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Collections: Nitpicking Gladiator's Iconic Opening Battle, Part I

This week, we’re going to take a close look at arguably the most famous and recognizable Roman battle sequence in film: the iconic opening battle from Gladiator (2000). Despite being a relati…

But subsequent pop-culture (again, I think Rome: Total War played a significant role here) would codify this vision of the Roman army – fire-throwing onagers, lots of auxilia archers, legionary rather than auxiliary cavalry, uniform use of the lorica segmentata – as the dominant model for quite some time. Via Wikipedia, remains of one of the Roman forts used in the siege of Masada (72-3AD), preserved by the arid conditions and lack of habitation, still showing the classic playing-card shape of the agger, which would have been topped with a wooden palisade (the vallum).But the really immediate problem is that Maximus’ army has formed up within his troops strung through the field fortifications, with legionary soldiers mostly in front of them (but some are behind them) and the archers in between the stakes and mantlets. So, for instance, the Roman army of the Middle Republic (that’s c. 343 BC to c. 101) is quite poorly attested archaeologically – being always on the move in offensive operations will do that – but its structure, equipment and tactics are very clearly described by our literary sources, such that we have detailed narratives for quite a lot of large-scale pitched battles.

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