Classics

Tell us, O muse, of that ingenious hero who traveled far and wide

Rachel Sauer — Wed, 15 Jul 2026 22:31:58 +0000

Tell us, O muse, of that ingenious hero who traveled far and wide Rachel Sauer Wed, 07/15/2026 - 16:31

Director Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey opens Friday and stars Matt Damon as the titular Odysseus. (Photo: Melinda Sue Gordon/Universal Pictures)

Rachel Sauer

With Christopher Nolan’s adaptation of The Odyssey opening in theaters Friday, ��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� classics scholar John Gibert considers why Homer’s epic is a tale that endures

The city of Troy likely existed. Scholars and historians broadly agree on this, citing its probable location as the mound of Hisarlık near modern Çanakkale in Turkey at the Aegean end of the Dardanelles, the waterway connecting Greeks and inhabitants of the Black Sea region.

Because of this desirable, strategic location, scholars and historians further agree that it’s likely wars were fought there. What’s much less likely is that a warrior king named Odysseus devised a scheme to build an enormous horse and hide Greek soldiers in it so they could sneak into Troy and win a 10-year war that began when the Trojan prince Paris kidnapped the king of Sparta’s wife, Helen.

Also unlikely: that Odysseus and his crew, on their journey home to Ithaca from Troy, were blown off course for 10 more years, encountering all manner of monsters, temptations and obstacles as punishment for eating the sun god’s cattle.

John Gibert, a ��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� professor of classics, notes that The Odyssey "is infinitely adaptable."

It’s a thrilling story, though, one that’s been told and retold for almost 3,000 years—since the Greek poet Homer (who may or may not have existed) crafted his enduring epic The Odyssey. Friday, Christopher Nolan’s film version of the story opens in theaters, and in explaining to New York Times reporter Melena Ryzik why he tackled such a monumental tale, Nolan commented that “it is the ur-text. It’s in everything I’ve done before.”

Millennia later, The Odyssey still fascinates, thrills and even outrages—students still are assigned to read it, and artists still plumb its 12,100 lines for insights into myth and loyalty and what it means to be human.

Perhaps that’s why we’re still reading it and, in the spirit of its origins, telling it, says John Gibert, a University of Colorado Boulder professor of classics and scholar of Greek poetry. It’s a story about gods and giants, but it’s also a story about a man trying to return safely to his home and (modest) kingdom.

“The Odyssey is infinitely adaptable,” Gibert says. “It gives storytellers who want to retell it so many options, and no two (retellings) are alike because creatives are always finding different things in the stories that they want to run with.”

‘Tell me about a complicated man’

In her acclaimed 2017 translation of The Odyssey, classist Emily Wilson opens with, “Tell me about a complicated man,” which Nolan has cited in interviews as an inspiration for his $250 million epic.

Wilson’s translation continues:

“Tell the old story for our modern times.

Find the beginning.”

And The Odyssey is a very old story, composed approximately 2,800 years ago and a companion to Homer’s The Iliad.

“Each one of them fills a translation 500 or 600 pages long,” Gibert explains. “So, they're really big works, but The Iliad only tells a slice of the 10th year of the Trojan War—slightly over 50 days, but really with a focus on about three or four days. It's very concentrated, and it's set in a wartime society where the values of warriors are uppermost.

“The Iliad is a kind of proto-tragedy in that it focuses on serious characters engaged in serious actions with large ramifications for the nation. But it is, at the end of the day, a fairly narrow slice of life.”

The Odyssey, on the other hand, follows Odysseus and his crew for 10 years, from a Troy in ruins to the land of the Lotus Eaters to the treacherous passage between Scylla and Charybdis and finally home to Ithaca. They encounter—and often anger—gods and monsters and a witch who turns men to swine, and in the end, only Odysseus makes it home.

Movie poster for Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey (Courtesy: Universal Pictures)

From a storytelling perspective, The Odyssey is rich with action and memorable characters and can be read on one level as a rip-roaring adventure. This may stem, in part, from its origins in oral tradition, Gibert says, with storytellers performing it live and adapting it as they went.

“If you look for complete consistency in their storytelling, you will not find it because they’re composing live every time,” Gibert says. “They’ve got a vision of the overall story, but in the details it’s going to differ every single time. So, a lot of Homeric scholars are thinking, ‘A-ha, this is why there's some unevenness in The Iliad and The Odyssey.

“This is also why they have those traditional epithets like ‘swift-footed Achilles’ and ‘circumspect Penelope,’ because deploying a phrase like that buys some time for the performer to think about where he's going next.”

This is also why, in both The Iliad and The Odyssey, there’s description of common things like preparing a meal, taking a bath or performing a ritual sacrifice, Gibert says: “(Performers) had a whole stock of motifs, and they could do that stuff almost on autopilot while they're thinking about shaping the larger storytelling purpose for the occasion that they're currently telling in.”

The oral traditions from which The Odyssey grew also belie the image of a genius who sits with a quill choosing one word at a time until the perfect epic poem spans the papers in front of him—“more or less what Virgil did in Rome centuries later,” Gibert says. “Homer is just something completely different.”

A folktale hero

The Odyssey, then, shares DNA with the sort of tall tales that evolve in their telling. It also presents, in Odysseus, a man who is both hero and human, who is complex and fallible and, in some ways, relatable.

“He is a folktale hero of the man against the sea, the man who has adventures against giants and things like that, so he's a traveling hero and this kind of hero naturally is a magnet for more stories of the same kind,” Gibert says. “You can attach any story to Odysseus, really, because it's plausible that he's the sort of guy that would happen to, and so there’s no limit. He’s a husband returning from war to his wife, and he’s also favored by a goddess who’s smoothing the path for him most of the time.”

And while The Odyssey is the story of Odysseus, is also expands the way that other characters’ stories are told, particularly women’s stories. While women only briefly appear in The Iliad and in small, circumscribed roles, Gibert says, in The Odyssey they’re more varied and complex.

“Of course, their roles are circumscribed, too (in The Odyssey), but there’s just more variety,” Gibert says. “Some of them are monsters; some of them are temptresses, goddesses or figures like the Sirens who can lure sailors to their deaths by singing a seductive song. And then some of them are family members and household members, so you’ve got your mothers, your daughters; you’ve got enslaved people”

In fact, Gibert adds, it is the plight of women and enslaved people with which some of his students have found connection and resonance. He recalls a student reading Book 22 of The Odyssey, in which Odysseus and his son, Telemachus, execute 12 enslaved women who had been assaulted or coerced by Penelope’s suitors, “and she just said, ‘You know what, this is where I quit.’ And she got up and left the classroom,” Gibert recalls.

“That was early in my teaching career and, incidentally, years before Margaret Atwood's Penelopiad (2005), which is more or less built on this scene. It was eye opening for me, and my eyes have stayed open. So, I try to work with (those emotional responses) in the classroom and tell students about how many ways we can think about this text.”

During the fourth semester of the Department of Classics’ Greek program, students read Homer in ancient Greek, developing new lenses through which they can approach both The Iliad and The Odyssey, Gibert says.

And while The Iliad is often regarded as the more profound work, The Odyssey “is going to give you just a much broader palette to paint with,” Gibert says, “with adventure, domesticity, warfare—Odysseus is the one who sealed the deal with the Trojan horse—adventures at sea, shipwrecks, giants. It’s great material for special effects if you're thinking in cinematic terms, but also just in storytelling terms it’s a story that’s still exciting to tell.”

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With Christopher Nolan’s adaptation of The Odyssey opening in theaters Friday, ��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� classics scholar John Gibert considers why Homer’s epic is a tale that endures .

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Top photo: Matt Damon as Odysseus in Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey (Photo: Melinda Sue Gordon/Universal Pictures)

Is it temple robbery? That depends on who is doing the taking

Rachel Sauer — Mon, 18 May 2026 19:15:43 +0000

Is it temple robbery? That depends on who is doing the taking Rachel Sauer Mon, 05/18/2026 - 13:15

Bradley Worrell

New book from ��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� scholar Isabel Köster examines temple robbery and the ancient Roman politics of moral blame

Ancient Romans often plundered temples in their wars of conquest—sometimes openly and with astonishing scale. Large statues and famous works of art were carried away from foreign lands to Rome, treasuries were emptied and sacred spaces were stripped bare.

Yet, despite how frequently these robberies occurred, Romans still expressed sharp moral outrage about it—not for the plundering itself, but for particular individuals accused of committing it for the “wrong” reasons.

That contradiction lies at the heart of Stealing from the Gods, the new book by Isabel Köster, a University of Colorado Boulder associate professor of classics whose research focus is the history, religion and literature of the Roman Republic and the early Empire. Her book, which has its origins in her PhD dissertation, examines how Roman authors thought about sacred theft, imperial power and moral character.

Isabel Köster, a ��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� associate professor of classics, notes that calling someone a temple robber became the ultimate character assassination in ancient Rome.

In a recent interview with Colorado Arts and Sciences Magazine, Köster discussed who was doing the robbing, explaining why temples were such tempting targets and why calling someone a temple robber became the ultimate character assassination in ancient Rome. Her comments have been lightly edited for style and condensed for space.

Question: How common was temple robbery? Also, who was doing the taking and where was it happening?

Köster: In military contexts, it seems to have been fairly common. However, it was usually not labeled ‘temple robbery’ unless a Roman author wanted to emphasize a character flaw. For everyday thefts—small amounts of money or objects disappearing from sanctuaries—we know very little; our sources simply aren’t interested in that kind of activity.

These weren’t small, anonymous thieves. They were generals, governors and emperors.

Most cases took place in conquered or soon‑to‑be‑conquered territories, especially in Greece and Asia Minor. The few instances we have in Rome itself are associated with periods of civil war.

Question: Why plunder temples?

Köster: In many ancient communities, sanctuaries were essentially the equivalent of banks today. They were often the most heavily fortified places in a town, with solid walls and impressive doors. They were used to store valuables that belonged to the community, such as treasuries, and also private valuables that individuals entrusted to the gods. If you didn’t want to keep something at home, one option was to bring it to a sanctuary and ask the deity to look after it.

So, if you’re conquering territory and need money quickly, temples are a very natural place to go. Especially during long, expensive campaigns far from Rome, some temple plundering was probably inevitable. That’s simply a reality of the economics of ancient warfare.

What’s interesting is how Roman sources frame this. They ask, first of all, who is doing the plundering? If it’s a general with an impeccable reputation who claims to be acting for the good of Rome—funding further war and later returning treasures for public display—then that’s considered acceptable. Nobody criticizes those cases.

But if the person involved already has a reputation for greed or moral failings and is clearly enriching himself, then the same behavior is treated as temple robbery. This distinction allows Roman authors to frame standard warfare practices as fine while isolating blame onto particular individuals.

Question: What kinds of objects were typically taken from temples?

Köster: Generally, the more spectacular, the better. We’re talking about giant statues, large amounts of coinage and especially famous works of art. In some extreme cases, particularly greedy individuals went much further—breaking decorations off doors or removing parts of statues they couldn’t transport. But in general, Roman armies had the logistics to move large items and they took advantage of that.

Despite how frequently temple robberies occurred, ancient Romans still expressed sharp moral outrage about it—not for the plundering itself, but for particular individuals accused of committing it for the “wrong” reasons.

Question: What happened to the plunder once it was taken?

Köster: Some of it was melted down on the spot to generate revenue and pay soldiers. Other objects—especially famous artworks—were selected to be transported back to Rome for triumphs and public display. How those decisions were made and how much was lost is something we simply don’t know.

Question: Was temple plundering technically illegal under Roman law?

Köster: Often, no. Roman law was quite clear on this point: If a sanctuary was not located in Roman territory and its possessions had not been formally consecrated by the Roman people, then legally speaking, taking from it was not considered a temple robbery. A sanctuary in a territory that Rome was about to conquer didn’t necessarily count as a properly sacred space from a Roman legal perspective.

That’s one of the reasons the moral outrage in the literary sources is so interesting. There’s a real disconnect between what was legally permissible and what ancient authors chose to condemn.

Question: If plundering from temples in foreign lands was typically legal, what qualified as temple robbery in Roman eyes?

Köster: That’s the key question, and the answer is: Who did the taking? When Roman authors decide whether something counts as temple robbery, they don’t usually start by asking what was taken or where. They ask who was responsible?

If the person plundering was seen as morally upright and claimed to be acting for the benefit of Rome—funding campaigns, returning treasures for public display—then the act was framed as acceptable.

But if the person already had a questionable reputation, then the exact same behavior became reprehensible. Calling someone a temple robber is character assassination. It’s a way of saying this person is greedy, impious and unfit for power.

Question: How does that distinction help Romans think about their empire more broadly?

Köster: It’s a very clever rhetorical move. Roman imperial conquests inevitably involved violence and the destruction of sacred spaces, but Roman authors didn’t want to portray the entire system as flawed. By framing temple robbery as the failure of a few bad individuals, they could acknowledge harm without accepting collective responsibility.

Thus, it’s not a problem with Roman warfare, according to this logic. It’s a problem with isolated people who can’t behave themselves.

Question: The Roman statesman, philosopher and lawyer Cicero plays a big role in your book. Why are his speeches about temple robbery so important?

Köster: You can’t study temple robbery without Cicero’s speeches against Verres, the former governor of Sicily. Temple robbery is not part of the formal charges against Verres, which focus on corruption, but Cicero devotes enormous attention to attacks on temples because he felt they strengthened his argument.

Cicero clearly felt that these stories helped his case. The logic is: If someone is capable of violating sacred spaces so badly, then of course he’s capable of embezzlement and corruption. Verres becomes the benchmark against which all other temple robbers are measured.

Question: You state in your book that temple robbers become almost caricatures in Roman literature. What do those caricatures look like?

Köster: They’re remarkably consistent. A temple robber is never just someone who steals from temples. They are also accused of murder, torture, illegal enslavement and all kinds of brutality.

"In Rome, accusations of temple robbery were less about protecting the gods and more about defining who belonged and who didn’t."

But what’s really interesting is how often these figures fail at basic ‘Roman-ness.’ They can’t give a good speech. They don’t know how to host a dinner party properly. They dress inappropriately and don’t know how to behave in elite social settings. Despite reaching the top of society, they’re portrayed as outsiders to Roman culture.

Question: Based on available historical records, how many Romans were convicted of temple robbery? Also, what punishments did they face?

Köster: We have no robust evidence for prosecutions for temple robbery—sacrilegium in Latin—during the period I study, nor do we have definitions of the crime or discussions of penalties. In later Christian sources, where sacrilegium signifies a broad range of crimes that diminish the sacred status of someone or something (e.g., blasphemy or insulting the emperor), it is a capital offense. Here it merits the most horrific penalties that the Roman world has to offer, such as throwing people to wild animals for public entertainment. But in pre-Christian Rome, at least in the sources that survive, accusations of temple robbery are not a legal charge, but supporting evidence in other cases.

Question: What roles do the gods themselves play in these Roman narratives? Do they ever punish temple robbers?

Köster: Sometimes. There are dramatic stories of divine punishment: People struck dead, afflicted with disease—even losing their hands while trying to plunder a sanctuary. But those stories are surprisingly rare.

Most of the time, temple robbers get away with it. That raised big questions for me about ancient ideas of divine justice and the reliability of gods as protectors of their own property, which will be the focus of my next major project.

Question: If readers could take one or two ideas away from your book, what would they be?

Köster: That when we encounter moral outrage in ancient sources, we should ask what that work is doing. In Rome, accusations of temple robbery were less about protecting the gods and more about defining who belonged and who didn’t. The first question to ask isn’t ‘what happened?’ It’s ‘who is being accused?’

At its heart, this is a book about insults. And insults tell us what a culture values.

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New book from ��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� scholar Isabel Köster examines temple robbery and the ancient Roman politics of moral blame.

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Top image: "The Triumph of Aemilius Paulus" by Carle Vernet, 1789

Exhibit explores identity through ancient coins

Rachel Sauer — Fri, 17 Apr 2026 17:59:18 +0000

Exhibit explores identity through ancient coins Rachel Sauer Fri, 04/17/2026 - 11:59

'Expressions of Identity in Ancient Greek Coins' opens Wednesday as a collaboration between the Department of Classics and the CU Art Museum

A new exhibit opening Wednesday at the CU Art Museum will celebrate the stories and history of ancient Greek and Roman coins, highlighting student research as well as the campus partnerships bringing the exhibit to fruition.

“Expressions of Identity in Ancient Greek Coins” will open with a celebration from 4:30 to 6 p.m. Wednesday, April 22. The exhibit, which has been jointly curated by Beth Dusinberre, a professor of distinction in the Department of Classics, and Hope Saska, CU Art Museum director and chief curator, features ancient Greek and Roman coins that served not only as currency, but as media for communicating political messages and civic pride.

The exhibit features coins from the collection of John Nebel, including one minted by Brutus that celebrates the Ides of March, as well as Roman coins from ��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� Wilton Jaffee collection. It builds on work done by students in Dusinberre’s Fall 2025 class on Greek coins.

The public is invited to attend the opening celebration Wednesday afternoon, and refreshments will be served.

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'Expressions of Identity in Ancient Greek Coins' opens Wednesday as a collaboration between the Department of Classics and the CU Art Museum.

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Art historian walks into the Middle Ages

Rachel Sauer — Wed, 25 Feb 2026 22:27:17 +0000

Art historian walks into the Middle Ages Rachel Sauer Wed, 02/25/2026 - 15:27

Much of Kirk Ambrose's nearly 800-mile trek was on the Via Jacobi, the Way of St. James, which threads through France toward Santiago de Compostela in Spain. The long walk served as research for a book he’s writing about art and doubt in the 11th and 12th centuries. (Photo: Kirk Ambrose)

Clint Talbott

��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� Professor Kirk Ambrose set out to better understand art, doubt and medieval pilgrimages, but his 800-mile walk has modern implications

At some point during his trek, Kirk Ambrose felt that walking was “too fast.” Days stretched and the small loomed large. He and his wife would stop to admire a spider, then just talk about it.

“It really did change my perceptions,” he says. And that was kind of the point.

Kirk Ambrose (right), a ��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� professor of classics, walked nearly 800 miles along medieval pilgrimage routes, joined for part of the journey by his wife, Kim Dickey, a professor of art and art history. (Photo: Kirk Ambrose)

Last summer, Ambrose, a professor of classics at the University of Colorado Boulder, walked nearly 800 miles along medieval pilgrimage routes—much of it on the Via Jacobi, the Way of St. James, which threads through France toward Santiago de Compostela in Spain. His wife, Kim Dickey, who is a ��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� professor of ceramics, joined him for part of the walk.

Ambrose trained for the trek, but the goal was not athletic. It was scholarly. The long walk served as research for a book he’s writing about art and doubt in the 11th and 12th centuries.

“I wanted to get a sense of, as much as is possible in the modern day, what these experiences were like,” he says. “Pilgrimage has been a framework for understanding medieval art—especially the 12th century—and I wanted to probe that from the ground.”

He approached the journey with “a healthy dose of skepticism.” The romantic picture of pilgrims dutifully trudging from shrine to shrine, he argues, owes much to early 20th‑century American portrayals of pilgrimages.

Ambrose cites Arthur Kingsley Porter, a wealthy American scholar who toured Europe by chauffeured Rolls‑Royce and helped popularize the idea of being on the road as a way to understand the spread of medieval art. Porter’s writings reflected a privileged and American way of moving through the world, Ambrose suggests, adding that Porter’s perspectives differed from those of most Europeans.

The road and its surroundings

The walk itself focused Ambrose’s attention on the social fabric that makes pilgrimages possible. “What interested me, perhaps more than the pilgrim, was the whole support network,” he said. He met volunteers who cleaned bathrooms and retirees who opened bedrooms—chambres d’hôtes—and cooked dinner for strangers.

Many of these workers had left urban careers after the pandemic, moved by a desire to be close to a journey even if they could not make one themselves. “Again and again, I heard a version of the same idea: ‘I travel through the people I encounter, even though I’m staying in the same spot.’”

The observation seemed timeless. Medieval monks, often prohibited from physical travel, were encouraged to undertake “spiritual pilgrimages”—imagined journeys toward the divine. The modern hosts Ambrose met felt like their analogues, he said.

Ambrose trained for a year—backpack full of books—before setting out; he finished the walk in just over two months without a blister. But the physical feat was secondary.

One observation about pilgrimages, he says, is “how much time you are not in churches.” Most days were focused on ferns, salamanders, hunger and the logistics of the next bed. Sacred sites punctuated but did not define the experience.

Scholarship in motion

Kirk Ambrose's journey took him along Lake Lucerne in Switzerland. (Photo: Kirk Ambrose)

Some scholars have argued that artistic styles spread via pilgrim highways. Ambrose suggests otherwise.

“There’s an increasing body of scholarship that challenges the idea that artists simply ‘followed’ pilgrims,” he says. “Institutional affiliation and alliances often explain transmission better—monasteries, chapters, reform movements—networks that stretch across regions through personal relationships, not roads.”

The variety he encountered along the way—the “dizzying” mix of styles and architectural solutions—underscored that point.

He offers a contemporary analogy: Rather than assuming ideas spread evenly across a state, think of a university department with deep ties to a lab in the Netherlands—ideas may travel faster via that friendship than along any map. The medieval equivalents—papal circles, Cluniac reform, houses of canons—made and remade aesthetic choices at large scale and across geography.

Ambrose also questions the notion of the Middle Ages as just an “Age of Faith.”

“I’m trying to complicate the emotional landscape,” he says. “Doubt is a primary motivator.” In the 12th century, commentaries on the Book of Job—which wrestles with faith and doubt—were among the most copied texts.

Ambrose notes that art from this period confronts doubt, raising questions such as: Which relic is genuine? Is the Eucharist literally the body of Christ or a symbol? What do I treat as true when I’m surrounded by competing claims?

Even images of damnation—liars punished, tongues ripped out—suggest a culture trying to distinguish fact from fiction. Today, humans face similar questions, he observes.

Ambrose speaks with delight about the people he met on the walk. “There’s a saying on the route that the kingdom of pilgrimage is 2,000 miles long and 5 feet wide,” he says. On that path, one might find an octogenarian walking from Budapest to Santiago—eight or nine months out and back—or a group of students between semesters, or a CEO on sabbatical. Most of the walkers he met weren’t religious.

He says the experience evoked what cultural anthropologist Victor Turner called the liminal experience—a phase between two stages of life, states of being or locations. “I met people from 18 to their 70s. We were all pilgrims together, regardless of motivation.”

Scenes from a (very long) walk

St.-Privat-d’Allier in France.

A fire salamander on the trail near Espalion, France.

The rooftops of Ste.-Foy, Conques in France.

Lungerersee in Switzerland.

View of Fribourg, Switzerland.

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��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� Professor Kirk Ambrose set out to better understand art, doubt and medieval pilgrimages, but his 800-mile walk has modern implications.

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Top photo: Kirk Ambrose on the trail. (All photos courtesy Kirk Ambrose)

Classicist explores fantasy of law in an empire of violence

Rachel Sauer — Tue, 06 Jan 2026 21:23:34 +0000

Classicist explores fantasy of law in an empire of violence Rachel Sauer Tue, 01/06/2026 - 14:23

Cody DeBos

In new book, ��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� classics Professor Zach Herz focuses on the law, the bureaucrat and the Roman Empire

When Zach Herz talks about Roman law, he says things like, “Maybe the biggest misconception is that the Roman Empire had the rule of law.”

The idea might surprise those unfamiliar with the legal timeline of the world’s most famous empire. But Herz and other legal scholars who study the period know there is truth behind this confounding theory.

Herz, an assistant professor of classics at the University of Colorado Boulder and trained attorney, explores the idea further in his newly published book, The God and the Bureaucrat: Roman Law, Imperial Sovereignty, and Other Stories. In it, he questions the long-standing assumption that Roman law was a systematic, even apolitical legal achievement.

Zach Herz, a ��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� assistant professor of classics, recently published The God and the Bureaucrat: Roman Law, Imperial Sovereignty, and Other Stories, in which he questions the long-standing assumption that Roman law was a systematic, even apolitical legal achievement.

Instead, beneath a layer of dry humor and self-awareness, Herz argues that the bureaucracy of Roman law functioned as a fantasy constructed to impose a sense of order on a world that was anything but ordered.

What we get wrong about Rome’s judicial system

Modern historians often describe Rome as a pristine model of legality adorned in tunics and stonework, the purest version of legal order and one that has persisted as long as its ideals.

“What I think happened is Romans lived in this world that was autocratic and violent and very scary,” Herz says. “Different people thought about this in different ways. For some, the thing they needed to do was think very hard about law.”

Viewing their ideas in an unblemished light ignores the political reality that existed throughout much of the Roman Empire. Emperors held unchecked power, assassinations were common and violence permeated daily life.

So, how did a society plagued by these problems end up producing one of the most detailed legal traditions in world history?

“The Romans were trying to imagine how a fairer state might be run. This exercise generated these massive tomes about how problems should be solved. Everyone who read them knew it wasn’t how problems were actually solved. So this thing we now see as perfect law coming from a perfect world was actually people in a very imperfect world imagining a perfect law,” Herz explains.

In other words, Roman law helped people imagine a world where the state operated predictably and justly—even if their lived experience told them otherwise.

Bureaucracy as comfort, law as theater

The illusion of a fair legal system in Rome was an important political tool. It helped stabilize Rome by giving people a language for justice and a sense they could navigate the state by rules, not whims.

In a world without modern civil institutions, that illusion was valuable. But even in today’s world, it’s still valuable, Herz argues.

“Law still does a lot of work in making our lives better by allowing us to just not think about things so much. It allows us to put certain possibilities of violence or extreme tragedy out of our minds so we can focus on the things we enjoy,” he says.

Roman law, in Herz’s view, was more about storytelling, allowing people to imagine what ethical government might look like, especially when the emperor—who held unchecked power—was corrupt, disinterested or 12 years old.

��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� scholar Zach Herz argues that the bureaucracy of Roman law functioned as a fantasy constructed to impose a sense of order on a world that was anything but ordered.

“It's clear that Romans wanted to believe there were checks and balances. And in some ways, there were. There was a remedy for having a bad emperor, right? It was a knife,” Herz says.

“A lot of our legal sources come from a particularly turbulent period in Roman history, early third century. It's called the Severan period. And I don't think that's a coincidence. We see law moved to the center of Roman political culture when the emperor is an obviously ‘good’ guy. I'm not saying everyone agrees with that, I'm not saying it's true, but that's sort of how everything is represented,” he adds.

Known as the Pax Romana (Roman Peace), this second-century CE period is remembered for a stretch of “Five Good Emperors.” With a trusted leader in power, the legal system was not often on the minds of the populace.

But when a bad emperor took the throne, that narrative changed quickly.

“If everyone agrees the emperor is good, we don’t have a problem. He is going to be ethical. There are going to be checks and balances. It's when the emperor is bad, now you need rules,” Herz says.

When the emperor cites precedent

One case study in Herz’s book tracks how legal rhetoric changed under child emperors, of which Rome had several. Drawing on techniques he learned during a stint in a corporate law firm, Herz noticed something curious.

“Cites to precedent are pretty rare in imperial decision-making because you're the emperor. But they showed up a lot more when the emperor was a child,” he says.

One boy emperor from the Severan period was four times more likely to cite prior decisions than adult emperors. Herz argues this was a strategic effort by Roman officials to borrow credibility from past rulings.

“It was a way to say, ‘Even though the emperor is a kid, the system still works,’” he explains.

That system, of course, was fragile. Even so, its stories of order held power.

“If the emperor is 12, you do not want a 12-year-old boy making decisions for you. You’d rather have lawyers doing that. You’d rather have statues doing that. You’d rather have coherent prospective guidance than whims, right? So, people decided to lean into the legal system,” Herz says.

Vestiges of the past

Although the Roman Empire is long gone, its influence endures in ways that we can see traces of throughout the modern world. In fact, most of continental Europe still bases its legal codes on Roman foundations. Even Louisiana maintains vestiges of Roman law.

“It was that or witches,” Herz quips. “They built their own laws on that imagined Roman Empire because that’s just what they had to work with.”

More importantly, Herz argues that we’ve inherited the Roman idea that states ought to operate through law. From Rome, we came to believe that legitimacy comes from procedure and precedent.

“Even in places that don’t explicitly follow Roman law, those notions are still deeply, deeply classical,” he says.

"Law still does a lot of work in making our lives better by allowing us to just not think about things so much. It allows us to put certain possibilities of violence or extreme tragedy out of our minds so we can focus on the things we enjoy."

That belief can be comforting, but also misleading, Herz says. As in Rome, modern legal systems can sometimes obscure violence, exclusion or inequality under layers of ritualized language and illusory checks and balances.

Imagined order, real impact

So, what can we gain by not upholding Roman law as a perfect blueprint, but instead treating it as a cultural artifact? For Herz, the answer is a better way to understand the interplay between power and imagination in human society.

“A huge amount of what law does is create this mirage of order. And it's backed up by force in unpredictable and confusing ways, if you really want to get into it,” he says.

Despite that ambiguity, Herz doesn’t see law as sinister. Nor does he see Rome’s imagined structures for a utopian world as malevolent. He believes it is human.

Our instinct for structure and fairness drive us to create something bigger than ourselves to believe in.

“You don’t have to think something totally real to think it’s incredibly useful. For most of us, the lives we want to make for ourselves don't require us to get into deep thinking about violence or crime and law prevents us from having to get into it. That's a very important gift that law gives to us,” he says.

For Herz, what makes Roman law worth studying is not that it worked inherently, but that it worked because people wanted it to.

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In new book, ��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� classics Professor Zach Herz focuses on the law, the bureaucrat and the Roman Empire.

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College of Arts and Sciences faculty win 2025 Best Should Teach Awards

Rachel Sauer — Tue, 22 Apr 2025 13:30:00 +0000

College of Arts and Sciences faculty win 2025 Best Should Teach Awards Rachel Sauer Tue, 04/22/2025 - 07:30

Peter Hunt, Warren Sconiers and Josh Strayhorn will be honored during an awards ceremony May 1

Three College of Arts and Sciences faculty members have been recognized as 2025 Best Should Teach Award winners.

Peter Hunt, a professor of classics; Warren Sconiers, an associate teaching professor of ecology and evolutionary biology; and Josh Strayhorn, an associate professor of political science, will be recognized for their excellence in teaching and academic leadership at an awards ceremony from 6 to 9 p.m. May 1 in the CASE Chancellors Hall and Auditorium.

Peter Hunt (left), Warren Sconiers (center) and Josh Strayhorn (right) have been recognized as 2025 Best Should Teach Award winners.

The Best Should Teach Initiative was established in 1996 by Lindley and Marguerite Stiles to support the idea that “the best should teach.” It celebrates excellence in teaching at primary, secondary and higher education levels and supports the preparation of college and university faculty, as well as public school teachers, in their disciplinary fields.

Hunt, who has been a faculty member at the University of Colorado Boulder since 2000, is a classical Greek historian who studies warfare and society, slavery, historiography and oratory.

Sconiers trained as an insect ecologist, studying the effects of drought stress and changes in nutritional plant physiology and insect species composition. He also researches how to increase student engagement and learning in large classroom settings, focusing on peer-to-peer collaboration, self-efficacy, bridging biology teaching and research experiences and building instructor approachability.

Strayhorn, who joined the ��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� faculty in 2013, specializes in formal theory, political institutions and judicial politics. His research applies game-theoretic models in a variety of contexts. His work examines the implications of delegation, oversight and accountability mechanisms for outcomes within political and judicial hierarchies and for democratic governance.

The Best Should Teach Award ceremony is free and open to the public. The keynote speaker will be Alphonse Keasley, former associate vice chancellor in the Office of Diversity, Equity and Community Engagement at ��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� who has more than 30 years of experience as a faculty member, staff and administrator.

Best Should Teach events and awards are co-funded by the Ira and Ineva Baldwin Fund in the CU Foundation and Brian Good's private Best Should Teach Fund, with additional support from the Center for Teaching and Learning, the School of Education and the College of Arts and Sciences.

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Peter Hunt, Warren Sconiers and Josh Strayhorn will be honored during an awards ceremony May 1.

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CU prof fighting to keep Latin classes alive through video storytelling

Rachel Sauer — Tue, 01 Apr 2025 15:51:17 +0000

CU prof fighting to keep Latin classes alive through video storytelling Rachel Sauer Tue, 04/01/2025 - 09:51

Cody DeBos

For Reina Callier, learning Latin ‘is like lifting weights for your brain’

When a student in one of Reina Callier’s Latin classes said, “I came for the language, I stayed for the vibes,” she laughed, but the phrase stuck with her.

It captured something essential about Latin classrooms. Beyond conjugations and declensions, they offer students a haven for community, curiosity and a shared passion for the ancient world.

In recent years, though, that community has been shrinking.

Reina Callier, a ��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� teaching assistant professor of classics, notes that “Latin survives because people love it. And as long as we keep sharing that love, it’s not going anywhere.”

“Enrollment in Latin classes, especially at the secondary level, has largely been declining,” Callier explains. “During COVID, Latin classes were seen as non-essential, so they lost a lot of students. And they’ve been having a hard time bringing the numbers back up.”

For Callier, a teaching assistant professor of classics and the Latin Program Coordinator at the University of Colorado Boulder, this trend is more than an academic concern.

She wasn’t alone in her worries. In response to falling enrollment rates, the Colorado Classics Association (CCA) formed a committee dedicated to promoting interest in Latin classes.

The solution? A project that would convey the benefits of learning Latin to students in their own words.

A language in decline

Across the country, Latin programs have struggled to justify their existence in an education system increasingly focused on STEM fields and workforce development. In some districts, administrators have proposed cutting Latin entirely, forcing teachers and students to fight for their programs.

In collaboration with the CCA and local high school educators, Callier helped spearhead You Belong in Latin, a video project designed to remind high school students why Latin is worth learning.

“We finally came up with the idea for a video, because it’s something you can share easily. It’s more entertaining than just looking at a brochure that says, ‘Here’s why Latin is a good thing to take,’” Callier says.

The project quickly took shape as teachers across Colorado filmed interviews with their students, capturing firsthand accounts of what Latin means to them. They also collected footage of classrooms filled with laughter, animated discussions and moments of discovery.

“One of the things we noticed is that once students get into Latin class, they really love it,” Callier says. “You just have to get them in the door.”

The team secured a grant to bring the project to life, which allowed them to hire a former ��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� student who majored in film—and took several semesters of Latin with Callier—to professionally edit the videos.

Over the course of a year, the raw footage was transformed into a compelling series of short videos, each emphasizing a unique aspect of the Latin classroom experience.

Now available on YouTube, the You Belong in Latin videos are a vital resource for teachers, students and parents to share.

Latin is for everyone

A central theme of You Belong in Latin is the tight-knit community formed in Latin classrooms. Unlike more popular language programs, Latin classes tend to be small, allowing students to form deeper relationships with their peers and instructors.

“At ��Ҵ�ý�ƽ��, if you take Latin, aside from the first semester where there are two sections of Latin I, after that, everybody’s in the same class together,” Callier explains. “You continue to see the same instructors in the department as well. So you get to know them, and you get to know your peers in a way that’s not really very common at the college level.”

The same holds true in high schools, where Latin students often stay in one cohort across multiple years and gain a sense of unity and belonging.

The videos also seek to challenge the misconception that Latin is elitist—a subject reserved for Ivy League prep schools and aspiring academics.

“Latin actually isn’t elitist. Everybody’s starting from the same level when they walk into Latin class. There’s no barrier, and everybody can benefit from it in various ways,” Callier says.

And while Latin’s reputation as a “dead language” often turns students away, Callier argues that its benefits are very much alive. Latin gives students a foundation for English vocabulary, enhances their analytical skills and prepares them for careers in law, medicine and the sciences, she says, adding that it also provides direct access to Latin texts, “which is immensely beneficial to anyone who is enthusiastic about Roman literature or history.

“Latin actually isn’t elitist. Everybody’s starting from the same level when they walk into Latin class. There’s no barrier, and everybody can benefit from it in various ways.”

“Learning Latin is like weightlifting for your brain,” she says with a smile.

Keeping the momentum going

Now that the You Belong in Latin videos have been published, Callier is working to spread the word.

“We have been sharing our Colorado Classics Association YouTube channel with educators from around the country who are looking for different ways to promote Latin,” she says.

Feedback on the project has been encouraging for Latin educators who rarely receive recognition for their efforts.

“What we are doing as Latin educators is something that is really having an impact,” Callier says. “Students are getting a lot out of Latin in various ways, and they’re really appreciating what we bring to the table.”

At its heart, this project isn’t just about keeping Latin alive but also celebrating what makes it special. As Callier and her colleagues know, the language is only the beginning. The real magic comes from the people who learn and teach it.

Callier says, “Latin survives because people love it. And as long as we keep sharing that love, it’s not going anywhere.”

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For Reina Callier, learning Latin ‘is like lifting weights for your brain.'

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That can of beer tastes and lasts better than you think

Rachel Sauer — Fri, 24 Jan 2025 17:48:48 +0000

That can of beer tastes and lasts better than you think Rachel Sauer Fri, 01/24/2025 - 10:48

Doug McPherson

Beer historian and ��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� Assistant Professor Travis Rupp explains why canned beer, celebrating its 90th anniversary today, has been ‘immensely impactful’ for the industry

“It's Saturday, y'all, here's a plan
I'm gonna throw back a couple …
Until the point where I can't stand
No, nothing picks me up like a beer can.”

From “Beer Can” by Luke Combs

"Cans are the best containers for beer," says beer archaeologist and historian Travis Rupp, a ��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� teaching assistant professor of classics. (Photo: Travis Rupp)

On Jan. 24, 1935, some shoppers in Virginia were likely scratching their heads and gawking at something they hadn’t seen before―beer in cans―specifically, Krueger’s Cream Ale and Krueger’s Finest Beer from the Gottfried Krueger Brewing Company. Up until then, beer drinkers had enjoyed their suds in bottles.

Today, canned beer is commonplace, but according to beer archaeologist and historian Travis Rupp, a University of Colorado Boulder teaching assistant professor of classics, even though canning would prove to be “immensely impactful” for the industry, neither brewers nor consumers cared much for cans initially.

“There were false claims made about metal flavor leaching into canned beverages because the beer was coming in contact with the aluminum,” Rupp says. “Where this may have been the case with early steel or aluminum cans, it wasn’t true for most of the container's history.”

Rupp adds that even as late as 2015, glass bottles were viewed as better containers for beer, given that they were “nicer” for presentation.

Yet today, cans have emerged as the clear winner in the beer game. A Colorado example: MillerCoors Rocky Mountain Metal Container, based near the Coors campus in Golden, now churns out roughly 13 million cans daily.

“Cans are the best containers for beer. They don’t let in sunlight or oxygen, which are both detrimental to beer,” says Rupp. “Bottles let in sunlight. Even brown or amber bottles allow a small percentage of ultraviolet rays through, which can skunk or spoil the beer. Bottles also can leach in oxygen through the cap over time as the seal breaks down. Bottles still have a place for cellaring or aging high gravity barrel-aged beers or sours, but if you want your beer to stay and taste fresh the longest, you opt for cans.”

The case for cans

Over the decades, cans have also helped brewers’ bottom lines: “Cans are far cheaper because they’re much lighter to ship,” Rupp explains. “Freight shipping costs are mostly dictated by weight. This ultimately can result in higher profits for breweries and lower costs for consumers. They’re also far, far cheaper to store, since they require far less space than glass bottles and cartons.”

The first canned beers were Krueger's Cream Ale and Krueger's Finest Beer. (Photo: Brewery Collectibles Club of America)

Long before cans made their debut, Rupp says some breweries tried replacing wooden casks with metal kegs throughout the 19th century, but no protective liner existed to prevent metallic leaching in these containers. “And given the long duration that beer would sit in the metal casks before serving, the flavor would become quite awful. It wasn’t until the 1960s that stainless steel kegs hit the market.”

��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� that metallic-flavor-leaching debate, Rupp says aluminum can producers now apply a patented protective liner to the inside of their cans to prevent leaching. “If you cut open a can produced by the Ball Corporation [the global packaging giant], you’ll find … a dull grayish-white crosshatched pattern in the can. This is the protective liner, and I assure you no metal flavor is leaching into your beer.”

But for Rupp, perhaps the most impressive technology comes in what’s called the seaming process on cans. The ends (or top) of the can are produced separately. Once the cans are filled, the end is placed on top and goes through a series of rollers and chucks to seam the top of the can.

“This bond is so tight that the sides of the can will fail before the seam does. It’s a really cool advancement in canning technology, as are canning machines in general that work hard to ensure no oxygen ends up in the beer before the cans are sealed. We’ve come a long way from church keys and pull tabs on beer cans.”

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Beer historian and ��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� Assistant Professor Travis Rupp explains why canned beer, celebrating its 90th anniversary today, has been ‘immensely impactful’ for the industry.

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Notre Dame cathedral rises from the ashes

Rachel Sauer — Tue, 03 Dec 2024 15:38:23 +0000

Notre Dame cathedral rises from the ashes Rachel Sauer Tue, 12/03/2024 - 08:38

Doug McPherson

Five years after a devastating fire, ��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� Professor Kirk Ambrose reflects on the significance of the renowned cathedral’s Dec. 7 reopening

When University of Colorado Boulder Professor Kirk Ambrose thinks of the famed cathedral Notre Dame in Paris, his mind goes back to when he lived near the site while researching European art and architecture.

He’d make a point of walking past the church every morning―repeated encounters that made him appreciate how much the building is part of the life of the city.

Kirk Ambrose, a ��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� professor of classics, notes that since its beginnings, Notre Dame has been the center of Paris.

He recalls that there was a regular vendor who sold pet birds in the cathedral’s shadow.

“I relished the entanglements of soaring towers and buttresses vis-à-vis these caged flying animals,” says Ambrose, whose great aunt was married in Notre Dame. “In other words, Notre Dame offers a lens through which one can understand Paris. This notion is underscored by the vista from its towers, which offer unparalleled views of the city.”

Ambrose, a professor in the ��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� Department of Classics who studies and teaches the art and architecture of medieval Europe, says from its beginnings in the 12th century, Notre Dame was at the center of Paris. (It is literally the city’s center: In front of the church, a small plate engraved with a compass is known as “point zéro des routes de France,” which marks where all distances to and from Paris are measured.)

Five years after the April 15, 2019, fire that collapsed the cathedral’s famed spire, consumed its wooden roof and heavily damaged its upper walls and vaults, Notre Dame is set to reopen to the public Dec. 7, with the first mass held the following day.

In his public remarks following the fire, French President Emmanuel Macron said, “Notre-Dame is our history, our literature, part of our psyche, the place of all our great events, our epidemics, our wars, our liberations, the epicenter of our lives.”

In the more than 800 years since its first stone was laid, Notre Dame has not only come to symbolize Paris but become one of the world’s great buildings. When it burned in 2019, people around the globe mourned, and its reopening is garnering international celebration.

An 800-year history

Throughout its multi-century history, Notre Dame has not been stagnant, but has reflected the shifting currents of culture, Ambrose says.

“This was the seat of the bishop of Paris and was a stone’s throw from the king’s residence,” Ambrose says. “Given these royal associations, there were many renovation campaigns to keep the building looking stylish, in line with the latest building trends.”

During the Middle Ages, the streets surrounding the cathedral were home to bookshops, ivory shops and other niche workshops. “The towers of the cathedral loomed large, both physically and conceptually, over these artistic activities,” Ambrose says.

After extensive renovation following a devastating April 2019 fire, Notre Dame will reopen to the public Saturday, and the first mass will be said Sunday. (Photo: Stephane De Sakutin/Getty Images)

The height of Notre-Dame de Paris's tower is 226 feet, and its spire is 315 feet. Until the Eiffel Tower was completed, Notre Dame was the tallest structure in Paris.

Historians note that the cathedral was an easy target during the Napoleonic Wars, when it took such a pummeling that officials considered razing it. To boost awareness for the church and revive interest in Gothic architecture, the renowned author Victor Hugo wrote the novel The Hunchback of Notre-Dame in 1831.

Ambrose says Hugo’s novel made the building a vivid character for readers’ imaginations. The book was met with immediate success, and in 1844 King Louis Philippe ordered that Notre Dame be restored.

“By the way, Hugo was friends with many of the leading architectural historians of the day,” Ambrose says. “Thanks largely to Hugo, the building was subsequently the subject of films, of garden sculptures, of gargoyles, etc.”

But five years ago, all of Notre Dame’s beauty and history was nearly lost. According to news reports, a fire broke at about 6:20 p.m. April 15, and in fewer than two hours, the spire collapsed, bringing down a cascade of 750 tons of stone and lead. It’s been speculated that the fire was linked to ongoing renovation work, but officials have yet to name a definitive cause. By 9.45 p.m., the fire was finally brought under control.

Saturday, the cathedral will reopen following a restoration supported by about 340,000 donors from 150 countries who contributed almost $1 billion.

Might Notre Dame become even more popular after the fire and subsequent restoration? Ambrose says there’s reason to believe it will.

“As a medievalist, I can say that fires often make buildings more popular,” he says. “The great cathedral of Chartres [a Catholic cathedral in Chartres, France, much of which was destroyed by a fire in 1194] leaps to mind as a comparison. In medieval lore, fires were often interpreted as expressions of divine will; that’s to say, they were interpreted as commands to make a building even more splendid.

“In the case of Notre Dame, the fire will, I believe, also make us appreciate this remarkable monument all the more, not taking this historical legacy for granted.”

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Five years after a devastating fire, ��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� Professor Kirk Ambrose reflects on the significance of the renowned cathedral’s Dec. 7 reopening.

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Top photo: notredamedeparis.fr

Gladiators make a comeback on the silver screen

Rachel Sauer — Thu, 21 Nov 2024 22:08:52 +0000

Gladiators make a comeback on the silver screen Rachel Sauer Thu, 11/21/2024 - 15:08

Bradley Worrell

Even if historical films like Gladiator II, debuting Friday, are inaccurate on key points, ��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� Department of Classics Assistant Teaching Professor Travis Rupp sees value in them as a gateway to getting students interested in real history

As an assistant teaching professor in the Department of Classics at the University of Colorado Boulder, where he teaches a class on ancient sports, Travis Rupp gives the Roman-era period film Gladiator decidedly mixed marks for historical accuracy.

That does not mean he is not big fan of the movie, however.

��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� classics scholar Travis Rupp teaches a course called Ancient Sport and Spectacle.

“I get asked about the movie Gladiator all the time. Most people just assume that I hate the movie. And actually, I love it. Gladiator is one of my top five movies of all time,” says Rupp, who teaches Greek and Roman archeology, Egyptology and Roman history, with a special focus on ancient food, alcohol and sports.

“What’s funny about it is that the movie came out in 2000, while I was an undergrad at the University of Iowa, and one of my roommates and I got so obsessed with the film that, no joke, I think we saw it a dozen times. I wasn’t even a classics major at the time; I was an English major. We just loved the movie that much.”

With Gladiator II hitting the big screens Friday, Colorado Arts and Sciences Magazine asked Rupp for his take on what Hollywood gets wrong (and right) about gladiators, how today’s movies about the Roman era compare with those made in the Golden Age of Hollywood and whether historical films can ever be 100% accurate and still engaging.

Question: What did Gladiator director Ridley Scott get wrong and right in the 2000 film?

Rupp: There are some big deviations. One thing I would say they got right is the setting of the film. The film starts off with Emperor Marcus Aurelius at war on the northern frontier with ‘barbarian’ tribes, and that’s accurate. Marcus Aurelius spent essentially his entire principate at war.

And one thing I think Scott did well was with the casting of (Richard Harris) as Marcus Aurelius, because he (Harris) captured the role with his cerebral manner and trustworthy cadence and delivery. The real Marcus Aurelius was a philosopher and someone far more literarily focused on his philosophical ideologies than he was war, even though he spent his entire time as emperor at war.

Things begin to deviate pretty quickly from there. When Commodus (played by Joaquin Phoenix) is introduced in the film, there is this idea that Commodus is still trying to curry his father’s favor and get his dear old dad to name him heir to the throne. However, we know from history that Commodus was declared co-ruler before the death of Marcus Aurelius, and there is nothing to suggest that Commodus had his father killed, like in the movie. But it works in the movie to create the idea of him as the antagonist. There’s no way you can’t hate Commodus from that moment on in the film.

At the same time, the movie does capture that Commodus, as he’s recorded in history, was kind of a looney. He was megalomaniacal in a lot of ways, and he was hated by a lot of people, including a lot of people in the Roman Senate. He wanted to be this dictatorial ruler in every sense of the word.

Actor Russell Crowe starred as General Maximus in the 2000 film Gladiator. (Photo: Universal/Getty Images)

He also fancied himself a gladiator, as depicted in the movie. He was actually trained as a full-fledged gladiator, and he was obsessed with the games.

Then there is the character of General Maximus (played by Russell Crowe), who is entirely fictitious. Ridley Scott said Maximus represented a composite of several historical figures.

In terms of the storyline that’s been built into the film, of this idea of a general of such high esteem or regard being singled out for execution, that’s not out of the question. These guys (Roman leaders) were pretty rough with each other, and if you crossed the line with the wrong person, they would find a way to get rid of you.

But the idea of Maximus ending up in a gladiator school is pretty far-fetched. That seems highly unlikely, especially given that he was a free man. He had rights as a citizen. But the storyline needed that to drive the film forward. Obviously, that’s how Scott creates our protagonist, so I suppose it’s understandable.

As for what happened to Commodus, he was assassinated, but there is no indication he was killed in the arena, as in the movie. And Commodus was emperor for about 12 years, whereas in the movie it seems like he is barely into his rule when he’s killed, so the film’s timeline doesn’t really play out right.

Question: As it relates to the gladiator battles in the Colosseum in the film, how realistic are those to actual history?

Rupp: I would say the games are 50-50 in terms of accuracy and how they are presented in the film. Some of the accuracy concerns how the Colosseum is displayed in the film, including with trapdoors and these surprises that could jump out at you, like wild animals, to shock and awe the crowds.

But what’s not real is the way the fighting is displayed or portrayed. Today we don’t actually think that most of the fights were to the death. Up until the 1990s, most scholarship presented the idea that most gladiators died probably within their first three battles, which would mean most of them only survived about two weeks.

As we’ve dug deeper into the topic over the last 30 years, we don’t have the archeological evidence to support that. We do have gladiator graves or cemeteries, but they’re not full of tens of thousands of people that were killed in the games.

Kirk Douglas starred as gladiator Spartacus in the 1960 film. (Photo: Bettmann Archives/Getty Images)

Meanwhile, we have a great deal of evidence that there were rules to these games, and that there were hand gestures and signals gladiators could give to stop a fight. There were two referees on the arena floor at all times who were watching for hand signals and could stop the contest if needed. So, why all of these rules and why referees if they are no-holds-barred events?

Hollywood has glorified the bloodthirst and the idea people wanted to watch gladiators die day after day, but the brutal truth of gladiation is that most of these men and women were enslaved, and to put it bluntly, they were really expensive property. Their owners put a tremendous amount of money into feeding them, training them and getting them ready for the games, so they would not want to see them get killed or maimed.

Question: Do you think Hollywood has to fictionalize certain story elements to make a film that audiences are interested in seeing?

Rupp: I think so, absolutely. With a lot of these ancient storylines, if they were to make it 100% accurate, I think they’d lose their audience immediately.

I have friends and colleagues who are probably going to scoff at this new Gladiator film. I’m sure some people are going to want to tear it down because of its inaccuracies.

For my part, I don’t think that’s the way to approach these things, even from a scholarly perspective. … We’ve all watched these super-dry documentaries, and it’s like, ‘Can you Ken Burns it up a little bit here, so I can actually get engaged in the subject?’

It’s the same thing for these (historical period) movies. It’s reviving these storylines and giving them a new voice for a new era to keep the story moving.

Question: The film industry has been making period pieces about the Roman era for a long time, including Ben-Hur and Spartacus, from the ‘Golden Age’ of Hollywood. Any thoughts as to whether movies today are more or less historically accurate than those from past eras?

Rupp: That is a great question. I think it really depends upon the film. When you look back on Kirk Douglas in Spartacus, that was just a phenomenal film. With Spartacus, there was a lot of research and analysis from scholars telling them how the military worked. There is that really cool scene at the end of the movie, the last battle, with Spartacus’ men against the combined forces of Pompey and Crassus, where there’s the slow movement of troops over the hill and you can just feel the tension of war as you see how the Roman legions move.

With Ben Hur, the chariot race sequence is really well done. It is phenomenally accurate in so many ways.

Pedro Pascal (left) and Paul Mescal (right) star in Gladiator II, opening Friday. (Photo: Aidan Monaghan/Paramount Pictures)

I think there’s been more deviation in the modern era, just in trying to tell a good story, and often accuracy is sacrificed in that way. In Troy, for example, it’s a highly contentious film in the field of classics because, for the lack of a better term, it just butchers the stories of the Trojan cycle in a lot of ways. But at the same time, it’s a really entertaining film, and it dared to do something that no other filmmaker had really done before, which was to try to give this comprehensive look at what the Trojan war looked like in that last year. How does one judge the reality or authenticity of what was heavily mythologized in the first place?

Question: Do you think movies are a good way to learn about history?

Rupp: I do, actually, even when the movie itself may not be very historically accurate. I think it’s a good way to hopefully get people curious and get them to go explore and learn more. For those who are naturally curious, I think historical-themed movies are kind of like a gateway drug to the classics, so to speak. So, a movie like Troy might actually get a student or an adult to pick up a copy of the Iliad and start reading it.

Even movies and TV series that majorly deviate from history have merit, I believe. The Spartacus Blood and Sand series on Showtime was like the movie 300 meets Spartacus. There was just blood everywhere.

But I love it because it keeps history alive. It keeps a select portion of my students interested in history, and saying, ‘I’m going to go to the library and find a book on this,’ or ‘I really want to go to Rome and see these things for myself.’

Without that, our field dies, and we lose history. So, I think Hollywood and films are helping us keep history alive in a lot of ways.

Question: So, are you planning on seeing Gladiator II in the theater?

Rupp: Absolutely, yes. I’ll be seeing it as soon as I possibly can, and I’m really excited to see what they do, because they have an all-star cast including Denzel Washington and Pedro Pascal. I’ve always liked Ridley Scott’s films; they’re very entertaining. Say what you will about him, Ridley Scott knows how to make a good movie.

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Even if historical films like Gladiator II, debuting Friday, are inaccurate on key points, ��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� Department of Classics Assistant Teaching Professor Travis Rupp sees value in them as a gateway to getting students interested in real history.

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Top image: Paul Mescal stars in Gladiator II. (Photo: Aidan Monaghan/Paramount Pictures)

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