Film Trivia Fact Check: Were we robbed of a Gladiator product endorsement?

The internet is filled with facts, both true and otherwise. In Film Trivia Fact Check, we’ll browse the depths of the web’s most user-generated trivia boards and wikis and put them under the microscope. How true are the IMDb Trivia pages? You want the truth? Can you handle the truth? We’re about to find out.

Claim: “Like modern day athletes, ancient Roman gladiators did product endorsements. The producers considered including this in the script, but discarded the idea as unbelievable.” [Source: IMDb]

Rating: Likely false but bordering on inconclusive.

Context: Ancient Rome may be all that men think about, but that doesn’t mean those men are always correct. Since before Gladiator’s release, many have echoed a claim from a 2000 IGN article, asserting that Gladiator’s script included a reference to Maximus accepting a product endorsement like a modern-day athlete. As recently as last summer, Russell Crowe used the unfilmed scene as an example of a historical fact that contemporary audiences wouldn’t buy. 

“[The script] had all these strange sequences,” he said. “Some famous gladiators had endorsement deals with products for olive oil and things like that, and that’s all true, but it’s just not going to ring right to a modern audience.”

In Dave Franzoni’s original script, the screenwriter did use Ancient Roman advertising to exemplify Commodus’ (Joaquin Phoenix) jealousy of Maximus (Crowe), whose fame has begun to eclipse the emperor’s. 

“The idea was that as Max grows more and more famous, Commodus grows more and more insecure,” Franzoni told The A.V. Club via email. “One of the smack-downs in this relationship was that Commodus went to see his newly erected gold statue in the Rome financial district, and behind it was a giant fresco of a huge Maximus advertising olive oil covering the whole side of a building. Irate Commodus loses his shit and orders it painted over.”

Dramatically, Franzoni’s idea makes sense, and Crowe’s instincts around audience acceptance may have been right, but there still isn’t concrete evidence to support the notion that gladiators accepted product endorsements like this. There’s a simple reason to doubt the claim, too: Gladiators were enslaved.

“Individual gladiators did not endorse products like modern athletes, not least because most of them were slaves with limited control of their earnings,” explained Dr. Garrett Ryan of the ToldInStone YouTube channel.  

That’s not to say slavery prevented all gladiators from controlling some aspects of their careers. Some gladiators were successful enough to buy their freedom; others supposedly became quite famous. Some free people would also volunteer for the games, like Emperor Commodus in Gladiator. Still, if they were in advertisements, those ads would have been more generalized.

“Gladiators appeared on a vast range of consumer products, from oil lamps to miniature figurines,” Ryan said. “We don’t know whether these products commemorated individual gladiators (unlike some frescos and mosaics representing gladiatorial matches, they aren’t labeled). But even if those lamps and figurines were associated with individuals, no gladiators received royalties from them.” 

Based on current evidence, it’s unlikely that specific gladiators appeared on those products, but gladiatorial themes appeared on walls throughout Ancient Rome. According to Dr. Dave Lunt, an Associate Professor of History at Southern Utah University, excavations at Pompeii revealed “over 10,000 separate graffiti inscriptions, drawings, and paintings, and a good number of them are connected to gladiators.” 

Inevitably, the popularity of gladiators has led to many misconceptions. For example, there is a persistent belief that wealthy Roman women bought and wore gladiator sweat as an aphrodisiac. However, while gladiators were considered “disreputable,” gladiatorial motifs were “prevalent decorations on various household items and carried connotations of combat, strength, and vigor.”

“Gladiators were erotic and dangerous, and in a disreputable profession, their image offers some paradoxical yet powerful interpretations,” Lunt told The A.V. Club. “For instance, some scholars have seen a gladiator decoration on a wine jug that might have suggested sex, and a baby bottle with a gladiator on it might imply strength and health. Perhaps they were just fun decorations. Either way, the gladiator motif as a decoration was quite common in the Roman world.”

Franzoni’s idea for Maximus’ likeness in the town square wasn’t so far off the mark. However, it’s less likely that he would’ve been advertising olive oil rather than the contests themselves. “The area around the arena at Pompeii has revealed several painted-on-the-walls advertisements of the upcoming gladiatorial events (called munera),” Lunt said. Unlike modern boxing or UFC events, competitors weren’t advertised as much as the event and sponsor. “These announcements included the name of the person sponsoring or paying for the games and specifics of what was to be shown,” Lunt continued,” things like gladiators, athletic contests, executions of criminals, and wild-beast hunts.” 

One man was more important than the competitor: The sponsor, which often meant the emperor. Only Roman emperors had the capital to “stage the most magnificent munera of all.” But as revealed in the script and finished film of Gladiator, these sponsors had “a strong interest in promoting their reputations, legitimacy, and the vibrancy of the empire.” Gladiators were simply part of the show. Lunt says, “There is not a hint of evidence for a Roman billboard (or similar) showing a known and recognizable (specific) gladiator selling a product like olive oil.”

“There were plenty of ancient advertisements of specific gladiator events, and epitaphs and graffiti reveal some details about gladiator lives, but none of these sources I know about indicates one acting as a ‘pitchman’ for some product or another.” 

Misreading history is easy, especially when the claim sounds true. An article from 2021 claiming an Ancient Roman floor mosaic is a “Gladiator Billboard” becomes supporting evidence in a Huff Post article about Russell Crowe’s Vanity Fair interview. What we do in life may echo in eternity, but if any gladiators were hocking EVOO, we haven’t heard the echoes yet.