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emperor. But Maximus is defiant and fatalistic: “I may die here in this cell
or in the arena tomorrow. What possible difference can I make?” Only
later, bolstered by the adulation of the mob and the respect of his gladiator
comrades, yet still inflamed with the desire to avenge his family and a
renewed longing to see them in the afterlife, does Maximus accede to
Lucilla’s whispered assurances and join the conspiracy.
While Maximus embodies the values and virtues of Republican Rome,
he is a reluctant instrument in the political maneuvering of the plot, and
only decides to assist the revolt out of a sense of personal outrage. In this
narrative motivation, Maximus more closely recalls the figure of Judah
in Ben-Hur, who is driven by his bitter quarrel with the Roman tribune
Messala, once his intimate boyhood friend. Like Maximus, Judah is brutalized
and enslaved by the Roman system of punishment, loses his family,
and seeks vengeance against the man who injured him. Both heroes play
out their personal revenge in the arena, in scenes of extreme violence that
reveal not a shred of forgiveness. Judah beats Messala in the famous deadly
chariot race, and Maximus slays Commodus in a climactic and bloody
gladiatorial contest. In both films, intense cinematic violence is used as
a righteous method to validate an ideal of family and individual honor
(Tudor, 2002).
Judah is ultimately redeemed and his family restored by the influence of
Christ, but early on, Judah’s destiny is indelibly inspired and shaped by
his adoptive father, the Roman consul Quintus Arrius. In a similar way,
Marcus Aurelius is Maximus’ surrogate father in Gladiator. “You are the
son that I should have had,” the old emperor tells his favorite general early
in the film, and Maximus, about whose parentage the film says nothing,
calls him “Father” in several scenes. Yet only in the arena, when Maximus
recognizes he is about to die, does he ultimately accept his political duty
out of love and respect for the memory of his imperial father figure.
“There was a dream that was Rome: it shall be realized,” he commands.
“These are the wishes of Marcus Aurelius.” For Maximus, the ideal of the
Good Rome is inextricably bound to his personal, filial relationship with
Marcus Aurelius, and underscored by his old-fashioned notion that Roman
power can be a just and positive force in the world. For the heroes of earlier
epic films, the concept of Rome itself was linked to the role of paternal
figures: “Rome is the name for the unrequited desire for an authority that
would restore the public world to these anachronistic men” (Fitzgerald,
45). In Gladiator, the apolitical Maximus displays his reluctance to become
a hero until driven to it by personal reasons, all the while demonstrating
his coiled desire for vengeance and his willingness to die for it.
GLADIATOR (2000) 231