Bartolomeo Pagano (27 September 1878 – 24 June 1947) was an Italian motion picture actor.

Before his cinema career, Pagano was a stevedore who worked at the port of Genoa.

There, he was discovered and selected to play the role of Maciste, a muscular slave, in the silent movie classic Cabiria in 1914.

[2] The actor retired from films in 1929 to marry and raise a family in his home town of Genoa.

[citation needed] In the role of Maciste, Pagano played a muscular African slave with dark skin who is transformed from his time and place in Roman antiquity into a light-skinned contemporary Italian.