So I just watched the last episode of Upstairs, Downstairs Rome. WTF? There was no gratuitous nudity in this episode or the last episode. Sorry, I didn't do a review of Rome last week.
Overall, I was disappointed in the series. They did get a few things right in the last episode. Caesar did want to extend Roman citizenship to many of the conquered people and make some of them Senators. The roman nobility hated him for that.
WTF were Caesar's guards carrying? As a dictator, Caesar was allowed to have 12 lictors (guards) who carried the fasces which were a bundle of sticks with an axe blade. That was not what Caesar's lictors were carrying in the last episode.
I forgot to mention sumpin' interesting in the 10th episode. When Caesar was celebrating his triumph and riding his chariot along the Via Sacra, we saw the Arch of Titus in the background. Unfortunately, the Arch of Titus wasn't built for another 120 years.
Where was Cleopatra? She was in Rome at the time of Caesar's assassination. That was another reason many people thought that Caesar was gonna make himself king since he was consorting openly with a queen from Egypt.
Last week Antony started boinking Atia again. During this period not only was Octavia married to Marcellus, by whom she had a child named Marcellus, Antony was married to Fulvia, the widow of Clodius, one of Caesar's rabblerousers. When Antony, Lepidus, and Octavian formed the Second Triumvirate, Antony had Cicero killed at the request of Fulvia who thought Cicero had a hand in the death of her husband.
Oh well, leave it to television to take good history, which in many cases was better than their version, and screw it up. If you want to read good historical (and very true to history) fiction from this era in Rome, read Colleen McCullough's Masters of Rome series. The three books that would cover the time frame of this series are Caesar's Women, Caesar, and The October Horse.
Posted by denny at November 20, 2005 10:14 PMReckon Pullo went off to found the mafia?
That boy oughta be on the Sopranos.
Gotta go. Ollie is doing a special on Tarawa.
Semper Fi
Posted by: bill on November 20, 2005 11:07 PMRome? Wasn't that some city in Greece? I didn't do to well in history and only finished the 8th grade. Took me three tries but i did it.
Posted by: joe on November 21, 2005 03:59 PMI think they should have made it 24 episodes till Caeser's death. They compressed too much history, especially since Cleopatra plays such a big role in Antony's life which they will hopefully gret to in Season 2 (in 2007!)
They actually got a lot right. The assassination was as I have read in accounts. I kind of wish they had used that bit where Caeser's wife tells him not to go and it was Brutus who escorts Caeser to the senate who tells her not to worry, because he'll be at his side. That's according to one historical account.
But again, this was really the story of the two soldiers with the historical stuff as backdrop. I thought it ended really powerfully and I wonder what becomes of Pullo and Vorenus. Will Vorenus side with Antony or Octaviu when it comes to the big push? My money's on Octavius.
My guess on Antony is they were trying to keep the cast low so adding all those complicated relationships distracts from the story.
Posted by: James Hudnall on November 21, 2005 09:38 PMThere was so much they left out. I would have had Milo and Clodius in the mix. They did a real good job with Cato. If they really wanted a slut, rather than Atia they could have brought in Fulvia. By all accounts, both Atia and Octavia were virtuous (by current standards) Roman women. After all, when Antony left Octavia for Cleopatra, Octavia raised his children by Fulvia as if they were her own.
My big problem here is that as bad as the knowledge of history is in today's society, there are people who probably think this is the way it actually happened. For example, my latest troll, Joe, who claims I know nothing about Roman history. I would match my knowledge against him any day, but then he is a troll so I'm sure his knowledge, as is his intelligence, is minimal.
Posted by: Denny on November 21, 2005 10:30 PM