Twin Emperors, Dead Princes, and Bloody Betrayals: The Real History Behind Gladiator II

Estimated reading time: 9 minutes

Paul Mescal stars as Lucius Verus, the former heir to the throne. Lucius was played by Spencer Treat Clark in the first film, where he was depicted as maybe being the love child of Crowe’s Maximus Decimus Meridius and Connie Nielsen’s Lucilla. This parentage is confirmed in Gladiator II, where we also learn that the character was forced to go into hiding after the death of Maximus at the end of the first movie.

As the grandson of the late Emperor Marcus Aurelius (Richard Harris), nephew of Commodus (Joaquin Phoenix), and son of Lucilla, Lucius is a prince of Rome. In the new film he returns to Rome all grown up and now a gladiator, just like Maximus, eventually playing a key role in freeing the Empire from the unjust rule of not one, not two, but three villainous emperors and/or usurpers. Like his grandfather, and his father, Lucius wants Rome to serve the people once again rather than the corrupt elite.

As far as history goes, we know that Lucilla did have a son named Lucius, the result of her marriage to her father’s co-emperor, Lucius Verus – after whom their son was named, of course. (Maximus is a fictional character, and there’s no indication that Lucius’ parentage was in question.) But the boy died at a young age. Which, hey, come to think of it, is also what most people thought happened to Mescal’s version of Lucius in the movies. Of course, in Gladiator II we learn that Lucius had snuck off to North Africa and taken the name Hanno, only to return years later as a bad-ass gladiator. Unfortunately, the real-life Lucius Verus wasn’t so lucky.

Were There Actually Awful Twin Emperors?

There were definitely twin emperors! But it seems as though one handled the awful side of things more than the other. Joseph Quinn plays Emperor Geta while Fred Hechinger plays Emperor Caracalla in Gladiator II, a pair of pretty loathsome ruling-class elites who seem to have nothing better to do than stage wars from afar and watch gladiators kill one another.

History tells us that the brothers served as co-emperors with their father, Septimius Severus, and upon his death they shared the throne as twin emperors for less than a year. A long-standing rivalry between the two came to a head (ahem) when Caracalla ordered Geta murdered by the Praetorian Guard, with Geta dying in his mother’s arms by some accounts. In the new film, Hechinger’s Caracalla and Denzel Washington’s character Macrinus ordering the execution of Lucilla and the senators who plotted against the emperors seems to be an extremely scaled-down rethinking of the campaign of terror that Caracalla enacted against his dead brother’s followers. Some 20,000 people were said to have been killed as a result. This also included Caracalla ordering a damnatio memoriae – the erasure of Geta from the public record, destroying images, statues, inscriptions, etc. that featured his brother. He’d probably be pretty bummed to hear that the future Human Torch is playing Geta in a blockbuster Marvel movie.

While Gladiator II depicts Caracalla being murdered himself not long after his brother, in reality he reigned for another six years, when indeed he was assassinated by one of his soldiers… at the behest of the praetorian prefect Macrinus.

And What About Lucilla’s New Husband, Pedro Pascal’s Marcus Acacius?

Marcus Acacius, played by Pedro Pascal, is an invented character, and a damned good guy. Even though he works for the gross twin emperors, he and his wife, Nielsen’s Lucilla, are secretly plotting to overthrow the pair. Of course, their plan goes awry and they are both executed as a result, but hey, at least they tried.

Historically, Lucilla did remarry, to a military man and politician named Tiberius Claudius Pompeianus. Interestingly, while the movie version gives us a more heroic spouse for Lucilla in Pascal’s Acacius, who is her partner in the scheme to overthrow Geta and Caracalla, in real life Pompeianus did not participate in his wife’s plot to assassinate the emperor (and her brother) Commodus (played by Joaquin Phoenix in the first film). As punishment for the failed attempt, Commodus banished Lucilla and later had her killed, but Pompeianus was spared. (And decades later, Lucilla’s son Lucius Aurelius Commodus Pompeianus was killed by Caracalla. These freaking guys!)

This is interesting in that Lucilla survives the awful reign of her brother in Gladiator I, only for her to be executed for the attempted assassination of the emperor(s) in Gladiator II… bringing her historical arc more or less full circle, albeit a bit later than how it played out in history.

Did Macrinus Become an Emperor of Rome?

He sure did. As played by Denzel Washington, Macrinus is the true villain of Gladiator II, manipulating everyone around him so that he can achieve vengeance against the empire that he so hates. A former slave who served under Marcus Aurelius, he has apparently been plotting against Rome for decades.

He doesn’t really become emperor in the film, since it’s not until the climax of the story that he murders Caracalla and then attempts to flee the city (only to wind up face-to-face with Lucius Verus, who takes him out by severing his arm during a fight in a river). Essentially, the accelerated timeline of Gladiator II doesn’t give Macrinus a chance to claim the throne, but this also kind of fits his character, as he seems more interested in getting the city to destroy itself than he does in ruling it.

As for the historical Macrinus, he was the first emperor not to come from the elite class. Some versions of his early life story actually say he was a gladiator before becoming educated and eventually rising through the ranks of government. Like the movie version, he did successfully plot to kill Caracalla, but whereas Washington’s Macrinus does the deed himself (with a pointy thing to the ear!), in reality he had a soldier stab the emperor to death. And unlike the Washington version, it seems Macrinus was happy to rule Rome rather than let it destroy itself. With the army’s backing, he named himself emperor, and there was nothing the Senate could do to stop him.

His reign didn’t last long, though. A little more than a year later, a rebellion (led by Caracalla’s aunt and her teenage grandson, Elagabalus, who was rumored to be Caracalla’s illegitimate son) resulted in his being overthrown. Macrinus was executed, but we’re not sure if it was in a river or if it involved having his arm cut off first.

So Who Should Be Emperor by the End of Gladiator II?

Hmm. It’s a little unclear where things are going by the end of the film. Lucius Verus is alive and certainly has a claim to the throne, but history tells us that the real Lucius didn’t reach adulthood. Instead, Elagabalus became emperor in 218 CE at around age 14. He lasted almost four years, but that’s a whole other messy story that culminates in him and his mother being killed by his own Praetorian Guard.

Sounds like we’ve got an outline for Gladiator III already.

Talk to Scott Collura on Twitter at @ScottCollura, or listen to his Star Trek podcast, Transporter Room 3. Or do both!