I was watching a DVD of Gladiator (Russell Crowe as heroic gladiator up against nasty Joaquin Phoenix as the Roman Emperor Commodus) and I thought to compare the account of Commodus in Edward Gibbon’s great history, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.
Gibbon is a wonderful stylist. Imagine Gladiator written by Jane Austen at her most feline with the gloves off and you’ll get the idea.
In the movie, Commodus’ only sexual desire is a creepy one for his sister. Gibbon gives a different picture:
“But every sentiment of virtue and humanity was extinct in the mind of Commodus. Whilst he thus abandoned the reins of empire to these unworthy favourites, he valued nothing in sovereign power, except the unbounded licence of indulging his sensual appetites. His hours were spent in a seraglio of three hundred beautiful women, and as many boys, of every rank, and of every province; and, wherever the arts of seduction proved ineffectual, the brutal lover had recourse to violence. The ancient historians have expatiated on these abandoned scenes of prostitution, which scorned every restraint of nature or modesty; but it would not be easy to translate their too faithful descriptions into the decency of modern language.”