RE:View – Rome (part I)
Almost twenty years ago HBO swung for the fences and knocked it out of the park with not one but the two best series in the history of that network.
And surprisingly, they were both period pieces. Deadwood I’ll look at another time… Maybe.
Today, we’re talking about Rome.
In his book Timeline, Michael Crichton predicted that the biggest selling point in the 21st Century would be authenticity. Time has proven Doctor Crichton right. Rome attempted to deliver that authenticity to the extent that it could with a contemporary audience. When it didn’t it was mostly because it would have involved lecturing an audience for a half hour on some of the ins and outs of Roman culture. HBO laid down some major coin on this project. Cinecitta Studios in Italy got pretty much a top-to-bottom rebuild for this show.
But in all other respects showrunner Bruno Heller attempted to deliver slice-of-life stories about Rome during the fall of the Republic and the rise of the Imperium. Everyone from the criminal classes to Caesar and Cleopatra were brought to life in a way that had never been tried before.
I still remember a scene with Octavian and his mother chatting about something and Octavian casually slapped a slave girl across the face and kept on talking to Mom. Almost like you’d be talking to a friend and briefly stopped to order the dog to get off the couch and then continue on with your conversation as if nothing had happened because so far as you were concerned, nothing had.
Rome was full of little things like that.
Normally a retelling of this period starts with Caesar’s arrival in Egypt, or maybe with the tail-end of the Battle of Pharsalia.
This show opened with the death of Caesar’s daughter Julia in childbirth. This event is one of those little “What ifs” historians try not to obsess over because it’s rather unprofessional but if either Julia or her son* had lived history would have taken a much different course. Gaius Caesar had no other children, a living grandson would have, under unbreakable Roman law and tradition, automatically become his sole heir. Making Pompey the father of a son who was going to be the second richest man in Rome after himself. There was no way Pompey would have broken Caesar. However, things happened like they did.
Truthfully, it wouldn’t have changed anything long-term. The Republican period had been over for a while, there had been a series of strong men ruling Rome, but the practice wasn’t institutionalized yet.
It started with Scipio Africanus, while he ruled very much as a conservative traditionalist, he did rule. Yes, there had been men like Cinncanatus in the past but Scipio brought something to the table none of them ever had before: Ungodly vast riches taken in conquest. It started a fashion.
The aristocrats didn’t like it but the average Roman in the street viewed a strong First Citizen as preferable. So far as the lower classes were concerned after a very brief period of, perhaps understandable, bloodletting, the new First Citizen would settle in for a period of stable and often prosperous rule. This was vastly better for them than the chaos of the Republic. Since the third Punic War, there had been a series of civil wars. These had been escalating in scope and intensity.
The First Triumvirate was a period of stability that everyone knew would never last. When Caesar first went to Gaul, alpha male and clinical narcissist Pompey couldn’t have been concerned. He was the new Alexander, not his son-in-law. He had been the young beautiful boy-general while Caesar was a middle-aged politician and untried as a general. Gaul was a shithole. What was there to worry about?
Things changed. Average Romans who used to ask about his exploits started asking things along the lines of “What’s it like to be Caesar’s Father-in-law?”
With Julia gone and Caesar lacking any family member he could marry off to Pompey, his former father-in-law joined the Optimates faction represented if not exactly led by Cato the Younger.
The opening credits of each episode featured the kind of graffiti drawn all over the city of Pompeii but animated. These scribblings by men who had been dead for two thousand years coming to life were a contextual statement that ancient Rome was about to come back to life for your amusement.
The first scene was a battle in Gaul where we meet our two common man protagonists. Hard Luck Lucius Vorenus and Titus Pullo. Both names are actually mentioned in Caesar’s Commentarii de Bello Gallico. Pullo breaks formation in the battle, disobeys Vorenius’ order reform, and worse, strikes an officer in the heat.
As Pullo (played by Ray Stevenson, hat over heart) is later being flogged, Lucius (played by Kevin McKidd) reminds the audience that what Pullo did wasn’t just illegal, striking an officer was also sacrilege. The show is letting you know that there is no such thing as strictly civil law in Rome, which prepares the audience nicely for what will happen in the Senate.
Apparently, this was the Battle of Alesia because we then see Vercingetorix stripped and forced to kneel before Caesar and then kiss a legion’s eagle. Ciaran Hinds as Julius Caesar earns his paycheck here with a glance he gives the last king of Gauls. His look said, ‘Sorry old friend, it’s how these things have to be done.’
Our next scene is in Rome. Timmon the Jewish horse trader has arrived in town with an exceptional stallion. The forum setting is dominated by a newsreader, who for a joy never takes sides, he just shouts out the official daily headlines with rhetorical flourishes of whoever the government is in Roman. He will act as a reliable narrator throughout the series when needed.
That was another interesting thing. When giving speeches all of the characters will use the rhetorical gestures seen on statues and frescoes, as was the style at the time… Probably. Sure they looked a little stilted and silly to us now but in that period it was part of the performance art that was ancient rhetoric. The problem with the static images is we never got to see the in between arm movements which were probably a lot more graceful.
After meeting the Senate windbags we get to know Attia of the Juli and her brood. Attia would never have been remembered but she had the good and ill fortune to be the mother of Octavian AKA Caesar Augustus. She is also the Mom of long-suffering Octavia.
To put Attia in context, today she would be wearing the slicked-back Clean Girl look to include freaking Apple Airpods Max, Stanley Cup and Uggs.** She would be constantly telling everyone, “People always think me and my daughter are sisters.” Octavia is definitely the daughter of a mother like that. Octavian’s behavior throughout is reasonably accurate to what we know about him from history. Attia wants him to be a Mama’s boy, he’s not happy with that idea.
Attia isn’t smart but she is cunning. Apparently, all the potential brains were reserved for Octavian because he’s all brain. Almost defectively so, but he’s not on the spectrum, just a really cold fish.
That was the setup.
The whole of the story begins when the XIIIth’s legion’s eagle is stolen, reportedly by Spaniards covered in woad. Questionable but needed later in the narrative.
Lucius gets picked by Marc Antony (James Purefoy in his signature role) to try and find it. Lucius knows it’s a fool’s errand that will end in his disgrace and probably damnation in the arena as a gladiator. So he takes Pullo along because he’ll be no loss to the legion and tells him so. All great romances and bromances are built on initial conflict.
Attia sent Octavian to give his uncle Julius the horse Timmon brought to town. He gets mugged and enslaved by the “Spaniards” that had taken the eagle. Their good luck runs out when they run into Lucius and Pullo who fight terrifyingly well as a team.
There is an astounding level of storytelling economy in this episode. Everything that needed to be told was told and an engaging manner. All the major stakes are set up and common men Vorenus and Pullo are now thrown into the company of the high and mighty. They will never be able to extract themselves.
The next episode introduces the rest of the characters, which is primarily Lucius’ family, and the relationships that are set in motion. Pullo’s relationship to the family is strange if you’re not in the military but trust me, it scans. If you’re single and as close as a brother you slip into uncle mode pretty easily.
Lucius and Pullo’s relationship with Octavian is slightly less believable given how cold he normally is. But not completely, he can show affection to the men who saved him precisely because they are so significantly lower in social status. They can’t be a threat to his position and can therefore be trusted friends.
I loved the title of the second episode, How Titus Pullo Brought Down the Republic. We will never quite know what happened to the Tribunes of the Plebians that backed Caesar. The guesses made aren’t terrible ones. Pompey’s faction expected Antony to impose his veto. Things got out of control and Antony was expelled from Rome. That’s all we really know. A lot of details undoubtedly got swept under the carpet and or rewritten by the winning regime.
The only thing agreed on is that Caesar’s Tribunes fled under threat of mob violence.
Caesar’s crossing the Rubicon wasn’t all that daring, for one he was already a rebel just by keeping his army together once the Senatus Consultum Ultimum was passed. Waiting for an official condemnation was pointless.
For another, Pompey had loaned Caesar a couple of legions at the start of the Gallic war. He had required their return when things fell out between them. Which Caesar had been happy to do because those legions were packed with his loyalists and handsomely bribed which was a near-contractual obligation to a Roman. The only other troops Pompey could count on were green as grass. The invasion wasn’t that high of a risk for Caesar.
Pompey knew all of this. Cato might have been stupid enough to want a fight under any circumstances but Pompey wouldn’t have. Getting out of Italy before the designated hitters in his veteran legions got orders to frag the political leadership was the only thing he could do.
Getting back to the show. Pullo starting the riot that kicked off the Civil War is the kind of horse shoe’s nail event that does happen. It doesn’t quite scan with the agreed-upon historical events but I’ve found consensus opinion on history is a lot like settled science. It’s a lawyer’s trick.
And I’m calling it night. This thing is killing my daily word count. This RE:View is now a series.
End of Part One
*Yeah, I know you history nerd, just roll with it.
**If you don’t know what the Clean Girl look is, you don’t have daughters. So just google it.
***Be sure to mention the comments how I got the Latin wrong.
