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Jeremy Ortiz HIST 458 Fall 2020 Hollywood movies have always simply depicted gladiators as men, who were either enslaved or captured prisoners of war, forced to constantly fight to the death for the entertainment of blood thirsty Roman spectators. These simplified depictions were commonly the result of artistic liberties of film makers under the guise of “based on a true story” to capture the attention of audiences. The most popular movies of the gladiator movie genre that represented first and second century CE gladiators include Ben-Hur, made in 1959, and Gladiator filmed in 2000. Even in Mary Beard’s book, SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome, she stated that big budget gladiator movies have tended to be successful[1]. Unfortunately, popular movies that are historically inaccurate can negatively impact what the general public knows about history and commonly annoys historians familiar with the topic portrayed in the film. The oversimplified depictions of gladiators in Hollywood movies

This historiography focuses on the scholarship published since 1941 to the present devoted to the causes for the American Civil War (1861-1865). Many Americans, including myself, know that the war was fought to end the cruelty of slavery however, there are many older students, like me, who were taught in elementary school that State rights over Federal rights was the reason for the conflict. I believe that the newest generation of students would benefit knowing that there were two conflicting primary reasons about the root cause of the Civil War for nearly 150 years after the war ended and will give other students a frame of reference for racial issues facing our country in the present. Learning more about how historians, from the 1940s to the present, approached and interpreted history will show us how they can shape historical analysis and potentially enable us to have an understanding of contemporary opinions for the causes of the U.S. Civil War. Historians and scholars have been