefully adds or alters certain elements of Roman history whenever it suits the plot, as the tattoo's presence decades before being introduced did.
Corrected entry: In the very first scene, when the Roman army is moving towards the Germanians, the way they attack is incorrect. As they first start to attack, they attack in rows, which is what any army should have done. But as soon as the armies clash, the Romans completely scatter. Had these soldiers done this, they would have been completely slaughtered.
Correction: This isn't a film mistake, it is your opinion of how the Romans handled themselves in this particular battle. In fact on the outskirts of their Empire the Roman Army was constantly troubled by undisciplined local conscripts reverting to their usual, chaotic style of skirmish fighting.
Correction: There is a moment where we see Maximus busy cutting or undoing the harness, before he rides away on the horse.
STP ★