The ending destroyed it for me

Rating: 1/10 (20 April 2010)

As a Roman History Buff, the ending destroyed it. You have the ending where the fictional Maximus kills Commodus (a real Roman Emperor) in gladiatorial combat. (Commodus was actually strangled in his bath when poison wasn't killing him fast enough.) The sister of Commedus, Lucilla (who had actually been executed at the beginning of Commedus' reign) announces that we are all going to honor Maximus and restore the Republic.
For a Roman history buff, this is like saying World War II was Hitler giving us all Ice Cream.
What actually happened was that after Commedus (who wasn't that bad of a guy, really) Rome went into an embarrassing period known as the "Year of the Five Emperors, where a decent man was assassinated, the office of emperor was auctioned off, and three rival generals launched a civil war.
This is universally agreed to be the tipping point of Rome's inevitable decline.