42: 3. LONDINIUM 91 CE. Hollywood and Rome. Gaius and Germanicus concluded their meeting by critiquing Hollywood's portrayal of Roman decline, focusing on Gladiator 2. Gaius admitted he could not finish the film due to its historically inaccurate conclusi

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3. LONDINIUM 91 CE. Hollywood and Rome. Gaius and Germanicus concluded their meeting by critiquing Hollywood's portrayal of Roman decline, focusing on Gladiator 2. Gaius admitted he could not finish the film due to its historically inaccurate conclusion. The film's ultimate payoff—the removal of bad emperors and the return to the Republic—is viewed as fundamentally wrong. Gaius argued that empires do not revert to republics, as the republic was "aged out" and the empire was necessary, suggesting that Hollywood confuses the word "republic" with "democracy." Germanicus elaborated on this distortion, noting that societies frequently look back and shape the past into a "golden age" from which they have fallen. The founders of the American republic were informed by Rome and Greece, viewing Rome as a morality play detailing triumph, tragedy, and the ultimate loss of virtue. This tradition of distortion was reinforced by Gibbon's Decline and Fall, which packaged the later empire as corrupted by "barbarism and religion" to suit the ideals of the Enlightenment. This historical lens persists, leading to a simplistic modern conventional wisdom, especially prevalent in Hollywood media, that "republic is good, empire is bad." Hollywood fails to recognize that the imperial institution maintained many of the Republic's institutions and sensibilities. Furthermore, the media elite confuses the Roman imperial office with a "mafia don" or "banana republic dictatorship." The speakers concluded that while they see the world "as it is," American aspirations (like those reflected in Hollywood) see the world "as they want it to be."
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