Table Of ContentRome, Season One
Rome, Season One: History Makes Television E dited by Monica S. Cyrino
© 2008 Blackwell Publishing Ltd. ISBN: 978-1-405-16776-5
For Flavia
optimae sorori
Rome, Season One:
History Makes
Television
Edited by
Monica S. Cyrino
© 2008 by Blackwell Publishing Ltd
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First published 2008 by Blackwell Publishing Ltd
1 2008
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Rome, season one : history makes television / Edited by Monica S. Cyrino.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-4051-6776-5 (hardcover : alk. paper) – ISBN 978-1-4051-6775-8
(pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Rome (Televison program) 2. Rome–On television.
I. Cyrino, Monica Silveira.
PN1992.77.R557R66 2008
791.45′72–dc22
2007032666
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Contents
List of Illustrations vii
Notes on Contributors viii
Episode Guide xii
Introduction 1
Monica S. Cyrino
1 Televising Antiquity: From You Are There to Rome 11
Jon Solomon
2 Making History in Rome: Ancient vs. Modern Perspectives 29
W. Jeffrey Tatum
3 What I Learned as an Historical Consultant for Rome 42
Kristina Milnor
4 Rome’s Opening Titles: Triumph, Spectacle, and Desire 49
Holly Haynes
5 The Fog of War: The Army in Rome 61
Lee L. Brice
6 Caesar’s Soldiers: The Pietas of Vorenus and Pullo 78
Brian Cooke
vi Contents
7 Becoming Augustus: The Education of Octavian 87
Barbara Weiden Boyd
8 “Not Some Cheap Murder”: Caesar’s Assassination 100
Alison Futrell
9 Women’s Politics in the Streets of Rome 117
Antony Augoustakis
10 Atia and the Erotics of Authority 130
Monica S. Cyrino
11 Her First Roman: A Cleopatra for Rome 141
Gregory N. Daugherty
12 Gowns and Gossip: Gender and Class Struggle in Rome 153
Margaret M. Toscano
13 The Gender Gap: Religious Spaces in Rome 168
J. Mira Seo
14 Staging Interiors in Rome’s Villas 179
Alena Allen
15 Latin in the Movies and Rome 193
Ward Briggs
16 Spectacle of Sex: Bodies on Display in Rome 207
Stacie Raucci
17 Vice is Nice: Rome and Deviant Sexuality 219
Anise K. Strong
Bibliography 232
Index 244
Illustrations
Figure 1 The city of Rome at the end of the Republic. 2
Figure 2 Caesar’s military conquests. 64
Figure 3 Brothers in arms: Pullo (Ray Stevenson) and
Vorenus (Kevin McKidd). 80
Figure 4 The Gallic campaign: Caesar (Ciarán Hinds)
rides into camp. 110
Figure 5 Caesar’s triumph: Atia (Polly Walker) sits next to
Antony (James Purefoy), with Calpurnia (Haydn
Gwynne) in the background. 138
Figure 6 Atia (Polly Walker) and Antony (James Purefoy)
enjoy dinner at her villa, while a servant attends them. 158
Figure 7 Plan of a typical Roman domus. 181
Notes on Contributors
Alena Allen is Instructor of Latin at Cathedral Catholic High School in San
Diego, California. Her most recent publication explores the image of Briseis
in the Homeric poems, Ovid’s Heroides, and the fi lm Troy. A lifelong
student of Roman and Italian art, she is interested in the depiction of the
ancient world in contemporary visual media.
Antony Augoustakis is Associate Professor of Classics at Baylor University
in Waco, Texas. He has recently completed a book, (M)otherhood and the
Other: Fashioning Female Power in Flavian Epic. He has also published
scholarly articles on Plautus, Pliny the Younger, Lucan, Statius, and Silius
Italicus. His current project is a commentary on Plautus’ Mercator.
Barbara Weiden Boyd is Henry Winkley Professor of Latin and Greek at
Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine. She is the author of Ovid’s Literary
Loves: Infl uence and Innovation in the Amores (1997) and the editor of Brill’s
Companion to Ovid (2002). She has written several textbooks on Vergil’s
Aeneid, and numerous articles on Augustan poetry. Her current project is
a book on Augustan Rome.
Lee L. Brice is Associate Professor of Ancient History at Western Illinois
University. His current book project is Holding a Wolf by the Ears: Mutiny
and Unrest in the Roman Military, 44 bc–ad 68. He is also a contributor
to the forthcoming Oxford Handbook of Warfare in the Classical World c.700
bc–ad 602. He currently serves as the President of the Society for Ancient
Military Historians.
Notes on Contributors ix
Ward Briggs is Carolina Distinguished Professor of Classics Emeritus and
Louise Fry Scudder Professor of Humanities Emeritus at the University of
South Carolina. He is the editor of The Biographical Dictionary of North
American Classicists (1994) and Soldier and Scholar: Basil Lanneau Gilder-
sleeve and the Civil War (1998). At present he is completing a biography of
the American classicist Basil Lanneau Gildersleeve and beginning a book
on classical myth in American fi lm.
Brian Cooke is Senior Leader of Iris Learning, an international consulting
group that focuses on leadership development and teambuilding. Prior
to founding Iris Learning, Brian taught history and classics at Deerfi eld
Academy and Milton Academy in Massachusetts. He is the author of Frank
Boyden of Deerfi eld: The Vision and Politics of an Educational Idealist
(1991).
Monica S. Cyrino is Professor of Classics at the University of New Mexico.
She is the author of Big Screen Rome (2005) and In Pandora’s Jar: Lovesick-
ness in Early Greek Poetry (1995). She has published numerous articles
on Greek poetry, mythology, and classics and cinema. Her current book
project explores the ancient and modern popular signifi cance of the goddess
Aphrodite.
Gregory N. Daugherty is Professor of Classics and Chair of the Depart-
ment of Classics at Randolph-Macon College in Ashland, Virginia. He is
interested in the reception of classics in American popular culture, espe-
cially Homer, Cleopatra, and the depiction of ancient battles. He is cur-
rently the President of the Classical Association of the Middle West and
South.
Alison Futrell is Associate Professor of Roman History at the University
of Arizona. An abiding interest in the symbols and rituals of power led her
to explore Roman spectacle in her books Blood in the Arena (1997) and
Roman Games (2006). She is also fascinated with the way the ancient
Mediterranean is reconfi gured in popular culture and has published
articles on Spartacus, Xena: Warrior Princess, Troy, and Rome.
Holly Haynes is Assistant Professor of Classical Studies at The College of
New Jersey. She is the author of The History of Make-Believe: Tacitus on
Imperial Rome (2003). She specializes in the historiography of the early
Roman Empire. Her current projects focus on memory and trauma in the
post-Domitianic period and on Petronius’ Satyricon.
x Notes on Contributors
Kristina Milnor is Associate Professor of Classics at Barnard College in
New York. She is the author of Gender, Domesticity, and the Age of Augus-
tus: Inventing Private Life (2005), which won the American Philological
Association’s 2006 Goodwin Award of Merit. She has published articles
on Roman comedy, elegy, and the use of history in marketing BarbieTM.
She was a Rome Prize Fellow at the American Academy in Rome
(2003–2004).
Stacie Raucci is Assistant Professor of Classics at Union College in
Schenectady, New York. Her research specialty is Latin poetry, in particular
the elegies of Propertius, and she has presented several conference papers
on the topics of gender and the gaze in the Roman poets. Her current book
project is entitled Vision in Roman Love Elegy.
J. Mira Seo is Assistant Professor of Classical Studies and Comparative
Literature at the University of Michigan. She specializes in Latin epic
and post-Ovidian Latin poetry. Her most recent publication explores
the ideas of divinity and prophecy in the television series Alias. She is
currently working on a book entitled Allusive Characterization in Latin
Literature.
Jon Solomon is Robert D. Novak Professor of Western Civilization and
Culture and Professor of Cinema Studies at the University of Illinois,
Urbana-Champaign. He is the author of The Ancient World in the Cinema
(2001) and The Complete Three Stooges: The Offi cial Filmography (2002).
His current projects include an edition of Boccaccio’s Genealogy of the
Pagan Gods, a volume on the infl uence of Ben-Hur, and several volumes
on the Greco-Roman tradition in opera.
Anise K. Strong is Visiting Assistant Professor of Classics at Northwestern
University in Evanston, Illinois. Her most recent scholarly publication
examines the ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ enforcement of incest laws in Roman
Egypt. She has presented several conference papers on the topics of ancient
prostitution, motherhood, pornography, and cannibalism.
W. Jeffrey Tatum was until recently the Olivia Nelson Dorman Professor
of Classics at the Florida State University, Tallahassee. He has now joined
the Department of Classics and Ancient History at the University of Sydney.
He is the author of The Patrician Tribune: Publius Clodius Pulcher (1999)
and Always I am Caesar: Eight Perspectives (2008), as well as numerous
