I saw you from afar.

From above your dusty floor.

From which you made the crowds roar.

And you held you head high.

And you fought for your own life.

I asked your name and they told me.

You went by a title and it hung on my tongue.

Gladiator.

You face I did not see.

You name I did not know.

I envisioned it in my mind.

The lines of your nose.

The red in your cheeks.

They called you the Spaniard.

And a Spaniard you were.

But my first glimpse of your face was also the emperors.

He called you by name but I called you by title.

Gladiator.

But now everyone spoke your name.

From the markets to the temples, it was all I ever heard.

Maximus!

Maximus!

Maximus!

Gladiator, I said.

I want to meet Gladiator.

But Gladiator was a façade and Spaniard was an adjective.

I couldn't fool myself into thinking you were not of a noble life.

A general, a father, a husband.

All the things that were taken from you were what made you great.

I wanted only to touch the hands that welded that sword with such ease.

With such a vengeance.

I sought you out.

I asked where can I find the Gladiator?

They knew.

I was taken to you at night.

They had Rome's saviour locked in a cell, clothed in rags.

You did not know me.

At that moment, I did not know myself.

And, although I had never spoken your name on my tongue, I felt I knew you from the moment I laid eyes on your sweat slathered face.

For it was the first time I had seen it within my reach.

Your face held confusion.

Confusion that I tried to ignore.

I could not ignore it when you asked who I was and what I wanted with you.

I told you I wanted to meet the man whom they call Maximus Meridius.

The saviour of Rome.

The general.

The Gladiator.

You clenched the bars of your cell as if they were the neck of the emperor himself.

That man is gone, you said. I am what is left.

You were a man detached from reality, only clinging onto the remains of your life to bring justice to the murder of your family.

In your face, I saw that this was so.

My aspirations with you instantly vanished in this moment.

I wanted nothing more than to see you succeed.

What a moment it was when you turned the emperor's own dagger against him.

With what little you had left, Gladiator, you wrote your sorrows in the sand with his blood.

You were free to go home.

And, indeed, you went.

Some said you died as a saviour.

A soldier, paying his last honour to his country.

But I knew, as they carried your body away, what had happened that day.

You died on your own accord.

You were not a general nor a hero when you closed your eyes for the last time.

You were a Gladiator.