Swords, sandals, and insurgencies: Ancient history goes to the movies

Abstract

This article explores the question of why so few insurgencies from the ancient world have ever made it onto the big screen. Many of these stories have been made into documentaries, but have been ignored by Hollywood. Even those events that have been made into Hollywood films, like the uprising of Spartacus, do not show any of the successful uprisings, only the defeats. Among the possible reasons may be Hollywood's fascination with big wars and big battles rather than small wars because they are more cinematic. Another reason is that American movies are reluctant to show successful slave uprisings or insurgencies against great powers. In the end, all movies are about the present, not the past, and thus Western bias will side with the imperial power, not the terrorist.

Keywords::

• Hollywood
• imperialism
• insurgencies
• ancient history
• terrorists

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

^1. On this, see Sheldon, Ambush. See also the comments of Powers, ‘Irregular Warfare’, 5. That particular issue is entirely dedicated to ancient insurgencies and modern writing on the subject.

^2. On the vilification of guerrilla fighters, see Powers, ‘Irregular Warfare’, 6–7; on the problem of Orientalism, see Sheldon, Ambush, 161–168.

^3. See Powers, ‘Irregular Warfare’, 5–6 on the debate among ancient historians and the literature in general including Porch, ‘Dangerous Myths’, 39.

^4. Powers, ‘Irregular Warfare’, 13 on the goals of insurgents.

^5. See Sheldon, Intelligence Activities in Ancient Rome, 284–285 on Kahn's Law as discussed by O'Toole, ‘Kahn's Law’, 39, 46.

^6. See Crawford, ‘Hollow Victories’, 80–98.

^7.Troy (2004), Alexander (2004), 300 (2006), Centurion (2010), The Eagle (2011), and The Last Legion (2007).

^8.Scipio Africanus: The Defeat of Hannibal (1939) and Hannibal, starring Victor Mature in 1959. Hannibal makes appearances in Cabiria (1914) an Italian silent film, and in Jupiter's Darling (1955) an MGM musical starring Howard Keel and Esther Williams. The other treatments have been limited to documentaries and TV series: The Great Battles of Hannibal (1997; British documentary); Hannibal: The Man Who Hated Rome, (2001; British documentary); The True Story of Hannibal (2005; British documentary); Hannibal vs. Rome (2005; National Geographic Channel); Hannibal – Rome's Worst Nightmare (2006; TV film starring Alexander Siddig in the title role); Battles B.C. (2009; History Channel TV film); Ancients Behaving Badly (2009; History Channel TV film); On Hannibal's Trail (2010; BBC Documentary) and Deadliest Warrior (2011; Spike television series).

^9. Her name was clearly spelled Boudica in the best manuscripts of Tacitus, and I have followed the most reliable classical source. In Cassius Dio 62.1–2 we find three different Greek spellings. See Webster, Boudica.

^10. See, for example, Boudica (released in the United States as Warrior Queen, which was a British television series released in 2003, starring Alex Kingston as Boudica). The Military History Channel series Decisive Battles of the Ancient World contains a segment on Boudica.

^11.Variety, 27 April 2004.

^12. Initially they were not part of the territory under direct Roman control, but they voluntarily allied themselves to Rome following Claudius' conquest of ad 43. They revolted in ad 47 when the then-governor Ostorius Scapula threatened to disarm them. See Tacitus, Annals 12.31–32.

^13. Camulodunum was earlier the capital of the Trinovantes, but at that time was a colonia—a settlement for discharged Roman soldiers, as well as the site of a temple to the former Emperor Claudius.

^14. The accounts of Tacitus and Cassius Dio differ. Tacitus, Annals 16.29–37; Dio Cassius 62.1–2.

^15.Maccabees: The Story of Hanukka (1996), directed by Richard Rich, screenplay by Brian Nissen who also does the voice of Judas Maccabeus.

^16. ‘Maccabees: Revolution and Redemption’, Mysteries of the Bible, 20 December 1997, Season 5, Episode 4.

^17. ‘The Maccabees or Chappy Chanukah’, The Naked Archaeologist, 22 August 2008.

^18.Schultz, Judaism and the Gentile Faiths, 155 writes: ‘Modern scholarship on the other hand considers the Maccabean revolt less as an uprising against foreign oppression than as a civil war between the orthodox and reformist parties in the Jewish camp.’

^19. See Herzog and Gichon, Battles of the Bible; Sheldon, Spies of the Bible, ch. 4 with extensive bibliography; Wallach, ‘The Wars of the Maccabees’; Bar Kochva, Judas Maccabaeus; Harrington, The Maccabaean Revolts.

^20. All three battles are discussed in Sheldon, Spies of the Bible, ch. 4.

^21. He is mentioned in the Divine Comedy, where Dante sees the spirit of Judas Maccabeus in the Heaven of Mars with the other ‘heroes of the true faith’. In Shakespeare's Love's Labour's Lost, he appears along with the other Nine Worthies, but is heckled for sharing a name with Judas Iscariot.

^22. In the medieval Christian art, Judas Maccabeus was regarded as one of the heroes of the Old Testament. He figures in a tenth-century illustrated manuscript Libri Maccabaeorum. The late medieval French artist Jean Fouquet painted an illustration of Judas triumphing over his enemies for his famous manuscript of Josephus. Rubens painted Judas Maccabeus praying for the dead; the painting illustrates an episode from 2 Maccabees 12:39–48 in which his troops found stolen idolatrous charms on the corpses of Jewish warriors slain on the battlefield. He therefore offered prayers and an expiatory sacrifice for these warriors who had died in a state of sin. During the Counter-Reformation the passage was used by Catholics against Protestants in order to justify the doctrine of purgatory. Accordingly, Rubens painted the scene for the Chapel of the Dead in Tournai cathedral. In the nineteenth century, Paul Gustave Doré executed an engraving of Judas Maccabeus victoriously pursuing the shattered troops of the Assyrian enemy.

^23. This work, with libretto by Thomas Morell, had been written for the celebrations following the Duke of Cumberland's victory over the Scottish Jacobite rebels at the Battle of Culloden in 1746. The oratorio's most famous chorus is: ‘See, the conqu'ring hero comes.’ The tune of this chorus was later adopted as a Christian Easter hymn tune Thine Be the Glory, Risen Conquering Son. Handel's Judas Maccabaeus was often performed in Israel, with the motif of ‘conqu'ring hero’ becoming a Hanukkah song. Tom Lehrer refers to Judas Maccabeus in his song ‘Hanukkah in Santa Monica’. Mirah refers to Judas Maccabeus in her song ‘Jerusalem’. See Wikipedia: Judas Maccabaeus.

^24. William Houghton's Judas Maccabaeus, performed in about 1601, but now lost, is thought to have been the first drama on the theme. The earliest surviving literary work is El Macabeo (Naples, 1638), a Castilian epic by the Portuguese Marrano Miguel de Silveyra. Two other seventeenth-century works were La chevalerie de Judas Macabé by the French dramatist and tragedian Pierre du Ryer (c.1600–1658) and the anonymous neo-Latin work Judas Machabaeus (Rome, 1695).

^25. The trend began with Giuda Macabeo, ossia la morte di Nicanore… (1839), an Italian ‘azione sacra’ based on which Vallicella composed an oratorio. A Hebrew version of Longfellow's play was published in 1900. Two later nineteenth-century interpretations of the story were Judas Makkabaeus, a novella by the German writer Josef Eduard Konrad Bischoff which appeared in Der Gefangene von Kuestrin (1885); and The Hammer (1890), a book by Alfred J. Church and Richmond Seeley.

^26. Jacob Benjamin Katznelson (1855–1930) wrote the poem, Alilot Gibbor ha-Yehudim Yehudah ha-Makkabi le-Veit ha-Hashmona'im (1922); the Yiddish writer Moses Schulstein wrote the dramatic poem, ‘Yehudah ha-Makkabi’ (in A Layter tsu der Zun, 1954); Jacob Fichmann's ‘Yehudah ha-Makkabi’ is one of the heroic tales included in Sippurim le-Mofet (1954).

^27.Howard Fast would also go on to pen the novel Spartacus, released the same year as Otto Preminger's Exodus. Both screenplays were written by Dalton Trumbo who was on the Hollywood blacklist.

^28. Another movie listed by IMDb as ‘in production’ for 2015 is The Last Maccabee, but this seems to be a crime drama.

^29. One should be careful about conflating the sicarii with the zealot party that started the war. They are two separate groups. The sicarii are mentioned in 15 passages in Josephus' Jewish Wars and in his Antiquities. See Sheldon, Spies of the Bible, 130–133; Zeitlin, ‘Zealots and Sicarii’, 395; Horsley, ‘Menachem in Jerusalem’, 344.

^30.Gichon, ‘Cestius Gallus's Campaign’, 39.

^31. He had the Legio XII Fulminata at full strength, six auxiliary cohorts, and four alae of cavalry. From the allies he got 2000 more horse and 3000 foot-archers of Antiochus, King of Commagene; 4000 men of Emesa, the majority were archers, one-third were cavalry; lastly, he got 2000 horsemen and some 3000 infantry from the army of Agrippa, the Judean. See Gichon, ‘Cestius Gallus's Campaign’, 42–44 for the disposition of Roman troops in the area.

^32. Against weapons like the sling, the javelin, and the bow, archers were the best remedy and thus the large contingent of archers both foot and mounted were supplied by local allies. Gichon, ‘Cestius Gallus's Campaign’, 45 citing Arrian, Tactica 17 on bowmen; Vegetius, Epitoma 3.6 on auxilia.

^33. With the exception of the small Temple guard which was of negligible account, and the Idumean border militia, which was tied to their border estates.

^34. The devastation of the Jewish settlements along the Roman line of advance was a deliberate policy designed to frighten the population into submission and to insure that enemy activity in the rear and along the lines of communication did not have a supportive civilian base. Gichon, ‘Cestius Gallus's Campaign’, 50. The risks involved in penetrating deeply into enemy territory with limited forces had been well understood since the days of the massacre of Varus in the Teutoburgerwald. See also Bar Kochva, ‘Seron and Cestius Gallus’, 18–21 on the route used by Cestius in the ascent.

^35. Gichon points out that this is standard operating procedure in handbooks such as Vegetius, the Anonymous Byzantine, and Leo but of course these were written centuries after this event. The Romans were quite capable of being caught in this kind of carelessness, see Varus in the Teutoburgerwald. Gichon, ‘Cestius Gallus's Campaign’, 60.

^36. Josephus, Jewish Wars 2.518; and Gichon, ‘Cestius Gallus's Campaign’, 53; Bar Kochva, ‘Seron and Cestius Gallus’, 18–19.

^37. Josephus, Jewish Wars 2.519.

^38. The early loss of baggage, heavy Jewish resistance, and the lack of agricultural land in the area must have made it imperative for Cestius to withdraw without delay. On the logistical difficulties, see Bar Kochva, ‘Seron and Cestius Gallus’, 18.

^39. Josephus, Jewish Wars 2.550–555.

^40. The army of Vespasian consisted of three distinct legions: the Fifth, the Tenth, and the Fifteenth. There were 23 auxiliary cohorts, 6 alae of cavalry, besides the auxiliary troops of King Agrippa, of King Antiochus of Commagene, of Soemus of Emesa, and of Malchus of Arabia. Josephus, Jewish Wars, 3.64–69; Life 26–30.

^41. Josephus, Jewish Wars 3.2.

^42. Ibid., 3. 177.

^43. Ibid., 3. 186.

^44. Ibid., 3. 192.

^45. Ibid., 3. 222–224.

^46. Ibid., 3. 272–273.

^47. Ibid., 3. 277–278.

^48. Ibid., 3. 145–339.

^49.Zeitlin, The Rise and Fall of the Judaean State, 99. Titus set out from Caesarea with the three legions his father had used to ravage Judaea as well as the Twelfth Legion, formerly commanded by Cestius Gallus. He was then joined by the Fifth and the Tenth legions plus substantial contingents led by allied kings. On the Jewish side Simon had an army, exclusive of the Idumeans, of 10,000 men commanded by 50 officers. The Idumean contingent numbered 5000. John, at the time of seizing the Temple had an army of 6000 men, but he was now joined by the Zealots under Eleazar who numbered 2400. Josephus, Jewish Wars 5.248ff.

^50. Jeremiah 52.12ff. puts the burning of the Temple by Nebuchadnezzar's guard on the 10th of Ab. 2 Kings 25.8 gives the day as the seventh of Ab. Jewish tradition celebrates it on the ninth of Ab.

^51. See also Masada (2002), a TV Documentary, Directed by Craig Haffner, written by Martin Gillam and starring Peter Woodward. Masada once again hit prime-time television in March of 2015. A program about the events at the end of the war aired on the Smithsonian Channel. The program was done in conjunction with the CBS Special, The Dovekeepers, based on Alice Hoffman's bestselling novel about four women at Masada. Among other things, one can see Professor James Tabor rappelling down the steep southern side of the fortress.

^52.Koestler, The Gladiators; Fast, Spartacus; A. Khachaturian, Spartak, (1953); Karl Liebknecht (1871–1919) and Rosa Luxembourg (1870–1916) chose Spartacus' name for the title of their journal and called their movement Spartacist; Futrell, ‘Seeing Red’, 89; Wiedemann, ‘The Spartacus Myth’, 7. Spartacus, the American TV series, was produced in New Zealand by Steven S. DeKnight and Robert Tapert. The series premiered on Starz on 22 January 2010, and concluded on 12 April 2013. A made-for-TV movie, Spartacus, appeared in 2004, directed by Robert Dornhelm. The Military History Channel's series Decisive Battles of the Ancient World includes a segment on Spartacus.

^53. See the comments of Winkler, Spartacus, 215.

^54. Because of its controversial features such a censorship and the blacklist, study guides were prepared for history teachers and professionals. These were written to raise the public's awareness of the film's educational and historical significance. Ibid., 211.

^55. The fully restored version of the film came out in 1990. Universal had junked the outtakes and trims in 1975. Ibid., 16.

^56. Ibid., 35.

^57. Ibid., 168–175. See the comments of Baldwin, ‘Two Aspects’, 289.

^58. The 1951 novel was written in Mill Point prison; it was rejected by every major publishing house to which it was submitted, and finally had to be privately printed by the author. See Futrell, ‘Seeing Red’, 77, 90; Blanshard and Shahabudin, ‘Roman History on Screen’, 81.

^59.Winkler, Spartacus, 15.

^60. Quoted by ibid., 4, n. 5. Ibid., 6, feels the film fits into Kubrick's total canon better than most critics will admit.

^61. They followed Mann's shooting script right up until the breakout scene. Ibid., 18.

^62. Ibid. There was no battle scene in the original script. The final conflict shows a beautifully choreographed, set-piece battle, not a protracted guerrilla war.

^63.Futrell, ‘Seeing Red’, 98.

^64. Appian, Civil Wars 1.14.116; Eutropius, Breviarum 5.7; Florus, Epitome 2.8.3; Orosius, History Against the Pagans 5.24.1.

^65. They were also rushing to get the film into production in order to beat another film company that was preparing a film about Spartacus based on the novel The Gladiators, by Arthur Koestler. M. Winkler, Spartacus, 23.

^66. The book was written as a reaction to Fast's imprisonment for charges stemming from his earlier involvement in the Communist Party. He had refused to disclose to Congress the names of contributors to a fund for a home for orphans of American veterans of the Spanish Civil War. He was imprisoned for three months in 1950 for contempt of Congress. On the rumors of a new HUAC investigation of Hollywood, see Futrell, ‘Seeing Red’, 98.

^67. Quoted in Winkler, Spartacus, 168.

^68.Baldwin, ‘Two Aspects’, 289.

^69.Winkler, Spartacus, 6 who interprets Kubrick's Spartacus as overcome by the ‘technological superiority of Roman military tactics’, as man continues in Kubrick's films to resist being overpowered by his own ever-increasing technological advances.

^70. Ibid., 11.

^71. Ibid., p. 12.

^72.Murdoch, Rome's Greatest Defeat; Clunn, Quest for the Lost Roman Legions; McNally, Teutoburg Forest AD 9; Sheldon, Intelligence Activities, ch. 10.

^73.Hermann der Cherusker: Directors: Ferdinando Baldi (as Ferdy Baldwin), Rudolf Nussgruber (uncredited); Writers: Ferdinando Baldi (screenplay), Adriano Bolzoni (screenplay), Stars: Cameron Mitchell, Antonella Lualdi, Hans von Borsody as Arminius. The Military History Channel's series Decisive Battles of the Ancient World has a segment on the Teutoburg Forest.

^74. That is the gap between The Fall of the Roman Empire (1964) and Gladiator (2000).

^75. See, for example, the works of John Solomon, e.g. The Ancient World in the Cinema, or the many books of Martin M. Winkler, such as Gladiator, Troy, and Spartacus, and Classical Myth & Culture in the Cinema, The Roman Salute, Cinema, History, Ideology. See also Wyke, Projecting the Past; Carnes, Past Imperfect; Joshel, Imperial Projections; Pomeroy, Then it was Destroyed by the Volcano; Silveira, Big Screen Rome; Nisbet, Ancient Greece in Film and Popular Culture; Blanshard and Shahabudin, Classics on Screen.

^76. For a thorough treatment of ambush, night attacks, and other indirect forms of warfare, see Sheldon, Ambush.

^77.Winkler, Spartacus, 214, esp. n. 29.

^78. Solomon, The Ancient World in Cinema, 34.

^79.Winkler, Spartacus, 3. For that matter, we might quote Benedetto Croce who pointed out that all history is contemporary history in: History, 12.

^80.Blanshard and Shahabudin, ‘Roman History on Screen’, 95.

^81.Jinnah, Canadian 1998. Starring Christopher Lee in the title role, directed by Jamil Dehlavi.

^82. Solomon, The Ancient World in Cinema, 31 writes: ‘Historical authenticity should never be the sole factor in evaluating a film about the ancient world.’

^83. Ibid., p. xvii.