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Rome, the Eternal Story: From Ben Hur to The Eagle

Posted January 21, 2011 to photo album "Rome, the Eternal Story: From Ben Hur to The Eagle"

The Eagle explores a part of ancient Roman history rarely seen on stage. But the history of Rome changes throughout history as well.

Slide 2: Rome - The Eternal, Ever-Changing City

Slide 3: Rome and the American Imagination

Slide 4: Ben Hur, the great American/Roman Novel

Slide 6: Ben-Hur (1925) and the Epic Grandeur of Rome

Slide 7: Scipio Africanus: The Defeat of Hannibal and the Fascist Italy

Slide 8: Quo Vadis - Nero’s Rome as a Totalitarian State

Slide 9: Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ (1959) and the Race to Freedom

Slide 10: Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ (1959) and Making Rome Gay

Slide 11: Spartacus (1960) and the Return of the Opressed

Slide 13: A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum: Rome turned Jewish

Slide 14: Satryicon (1969), Ancient Rome through Fellini’s Eyes

Slide 15: Caligula (1979): Rome Goes All The Way

Slide 16: Monty Python’s The Life of Brian - Rome as Parody

Slide 16: Gladiator (2000), and the Return of Rome

Director Ridley Scott has said that Spartacus (1959) and Ben-Hur (1960) provided the inspiration for Gladiator. “These movies were part of my cinema-going youth,” he said. “But at the dawn of the new millennium, I though this might be the ideal time to revisit what may have been the most important period of the last two thousand years—if not all recorded history—the apex and beginning of the decline of the greatest military and political power the world has ever known.” Chris McDonald, writing in TheOohTray.com, observed, “Ridley Scott’s Gladiator in 2000 marked the only real cinematic attempt to revisit Rome in the past forty years. But, with the U.S. and her allies embroiled in two wildly unpopular and bloody wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the allegorical heft of the Roman Empire is once again being taken up by filmmakers.”