The evil Caracalla

Just a supporting character in the new Gladiator blockbuster

The ruins of the luxury thermal baths that Caracalla had built.

(Bild: stock.adobe.com/Valery Rokhin)

Long awaited: The new Gladiator film with the number II is in theaters. This is not a film review, however, but a slightly different look at the era depicted. Author and natural scientist Christian Mähr explains who Emperor Caracalla was and why the man became so famous - and not just for his fierce look... 

It's nice that there are trailers for new films on the Internet these days. It saves me going to the movies. As far as I know, this didn't exist almost a quarter of a century ago, which is why I went to the cinema to see "Gladiator", not suspecting anything bad. I spared myself that this time, because the first few seconds of the YouTube trailer already show fireballs of exploding bullets on an ancient city wall. Sorry, nothing exploded at all in Europe at the end of the second century - there was only one firearm in late antiquity, the infamous "Greek fire", but it wasn't invented until 500 years later and was used by the Eastern Roman Empire to keep enemies at sea at bay, a kind of flamethrower.