Episode 106: We Watched Gladiator II So You Don’t Have To with Dr. Sarah Bond and Dr. Bret Devereaux

Historians At The Movies

HOO BOY this week Roman historians Dr. Sarah Bond and Dr. Bret Deveraux drop in to talk about Ridley Scott's ode to his first film, uh, ancient Rome, Gladiator II. We talk about the legacy of the first film, our impressions of the new release, and the actual history behind Gladiator II. This discussion is pretty epic. Stay tuned and subscribe.
About our guests:
Dr. Sarah E. Bond is an Associate Professor of History at the University of Iowa. She is interested in late Roman history, epigraphy, late antique law, Roman topography and GIS, Digital Humanities, and the socio-legal experience of ancient marginal peoples. She earned a PhD in History from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (2011) and obtained a BA in Classics and History with a minor in Classical Archaeology from the University of Virginia (2005). Her book, Trade and Taboo: Disreputable Professionals in the Roman Mediterranean, was published with the University of Michigan Press in 2016. Follow her blog: History From Below.

Additionally, Bond is a regular contributor at Hyperallergic, a columnist at the Los Angeles Review of Books, and a section editor at Public Books. She has written for The New York Times, The Chronicle of Higher Education, and The Washington Post. Bond's latest book, Strike: Labor, Unions, and Resistance in the Roman Empire will be out on February 4, 2025. It is available for preorder here: https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300273144/strike/
Dr. Bret C. Devereaux is an ancient and military historian who currently teaches as a Teaching Assistant Professor at North Carolina State University. He has his PhD in ancient history from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and his MA in classical civilizations from Florida State University.

Bret is a historian of the broader ancient Mediterranean in general and of ancient Rome in particular. His primary research interests sit at the intersections of the Roman economy and the Roman military, examining the ways that the lives of ordinary people in the ancient world were shaped by the structures of power, violence and wealth under which they lived and the ways in which they in turn shaped the military capacity of the states in which they lived (which is simply a fancy way of saying he is interested in how the big picture of wars, economic shifts and politics impacted the ‘little’ folks and vice versa). More broadly he is interested in many of the nuts-and-bolts of everyday life in the ancient world, things like the production of textiles, the economics of small farming households, and the burden of military service.

He is also a lifetime fan of fantasy, science fiction and speculative fiction more generally. Bret enjoys good music, bad jokes and writing about himself in the third person. He is also required, by law and ancient custom, to inform absolutely everyone that he has, in fact, beaten Dark Souls (and now also Elden Ring).