By Gary Topping–
My wife and I are in the midst of our umpteenth annual re-watching of Rome, the magnificent HBO series, the two seasons of which first aired in 2005. The first season treats the fall of the Roman Republic from the opening of the Civil Wars to the death of Julius Caesar; the second season covers the struggle between Octavian and Marc Antony, culminating in the defeat of Antony and the creation of the Principate under Octavian as the Emperor Augustus.
We love it and keep coming back to it for many reasons, but before I recommend it to readers of TheBoyMonk, I must offer the sternest of caveats that it requires a strong stomach for nudity, realistic simulated sex, extreme violence and the roughest of language. Be forewarned!
We love it foremost, I think, for its minute and deep research that accurately and perceptively takes one into the Roman world, from the stuffy aristocrats of the Senatorial class to the prostitutes and robbers in its brothels and bars. It gives us, of course, the historical characters like Cato and Pompey, Caesar and Cicero, Antony and Brutus whose lives are elaborately given in the literature of the period. But it also gives us judiciously invented characters like Timon the horse merchant and his Zealot brother Levi, who open up for us the life of Roman Jews. And most delightfully in the shadowy middle ground between history and fiction are the two Roman soldiers Lucius Vorenus and Titus Pullo who carry a major part of the narrative development. Vorenus and Pullo were real people who fought in Gaul under Caesar, who devotes a full page in his narrative of the campaigns to their exploits, the only common people he ever mentions by name.
Equally impressive to us, though, is the casting, which brings to the screen a stable of stunningly expert British and Italian actors, almost all of whom are unknown to American audiences. Exceptions would be the great Ciaran Hinds, who plays Caesar, and Ian McNiece, the comical (and fictional) News Reader who has the ongoing role of Bert Large in the PBS series Doc Martin. Most regrettably absent from American audiences is the magnificent Polly Walker, who plays Atia, Octavian’s mother and Caesar’s niece. Almost nothing is known of the historical Atia, but the writers develop her into the most appallingly Machiavellian character not at all reluctant to deploy her own children in advancing her ambitions.
There are several traps that await the unwary screenwriter who would address the theme of the fall of the Republic. One is the temptation to judge the pagan culture of the Romans by Christian standards. All of the events in this series take place before the birth of Jesus, and although some consideration is given to the Roman puppet Herod and the discontented province of Palestine, Christianity and Christian values are never mentioned. The writers let the message sink in to us modern Christians that this is the immediate pre-Christian world into which Jesus was born, but we have to imagine for ourselves and to draw upon the New Testament writers as to how Jesus would view and cope with it.
Another trap is William Shakespeare, whose great plays Julius Caesar and Antony and Cleopatra, particularly with their characters Brutus and Cleopatra establish indelible images in our minds. While Rome’s Brutus is every bit as tormented and conflicted as Shakespeare’s, the actor Tobias Menzies brings his own forms of torment to the role and borrows none of Shakespeare’s. Similarly, Antony’s funeral oration over Caesar’s body, one of the most famous passages in all Shakespeare, comes to us second-hand in Rome, summarized by another Roman soldier.
A final trap is Cleopatra, the role played so unforgettably by the stunning beauty Elizabeth Taylor. (This trap was made all the more tempting by the fact that Rome was filmed on the same Roman soundstage as the Taylor-Burton movie.) Realizing that trying to out-Taylor Elizabeth Taylor was a losing game of the first proportion, Lindsay Marshall, who plays the role in Rome, decided to take it in a very different direction, playing the queen as a drug-addled sex addict who sees the main chance in her manipulation of first Caesar, then Antony, and finally Octavian. In a rare departure from historical accuracy, the series offers a hilarious and yet touching alternative to the patronage of Caesar and Cleopatra’s illegitimate son Caesarion.
There are, then, many reasons to watch and enjoy Rome, like any other great dramatic production. For readers and bloggers at TheBoyMonk, though, there is yet another one. We study history and other cultures not our own in order to gain perspective. However much we might remain committed to our own culture, our own religion and our own value systems, there is always good reason to try to enter into an understanding of other cultures with their own internal logic and integrity. Ours is not the only way to do things, and being aware of that leads to tolerance and respect.
