Few series are as popular as the series of Rome. It is one of those dramas that serves as a real inspiration to many, and that serves to fascinate.
The reason for this is obvious; no other series has ever captured half so well the ‘foreignness’ of Rome. It goes without saying that in a world that has been marked and changed by Christianity over the course of nearly 2000 years, we have changed a great deal in how we perceive the world.
Before Christianity sacrifices like those we see in the show, were common throughout the whole of the Occident and Middle-East. Interestingly Asia while they got in on the act of animal sacrifice sometimes, didn’t always engage in it on the same scale as the rest of the world, in this they were far more civilized.
That said the Rome series shows how strange and exotic this world truly was. It must be said however that there are other elements that stand out from the first episode.
Notably there’s the pornography that’s directly attached to the series.
For some reason HBO as a studio was obsessed and still is, with sexual gratuity on a level that is pretty difficult to equal. What is so strange though, is that though Rome had her sexual deviants in the form of Elagabalus, the maddest and perhaps most evil ‘Princeps’ to ever rule over the Eternal City, Caligula, Claudius, Nero and Commodus and many others also got in on the act of sexual deviancy.
The truth is that the show banks a great deal on the sexual. This must be acknowledged and what is so odd is that historically it wasn’t flaunted quite so openly on every street-corner. It is difficult to imagine a people so depraved reaching any sort of wonders.
The trouble with a re-watch of this admittedly great series is just how much run-time was wasted on sex-scenes. And it isn’t as though any of it is relevant, or almost any of the sex-scenes how it happened or how it might have happened. It was just the writers and show-runners being horny for its own sake.
Tastefulness and history are sacrificed on the altar of pornography.
Did Pompeius Magnus have relations with Octavia? Nope. In actuality she was a very faithful, pious and possibly prudish lady. That gets to the heart of the matter; we know Roman women from the age of the End of the Republic and beginning of the Empire could behave prudishly.
We know because look how they hold up Cornelia the mother of the Gracchi brothers as an icon, and also Octavia and even Livia all of whom were fairly modest in their dress and circumspect in their comportment. Though it must be acknowledged that before she marired Octavius, Livia began as his mistress so she could should push comes to shove use sex to get ahead.
We also know from the disgust with which Roman chroniclers spoke of the sexual mores of some of the rulers that there were definitive ‘no-nos’ to sex. Look at how shocked Augustus was to discover his daughter flagrantly engaging in a number of affairs, and then at how he was equally stunned and infuriated by the poor comportment of his granddaughter.
If Romans were so sensitive about their image, and that prudish that they’d kind of consider banishment and in the case of some men in some cases execution natural punishments for bad sexual behaviour, why would they behave as immorally as they do in this show at times? Certainly in some cases it is a perfect reflection of reality at the time.
So while I disagree with say Octavia and Pompeius’ scene, and the fact that Atia will jump anyone and everyone (which was untrue, she a month after her husband died jumped her stepson and produced by him a daughter, she was certainly depraved but the show dials it to a 100) she was not entirely like that. Nuance is sacrificed for shock effect.
And that’s the problem with the show they really focused too much on the sex and not enough on the political drama and personal dramas of the various characters.
That aside, the battle at the start of the drama is one that is honestly magnificent and glorious as Pullo breaks rank showing himself to be a bit of a cultural outsider. He is brutish and poorly civilized so that he does not quite belong, in contrast to Vorenus whom he burns with anger towards for having ‘stolen’ his promotion.
Vorenus for his part is irritated by and dislikes Pullo, and chooses him for the ‘doomed to fail’ mission of finding the Golden Eagle Standard of the Tenth Legion (er Thirteenth…. why Thirteenth? They should have stuck to the Tenth).
I say Tenth because historically Caesar’s best legios was not the Thirteenth but rather the Tenth. They were the men who got things done and were the perfect killing machines, until they protested, were called ‘citizens’ and immediately fell back in line (I’ll get to the incident when it comes to it in the show’s episodes, as it is a remarkable incident).
That said, the Gallic Wars are skipped over with good reason, as politically it isn’t as interesting as the Civil Wars, which is what this show is about.
What is more is that the show inserts an incident that did not happen, Octavius’ kidnapping. We know from the record that Caesar quite liked the youth and likely would have scourged and crucified half of Gaul had such an incident happened. Why? This was his heir.
Over-all though the series is a great one. The acting is top-notch and the themes are pretty good.
At the start when we first meet them, Lucius Vorenus and Titus Pullo seem like opposites but they aren’t all that different. In truth they are quite similar. Both are brutish, tough men who have had to fight for every inch of life that they’ve gotten. They love Rome if in different ways, being nationalistic young men full of love also for their families and with tragic circumstances behind them.
Vorenus is an orphan, one who has not inherited the horse-farms his mother’s family took care of with such care, and having no land outside the city in spite of the fact that his father’s ancestors fought at the battle of Zama.
Yes that Zama! The very battle where Scipio Africanus completely schooled Hannibal, used Hannibal’s own stratagems to triumph over the Carthaginian and utterly humiliated him, in spite of having green troops and the veterans of Cannae whilst Hannibal had the best trained mercenary force in the world, welded together after fifteen years or so of hard-core fighting in Italia.
Vorenus’s claim to a noble ancestry is comparable to an American claiming he has ancestors who fought in the last battles of 1776 under George Washington or Lafayette. Or for one of us Francais to have an ancestor who fought under the banner of Napoleon during his first campaigns, or for the English to have an ancestor who fought under the Duke of Wellington, or for the Japanese to have someone who fought in the last battles in the Russo-Japanese conflict of the late 19th century.
Zama changed the world. Vorenus is claiming it as the time and place when his family achieved glory. Likely he leaves out Cannae from his family accomplishments due to the humiliations, but it is possible his family might have also fought at that ill-fated battle. It is also possible his family went on to fight in the 3rd Macedonian War when Lucius Scipio went on to achieve nigh on equal glories to his brilliant older brother Publius, and also defeated the likes of Hannibal.
Thing is Pullo can’t trace his family to such glorious roots. He’s far more of a ‘novus homo’ and so doesn’t have any glory behind him. A pleb in the truest sense of the word, he seeks to accomplish his own glories, his own triumphs and never fully does so. He doesn’t manage to be present for Pharsalus or Philippi like he’d like to be. He’s present at Alesia and that’s it.
But Alesia itself was a game-changer as suddenly Gaul which had been slowly conquered is forcibly ushered into the Roman sphere and completely and utterly claimed as Roman property.
The Gaulish Civilization that existed prior to that moment is irrevocably changed. Conquered it shall morph and change, and fuse with Roman culture and civilization over the course of the next few centuries only to fuse with Francish civilization and become transformed into ‘la Civilization Francaise’. France will be born from this glorious battle and magnificent conquest by Caesar.
Pour nous les Francais, for we the French this is a great moment. We do not look on it with disgust or horror but rather joy; Alesia is our admission into the Res Publica, our admission into the first steps of the transformation of Gaul into France. It is a necessary and in some ways beautiful thing in our eyes.
What is horrifying though it cannot be denied is the million or so lives lost. This is not glorious, and the show doesn’t seek to glorify this bit. I may glory in the fusion of Gaul-Rome-Francs but I do not glory in the death that was part of the process.
That said, the fact is that this great victory is not enough for Pullo who for a long time seeks a life of some meaning, of ‘flavour’ to use a word he likes. The trouble is that he never quite achieves it. What he does achieve though is a life full of ordinary beauty and extra-ordinary heroism, he helps to be a father to the young Octavius, whom is longing for a father and only has his often absent great-uncle.
This is where Pullo shines most; when he acts like kid-brother to Vorenus and also father to Octavius. It is honestly a shame they didn’t give Pullo a proper child of his own as those would have been very touching, and beautiful scenes to witness.
As to Pompeius what is interesting early on before he fully aligns against Caesar is the extent of his envy and frustration. He is vain and loves the people’s love for him and struggles with the notion that he is no longer the ‘top man’ so to speak of Rome. This he cannot allow, and the Senate knows it.
It is for this reason that Cato and others seek to corrupt him to their side. That said, where the show fails with those who form the basis for the Optimates faction is in their portrayal of the noble, tragic and fascinating Marcus Tullius Cicero.
Cicero was a complex figure, one who was a loving father who lost his daughter, suffered immense heart-ache to this loss, who tried to be as a grandfather to the Res Publica to no avail and tried to guide abler men than himself down the correct path. All to no avail, he was also a man of immense personal courage, immense loyalty to his cause and who was an incredible Orator. Seriously read his orations (I myself am planning an ‘audio read through’ of them and will be publishing this in the coming weeks).
There aren’t enough words in English to describe how wonderful and magnificent Cicero was. The show has a weird hard-on at times against him even as it has one for him.
All this can be unpacked in the first episode. Much of the show’s failures and success can be found in it.
Doubtless many will come in and complain of my criticism towards it, but it does come from a place of love. At fifteen I liked the sex scenes, but then as I grew older and re-watched the series over and over again and read Colleen McCullough’s excellent series, I found myself growing colder towards these scenes and actually quite bored.
Colleen’s series is really quite remarkable, telling the same story in some ways better and in other ways less so. A combination between the two is truly the perfect interpretation of the series, or possible adaptation of Rome’s bloody, violent and tragic Civil Wars that plagued the Res Publica and brought about an end to it, and its 500 years experiment and ushered forth nearly 500 years of ‘Imperium’ or ‘Monarchical’ rule over Rome.
Bryant said it already damn great essay
quelle coincidence!!(?)
I've just watched this series, 20 years too late. It's very good and surprisingly historically literate (if not strictly or even nearly accurate).
It's full of diversity but in a good way: its protrayal of urban vibrancy is similar in quantity but different in quality to those found in more recent programs of the same type. On balance--excluding kickasskween exploits of mysterymeat Gaia character towards end of season 2--the message this series conveys is that diversity is a weakness brought about by a corrupt republican elite and that the struggle is to correct it by removing slaves and restoring land and political power to the trVe Roman plebs; Caesar even says something to that effect (echoed by Octavian) early in season 1. Vorenus, with his unwavering old Roman vir and for all his faults, is depicted as the last truly good man in Rome.
Please continue with this series of articles!