Hollywood loves Ancient Rome. Who doesn’t? It would be hard to find a greater source of pomp, brutality, action, and personality than Rome.
But apparently, sometimes Hollywood feels the need to embellish—leading to lots of myths, misconceptions and just plain errors that are often taken as fact. I give you ten.
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gladiator fighting in the arena of Roman circus
First, my pet peeve: Roman men did not fight bare-chested, let alone walk around town shirtless. It might make for good eye-candy, but it’s just … wrong. They didn’t wear those stupid leather armbands above the wrists, either.
- My second least favorite: Upper-class Romans did not speak with English accents. (English did not even exist when Rome occupied Britain.) In fact, given the far-flung nature of the Empire, they likely spoke vulgar Latin (not the classical Latin that is studied in prep schools and universities) with a myriad of accents. The emperor Hadrian had a noticeable Spanish accent, a fact which embarrassed him as it was considered “provincial.”
- “Plebians” were not poor. Just common.
- Everyone did not wear gleaming white togas 24/7. To begin with, only a Roman citizen could legally wear one, and there were as many as six different kinds, which signified a wearer’s status and often the occasion. They were expensive, bulky and required a servant to help the wearer put it on properly. Even before the Empire, they were mostly reserved for formal occasions. In casual environments, the average male Roman citizen would instead wear one of his tunics, without a toga.
- There was no such thing as a “Roman salute,” where a man extended a flat palm upward. The Nazis claimed they got their salute from the Romans, but there is no contemporary evidence the Romans ever did this.
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Athena and Hera shaking hands. 5th century BC. Photo by Marcyas.
The forearm grip is also a Hollywood invention. All evidence says the Romans shook hands just like we do, but it wasn’t a greeting. It was used to solidify an agreement.
- Nero did not cause the fire of 64, and he certainly didn’t fiddle while Rome burned. (The fiddle hadn’t been invented.) He wasn’t even in town the night it started.
- I could do a whole post just on gladiator myths, but here are a few. Gladiators were not all men, nor were they all slaves.They didn’t fight in the Colosseum until it was completed in 80 AD., and they rarely fought against animals. The fights ended in death less than half the time (until the late Empire). In the arena, a thumbs-down did not signal death. No one is quite sure how it worked, but the best explanation I’ve heard is that a thumbs-up, representing an exposed blade, meant death, while a thumb tucked inside the fist spared the combatant. The crowd could shake their fists as much as they wanted, but only the emperor’s choice mattered.
- Marble statues were not left white but were painted in bright colors.
- Perhaps most important, Christians were no always persecuted by the Romans. Though technically illegal for most of Rome’s history, since Christians refused to worship the Roman gods, persecution on a large scale didn’t really start until 64 AD, after the great fire. Nero needed someone to blame since he was being accused of starting it, and his Praetorian Prefect at the time, Ofonius Tigellinus, convinced him to blame the Christians.
