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Historical Inaccuracies in Gladiator
I can understand why creative license is taken in film and television. We just do not know every tiny detail that happened throughout history. Sometimes creative license is taken to condense the events to fit into the relatively short time frame of movies and television. However, sometimes there seems to be no rhyme or reason as to why major changes were made. Things have been unchanged needlessly and the real story is not given its due. Gladiator was a box office hit with all-star cast as well as being loaded with fighting, action and blood galore; a mixture for pure success. But what happens when that particularly popular movie tells…
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Montezuma II
Montezuma II, also seen as Moctezuma, was the ninth Aztec emperor of Mexico who is best known for his confrontation with Hernan Cortez. Most information on Montezuma revolves around his befriending and eventual betrayal by Cortez, which some believe is the reason that the Aztec empire fell only 2 years after thier chance meeting. What is more interesting about Montezuma though is his lifestyle outside of his kingly duties. Living in a palace in the capital city of Tenochtitlan (modern day Mexico City), Montezuma enjoyed a lavish lifestyle that rivaled that of Rome. The palace itself was not only enormous, it was decorated with hanging gardens, weapons embellished with gold…
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Empress Theodora- Purple is the Noblest Winding Sheet
Born the daughter of a bearkeeper and an acrobat, the prospects for the new baby girl born in the vast city of Constantinople were not that great. Likely she would become a performer like her parents, and if she was lucky the mistress of a wealthy man who would take care of her. At that time an actress was little more than a courtesan and debarred from polite society. If she was unlucky, she would die in poverty like so many others. However, fate had more in store for the young girl her parents named Theodora. It would take her to the highest places in the world, far beyond anyone’s…
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Claudian Invasion of Britain
The Romans had been lusting after Britain for quite some time. Julius Caesar had made two passes according to Dio Cassius in 55 and 54 BCE, but did not make much headway. The first only established a beachhead, but the second established a king friendly to Rome. However, Caesar had bigger fish to fry and headed back to Rome and glory leaving Britain alone in the mists. Caligula had tried again in 40 CE, and had a lighthouse built in preparation at Gesoriacum, modern Boulogne-sur-Mer. However, according to the tale told by Suetonius in The Twelve Caesars, he made less progress than Caesar. According to this story, he had the…
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TRAJAN
Have you ever looked back on history and thought to yourself: “Wow. Everyone who came before me was a bag of dicks.” I mean, seriously: Most of our world today was shaped by jackholes being jackholes. By all rights, Ghengis Khan, Alexander the Great, Nero, Caligula, Henry VIII, Louis the XVI, were all jerks; hell even JFK was kind of a git. Great man with great ideas, but that doesn’t always mean he was a good person. So does that mean that our world was built on the shoulders of dirtbags and murderers? To some degree. But see, in the wake of every genocidal expansionist tyrant there were a whole…
