The historical accuracy of gladiator in some aspects was quite good but in others, quite bad. Even right from the opening scene, the inaccuracies start. First, there was no last great battle with the Germanic tribes on the eve of Marcus Aurelius' death. There was a great daylong battle late in the campaigning season of A.D. 179, but Marcus died on March 17 of 180, just as he was about to launch another great military campaign. It is most probable that the scriptwriters needed to shorten the chronology here to save time in a long movie, but that wasn't their only mistake relating to battles. The use of fire-hurling catapults and mechanical dart launchers against the oncoming barbarians was certainly dramatic but probably unhistorical. Such weapons were too burdensome for use on the open battlefield, thus were confined to more static siege warfare.

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