Macrinus is one of Rome’s wealthiest businessmen, who purchases Lucius (Paul Mescal) as a gladiator after being impressed by his baboon-biting skills. Since “Gladiator II” is largely a retread of the original film’s plot, the audience is led to assume that Macrinus is an analog for Oliver Stone’s Proximo: a slave turned freedman who becomes an ally for the protagonist. Macrinus certainly presents himself as such, even offering Lucius the head of his enemy in exchange for his service.
By the third act, however, Macrinus is revealed as the true villain of the movie, who has been plotting to become emperor himself. In a monologue to Lucilla (Connie Nielsen), Macrinus reveals that he was once a slave of her father, Marcus Aurelius, but has since risen to the role of a wealthy man, second consul, and ultimately claimed the highest seat of power in Rome — which, by extension, makes him the most powerful man in the world. Improbable as it might sound, this isn’t far from the truth.
While certain corners of the internet groused about an African-American actor playing a Roman elite — let alone an emperor — there’s a slight issue with their outrage: Macrinus actually was African. He wasn’t even the first African Roman emperor (that would be Geta and Caracalla’s father, Septimius Severus). The gold earrings that Washington wears in “Gladiator II” aren’t just Hollywood embellishment, but were a traditional piercing for the Berber people of North Africa. A bust of the real Macrinus in Rome’s Hall of the Emperors sports similar earrings. He was never a slave, but he was the first ever member of the equestrian class (roughly equivalent to knights in medieval Europe) to become emperor of Rome — and that was controversial at the time.
According to historian Edward Gibbon, Macrinus was a man of “crafty ambition” who used his business savvy to raised himself to a high position in Caracalla’s court. After finding out that he’d somehow ended up on the emperor’s hit list, Macrinus persuaded a soldier with a grudge against Caracalla to stab him in the back while he “had stopped on the road for some necessary caution” (that’s historian for “pee break”).
Macrinus is the final villain of “Gladiator II,” but history remembers him more fondly, as the man who finally brought an end to Caracalla’s reign of blood and terror. Gibbon wrote that, upon learning of the former emperor’s death, the Roman senate initially “exulted in their unexpected deliverance from a hated tyrant.” However, they were not happy about Macrinus being chosen as the new emperor by the army instead of the senate, especially since he was not himself a senator. He ruled for little more than a year before being assassinated and replaced with Geta and Caracalla’s cousin, Elagabalus.