The Further Adventures of Lucius Vorenus & Titus Pullo
Netflix has at last delivered the first disk of Rome's second season. I will admit it: I go into happy fanboy mode at the receipt of new episodes.
It's like The Sopranos for Pagans. There are no really sympathetic characters, but you can't take your eyes off them.
Especially Lindsay Duncan's Servilia--perhaps because she resembles the former provost of my university, whom we used to refer to as the Dark Queen.
I asked my rhetoric class yesterday if any had seen it, and only one hand went up. (Just as well, perhaps. Our textbook talks about Cicero, but he doesn't come off all that well in the series.)
Likewise, when I used a clip from The Sopranos to illustrate Machiavelli's maxim for rulers that it is better to be feared than loved for a class of freshmen, many had never seen the show. Kids these days! I thought everyone but us got HBO. But getting it does not mean watching it, I realize.
It's like The Sopranos for Pagans. There are no really sympathetic characters, but you can't take your eyes off them.
Especially Lindsay Duncan's Servilia--perhaps because she resembles the former provost of my university, whom we used to refer to as the Dark Queen.
I asked my rhetoric class yesterday if any had seen it, and only one hand went up. (Just as well, perhaps. Our textbook talks about Cicero, but he doesn't come off all that well in the series.)
Likewise, when I used a clip from The Sopranos to illustrate Machiavelli's maxim for rulers that it is better to be feared than loved for a class of freshmen, many had never seen the show. Kids these days! I thought everyone but us got HBO. But getting it does not mean watching it, I realize.
posted by Chas S. Clifton at 10:44 AM Permalink
5 Comments:
I LOVE Sevilia. Anyway, I don't have HBO so depend on Netflix to watch this great show. I'm looking forward to the second season. I wish the show would go on, but at least I hope it was successful enough to spawn others. Perhaps something Egypt or the Celts? How great would that be.
Actually, I would be just as happy to see Rome continue into the 2nd or 3rd centuries CE.
At least the television adaptation I, Claudius went farther. But why not Marcus Aurelius or Hadrian or any later emperor?
I've watched I, Claudius endlessly, and It's one of my favourite shows. So it was great when they released Rome, which is kind of like a star wars style prequel to I, Claudius.
At some time I'm going to have to read the lives of the twelve Caesars by Suetonius.
Bloody good stuff.
Some critics argue that Rome shows the cultural distance between them and us better than I, Claudius, which was more like 20th-century English people in tunics and togas. I, Claudius, of course, was directly based on Suetonius' narrative.
Sigh -- many students have not seen The Sorpranos? How can one teach rhetoric when there are so few common cultural references?
I was sad to see Rome go, though. Kevin McKidd (Vorenus) will be back on the small screen this fall in a time travel series, Journeyman.
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