Tiberius? You cut it off that early?
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Tiberius? You cut it off that early?
It got better with Constantine though!:book:Quote:
Originally Posted by Philipvs Vallindervs Calicvla
Yes.Quote:
Originally Posted by abou
Constantine wasn't great, best of the worst really.
Hadrian was okay, Trajan, Marcus Auralius, but then he spawned Commodus and didn't have him killed.
Oh show some pity for poor Commodus, its not his fault he was a paranoid schizophrenic! Was he not merciful? WAS HE NOT MERCIFUL!??! :laugh4:Quote:
Originally Posted by Philipvs Vallindervs Calicvla
Yeah Marcus Aurelius was one of the greatest though IMHO.
Back on topic:I was wondering about that outfit Brutus was wearing before he took a bath in that lake a few episodes before the battle.(Can't remember the name) Now I'm not an expert on Roman outfits from that time but it looked very much like a 17-19th century Ottoman robe or something and it kinda stood out to me.:oops:
Also, wasn't Atia much older and had already remarried by the beginning of Season 1? This whole thing she had with Anthony got on my nerves after awhile cause we hardly got to see him with Cloe until the last few episodes! :wall:
Here in the Netherlands season 2 finished some time ago on television. However after 2 episodes in season 2 on prime time, they moved it later up the evening to start at 23:45, not because there was too much sex in it ( Dutch people tend to not make that great a deal about that stuff ) but simply because the ratings were too low. I guess a lot of people only watch these kind of shows when there's at least 2 battle scenes in every episode, over the top graphics and some over the top emotional hollywood drama in it...
I absolutely loved the second season. In my opinion this is the first series of all series and films about ancient Rome, that not only showed the events that happened back then, but also gave a real good insight in roman mentality and attitude towards honour, sex, love and violence. All previous shows and and films made about Rome always showed some cheesy victorian love story and an attitude towards honour and violence based on christian morality...
To view Romans and highly superstitious is a big mistake. By Caesar's era a lot of people had long stopped believing in all these myths about the gods. Especially in the upper echelons of society a weak form of Deism, ( there's probably something out there, but all the old stories are most likely ridiculous ) or even Atheism could be found in abundance. Testimony to this are the amount of followers all the philosophical disciplines had ( stoics, cynics, epicureans etc. ) Romans were pretty open minded about gods. ( The problems they had with Christians and Jews were not so much that they had their own god, many people had, the problem was that they refused to acknowledge any other gods and the sectarian character these religions had. ) This kind of attitude can't be found in Europe again till the enlightenment age ( 18th century ).
Roman attitude about sex was also very lax and can't be compared with anything later on. Even in a secularist society like we have today, you can still see a lot of evidence of a christian morality towards sex. I found scenes like the one where Marcus Antonius fucks a slave because he feels like and the scene where Octavianus looks for a wife typical ( *hey, who is that girl, is she from a good family? I want her to be my wife, make the arrangements* ).
Divorce rates were very high in ancient Rome and a lot of marriages were political ( wives of Pompeius are a good example ) .
If you look at old popular roman writers like Catullus, Horatius, Martialis, who were a bit like the cartoonists and column writers of todays newspapers you often see them using words like penis and cunt more often in one sentence than they're used in an entire hollywood film. These words often have double meaning. Like Catullus famous, *the sparrow of my girl* where sparrow means both cunt and is the name for the actual bird, just like the word *gladius* which means both sword and penis...
Indeed, there were a lot of roman writers who stressed a return to the old values and marriage fidelity, as a cure against decadence. The fact that they stressed a *return* to those values also points out that these values were not too common in their contemporary society. Tacitus looks with admiration to the marriages and the monogamist attitude in Germanic societies that are not yet corrupt and decadent. More often is meant by this *return to the old values* , however, a return to the old Roman militaristic tradition, bravery and honour, in contrast to the wealthy, complacent, smug aristocrats in Rome. This, attitude is also beautifully captured when Octavianus announces his wish to restore Rome to it's ancient glory and values, while everyone around him pretty much ignores this moral offensive...
I really dont think a Season 3 is needed since I Clavdivs pretty much covers that period unless they want to remake that.
Dont know why we think the Romans were all prudish. There's really no literary evidence to support this interpretation. In fact Cato the elder--the famous moralist--exhorted young men to use prostitutes in moderation as a vent for their sex drive. If anything their attitude towards sex was anti-Victorian: very unromantic and starkly pragmatic.