Scenic, but poor screenplay
This film was shot very well, lots of "glory and splendor" but the screenplay is weak. Constantly cutting in the fictitious romance between Caesar's daughter and the head of his legions was extremely distracting. The best part was Guinness' death, after that the film became hard to follow, jumping around without really explaining what was going on. Lots of battle scenes, some of which were not choreographed particularly well.
For a much better "swords and sandals" epic, see Ben Hur, or Spartacus. Even Gladiator was better.