Rome X

Sorry, I didn't get around to watching the latest episode of Rome until tonight. As usual, they got some stuff right and other stuff wrong.

The triumph was actually done fairly well. The general would paint his face red and there would be a slave riding behind him in his chariot holding a laurel crown over his head. The slave would be whispering in his ear that he was only mortal and all fame is temporary.

Caesar was not proclaimed Imperator by the Senate and Cicero would be the last person to introduce that. Caesar did have himself proclaimed dictator and that was legal according to the Roman Constitution.

What we are witnessing here is a class struggle between the aristocracy and the middle and lower classes that had been going on for close to 100 years.

As Roman power grew throughout Italy and the rest of the Mediterranean, the Roman aristocracy accumulated massive estates in Italy. Many populist politicans arose on a platform of land reform. Two of these were Tiberius and Gaius Gracchus (the Gracchi). They were both murdered by the aristocracy.

Then along came Gaius Marius. The Cimbri and the Teutones had defeated the Roman armies sent against them. Prior to Marius, Roman soldiers were citizens who supplied their own gear. Marius recruited an army made up of the proletariat of Rome. This created the precedent of a Roman army swearing allegiance to a general and not to Rome.

Marius became the champion of the middle and lower classes. He also married Caesar's aunt, Julia. One of Marius' officers, Lucius Cornelius Sulla, was from an aristocratic family that had fallen on hard times. He distinguished himself in the war against Jugurtha. Sulla once remarked upon seeing a young Caesar, "There are many Mariuses (Marii in Latin) in that man.

Sulla became the champion of the aristocracy and in the social (and civil)war he won. Marius died while Sulla was in Greece and on his return, many supporters of Marius were killed and their property seized and sold. The streets of Rome ran red with blood.

Sulla made himself dictator and restored the oligarchic republic. Thinking all was well he retired to his villa in the country and shortly thereafter died. his epitaph read: No friend ever served me, and no enemy ever wronged me, whom I have not repaid in full.

Awesome!

So now we come down to Caesar and Pompey. Caesar grew up in the Subura where the lower classes of Rome lived. His mother Aurelia owned a tenement there and that is where Caesar was raised. As such he was thrown into contact with the poor and immigrants to Rome. The Julii Caesares were an ancient patrician family that had fallen on hard times. Caesar became a champion of the poor. Pompey, who had served under Sulla, was for the aristocracy.

They made their peace by forming a triumvirate with Crassus who was incredibly rich. Crassus lent Caesar a fortune to finance his political career. Pompey married Caesar's daughter Julia to seal their deal. Unfortunately, while Caesar was in Gaul raping the province to get enough money to pay Crassus and for his future political career, Crassus got himself killed by the Parthians and Julia died in childbirth. That's where the series started.

What is going on throughout the series is a class warfare with Caesar wanting to institute agrarian reforms i.e. breaking up the estates of the aristocracy and providing land to his veterans. Cato and the others were against this.

We'll never know if Caesar was gonna pull a Sulla and institute some needed reforms and then restore the republic like Sulla did, or if he was gonna become an emperor.

Vercingetorix was kept alive for Caesar's triumph, but I think he was strangled after the triumph was over.

Everytime I hear Octavia talk it turns me on. I just love her accent.

Posted by denny at November 9, 2005 09:02 PM