ABSTRACT
The 1953 epic The Robe ends on a note both tragic and triumphant, as the handsome heroes, Marcellus (Richard Burton) and Diana (Jean Simmons) face the camera and the viewer, and walk calmly yet joyfully down the long central aisle of Emperor Caligula’s vast throne room toward the camera, their certain death, and their happy afterlife together in their Christian heaven. The Robe is a classic example of the so-called “sword-and-sandal” or
“peplum” film genre that, like the Old Testament and Jesus epics, flourished in the silent era and then again during the two decades immediately after the Second World War.1 The label comes from the costume design, which uniformly features pepla (plural of peplum, from the Latin for tunic, toga, or robe of state), swords, and, of course, sandals. Although Old Testament and Jesus-movies also clothed their actors this way, the label initially designed specifically Italian historical films set in the ancient past, and then was broadened to include epic films set in ancient Greece and Rome.2
