Denzel Washington’s Macrinus, in Gladiator II, quotes Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations that “The best revenge is to be unlike him who performed the injury.” It’s a high-minded idea, but not as applied by Macrinus, who (in the movie, not real life) was once Marcus’ gladiator-slave and seeks revenge by discarding the late emperor’s self-restrained Stoic philosophy, pursuing untrammeled power instead.
Perhaps some future U.S. president will, in a better turn of events, aim to be unlike the incoming presidential iteration of Donald Trump, by restoring violated norms, repairing damage to institutions, and appointing competent people who’ll uphold the rule of law. Such a future president most likely will be a Democrat, but I could also imagine a Republican playing this remedial role; someone who’d been sidelined in the Trump years, or even who’d worked for or with the Trump administration, but who quietly resented Trump’s efforts to break down the constitutional order and install an autocracy.
In the first Gladiator, the villain was Marcus Aurelius’ son Commodus, who in real life was killed not by the (fictional) general-turned-gladiator Maximus but by a wrestler named Narcissus. In Gladiator II, imperial power’s in the hands of the brother-emperors Geta and Caracalla, though their decadence and unpopularity provide openings for power-seeking by others, including Macrinus and General Acacius, whose marriage to Commodus’ sister Lucilla is, like Lucilla’s onetime involvement with Maximus, a pairing of a historical woman with a fictional man; in real life, her brother had her executed.
Trump lacks the institution-building acumen of Augustus, who tossed aside the power-sharing that had characterized the Roman Republic but established the foundations of the Roman Empire; or Diocletian, who reorganized the empire, then voluntarily retired. Trump isn’t adept at restoring order like Aurelian, who defeated Zenobia, the queen of Palmyra who’d rebelled against the empire; Aurelian showed a degree of magnanimity in allowing Zenobia her life and a pension after parading the ex-queen through Rome in chains, a scene Tucker Carlson might wish to incorporate into a fantasy about Liz Cheney.
While Trump critics might be inclined to cite Caracalla, Commodus or Caligula as parallels to the incoming president, I find closer precedent in Septimius Severus, the father of Caracalla and Geta, whose advice to his sons (besides that they be good brothers, which they didn’t follow) was to keep the army well-paid and care nothing about anyone else. This narrow view of the use of power for its own perpetuation led Edward Gibbon to write of Severus: “Posterity, who experienced the fatal effects of his maxims and example, justly considered him as the principal author of the decline of the Roman empire.”
Still, in Gladiator II, Caracalla appoints his pet monkey as first consul, a scene seemingly inspired by Caligula’s reported appointment of his horse to the Roman Senate; this depiction of Caracalla, who’s seemingly suffering from syphilis, dramatizes the power play of an executive who makes inappropriate appointments to test the will of legislators to object. Shortly after leaving the theater, I read of Trump’s intent to fire Christopher Wray and nominate Kash Patel to head the FBI, a move that, as David Frum points out, is noxious not only in elevating one whose qualifications are blind loyalty to the president and vindictiveness toward the bureaucracy he’d oversee; but also in that FBI directors are supposed to serve 10-year terms, a timeframe aimed at limiting a president’s capacity to abuse the agency’s powers.
The willingness of the Republican majority in the Senate to vet, and in some cases reject, Trump’s nominations is a key indicator of whether checks and balances will endure. During Trump’s first term, I noted developments in the U.S. government reminiscent of eroding safeguards in the Roman system, with the Roman Senate losing most of its powers in the imperial era. Under Diocletian, even the formality of the Senate bestowing power on the emperor was abolished, and under Constantine, the Roman Senate became yet less relevant as a second senate was established in Constantinople.
An oddity of the Roman Senate is that it survived for more than a century after 476, when the last emperor, Romulus Augustulus, was deposed. The Senate continued to operate under subsequent Germanic kings, and even regained some of its powers, as these kings, deemed barbarians, saw senatorial support as a source of legitimacy. The Byzantine invasion of Italy then again damaged the authority of the Roman Senate, which stopped meeting sometime into the 600s, its building becoming a church. Institutions can take on a life of their own, despite efforts by autocrats to control them.
—Kenneth Silber is author of In DeWitt’s Footsteps: Seeing History on the Erie Canal. Follow him on Bluesky