Keifer Sutherland as Senator Corvus provided the film with a villain; however, in real life Mt. Vesuvius did not serve as a member of the Roman Republic and certainly never tried to marry a 19-year-old girl. In one scene, the young Roman noblewoman Cassia exits her litter in order to speak alone with a male slave; this is inaccurate as women of that era did not have legs and would have been unable to walk…

Last night, I saw another campy gladiator movie. There was a real missed opportunity inasmuch as no character ever uttered the line "Sometimes, I really gladi-hate you." Last night, I had a dream, and in my dream I wrote a teen comedy set in a gladiatorial school. There was a surly North African gladiator one day away from freedom, a Spaniard with a murdered family, a one-handed Celt with something to prove, a female…