what is wrong with this picture this is
a still from the film Gladiator our hero
Russell that's him in the foreground uh
has just galloped all the way from
northern Germany to here in southern
Spain in less than 24 hours uh you may
say that the the sequence of the film is
actually meant to be a montage
representing a much greater period of
time um but may I point out that he sets
off bleeding profusely and arrives still
bleeding anyway you may think I'm going
to spend some time going on and on about
his costume well yes there are several
things wrong with it it is basically
just made up but no actually that's not
going to be uh what I'm going to
concentrate on here although can I just
say that Roman men did not all go around
with little bits of leather wrapped
around their wrists it's just a
Hollywood thing it's made up well I'm a
Roman man you can tell CU I got bit
leather around my wrist no stupid anyway
actually I'm going to um ignore as well
the rather suspicious sthe in this field
on the left which is very smooth smooth
and uh looks very suspiciously like it
was caused by the passage of some Modern
vehicle uh no instead I'm going to talk
about first this wheat you notice in in
the foreground um one thing that you
might expect is that we shouldn't be
able to see our hero at all because of
course ancient wheat was tall clearly
he's reaching down to run his fingers
through it lovingly uh whereas in fact
ancient wheat was about head height here
we have some ancient Egyptians
harvesting some wheat you'll see it
tall another thing about it ancient
wheat is that um they didn't have modern
pesticides and so it was full of weeds
and yet here we see that it's pure wheat
wheat and nothing but wheat Weed Free
wheat
H in the background you'll notice that
there are these rolling
prairies these don't bear much
resemblance to what we imagined the
ancient world to look like lots of field
boundaries enclosing quite small Fields
these look very modern in the background
you see that there is the Main Road
along which our hero has come from
Germany now I have a couple of quibbles
with this uh the first is that it has no
fence no boundary along the edges of it
what's going to keep all the passing
animals from just straying into the
field now today of course you just bung
all your sheep or cattle or whatever
into the back of a big lorry and off you
go to market and then you're home in
time for tea but in the ancient world
anyone wanting to move life stock would
have to drive it ahead of them along the
road and well if a load of sheep are
going along the road and they see
something much tastier looking than road
to their left or right well in an
instant they're off the road and it's
quite a bit of work sometimes getting
them back onto the road again can just
imagine how annoyed you would be if you
were the owner of a great rolling plane
like this of Wheat and almost every
passing herd took a chunk out of it now
there's another thing wrong with this
road I'm going to show you a closeup can
you see what it is okay uh in case you
haven't over to our correspondent from
Turkey this is this is something they
very often get wrong in the movies
there's a scene set on a road so they
send out a location scout to find a nice
old looking Road and he comes back
saying oh I found a brilliant one it's
got grass growing down the middle of it
and everything ah it'll be great for the
scene where the two characters meet on
the road only that there is grass going
down the middle of this path is proof
that this path belongs in the modern
world you see a Horseless Carriage came
down here it had car tires and uh no
horse in the middle pulling the wagon or
cart until very recently until the
Victorian period in fact uh the most
common form of Transport would have been
drawn by a single horse in the middle so
actually the part of the road that got
trampled the most where there' be the
least grass would be the middle this
pattern you're seeing now is what modern
cars create now just before you go away
with the impression that I'm being
rather unfair um I I'm just going to say
that I don't object to everything in
this Photograph yes I I have objected so
far in this video to to these parts of
the photograph but I you know i' just
like to State now that I've have no
strong objection to these
parts
for