Perhaps because to imagine such a scenario would take Gladiator II even further away from history. Which is saying something since the film is already outright fantasy by this point. Admittedly it’s an exciting fantasy. But even so, it missed the chance to dig into the real history of Rome at the turn of the third century A.D. and to further tap into the modern anxieties Scott told Den of Geek he hoped Gladiator II would explore. In an interview with our magazine last month, the filmmaker posited “there’s no difference” between then and now. “It’s the same, except I think now it’s much worse.”

If that’s so, the reign of the real Caracalla, which did not include primate consuls and (as far as we know) was not marred by syphilis, is a missed opportunity for Scott to hold up a mirror to today. After all, this was the emperor who answered for good and all what it meant to be a Roman citizen when he sweepingly made all non-enslaved men throughout the empire citizens, changing the definition of what it means to be Roman after centuries of debate… and still getting assassinated by a man named Macrinus shortly thereafter.

The Real Caracalla and Geta

To get it out of the way, Caracalla was neither a twin to his brother Geta, nor the junior. His real name wasn’t even Caracalla, though modern historians use that nickname from his lifetime to differentiate him from his various namesakes (his real name when he assumed the throne was Marcus Aurelius Antoninus). Still, “Caracalla” and Geta did briefly rule together as the heirs of their father and the first of their dynasty, Emperor Septimius Severus.

So from the jump, you can guess what appears in Gladiator II is highly fictionalized. In 200 A.D., their father was still alive, and no monkey became consul—that amusing sequence seems rooted in appropriating the much debated claim about Caligula, an emperor who supposedly planned to make his horse a consul before his own assassination in in 41 A.D. In fact, almost everything we see about Caracalla and Geta’s reigns in Gladiator II is an invention for the film, beginning with the fact that they did not assume power between themselves until 211, 11 years after Gladiator II is set. Prior to that they ruled as co-emperors with their father, beginning in 198 for Caracalla and in 209 for his younger brother.

What is true in the film, though, is that Caracalla did witness the murder of his brother. In fact, he had it carried out, with Caracalla ordering the Praetorian Guard to assassinate Geta, which allegedly was executed as the still young man cried in their mother’s arms. This was not done because Caracalla was simple of mind, but ruthless and hungry of power. Much like the myth of Romulus and Remus, these co-emperors arguably represented the worst of their culture, or at least of politics in the imperial age.

After Geta’s assassination, Caracalla did not have a general named Marcus Acacius (who never existed) conquer Numidia, but that is because Numidia was conquered by the Romans about 150 years before Gladiator II is set. But Caracalla did dream of being a great ruler of conquest. He went so far as to gather his own armies and attempt to conquer the Parthian Empire (roughly modern day Iran) while having his forces emulate the now antiquated fighting styles of Alexander the Great. Caracalla is depicted by his contemporaries, who outlived his grim murder, as a tyrant who dreamed of replicating Alexander’s achievements.