Empire: The Battle of Mutina

Tags

Ancient Rome, Battle of Mutina, Empire, Mark Antony, Military Stuff, Movies I Hate, Octavian/Augustus, Roman Republic, Santiago Cabrera, Vincent Regan

I hate Empire with a surprising passion. I want nothing better than to forget the 6 hours I spent watching it, but somehow I just can’t seem to stop writing about this turd, sort of the way I couldn’t stop picking at a wart that I once had on my right hand, even though picking at it hurt in a bad way. The worst thing ever filmed about ancient Rome culminates in the Battle of Mutina, a very odd choice, but no odder than the other shit that gets dropped into this film.

 

The Battle of Mutina

Historically, the Battle of Mutina was a fairly minor conflict, usually barely even mentioned in modern histories of the Late Republic. In 43 BC, the negotiations between the Senate and Mark Antony broke down. Antony insisted on being given a 5-year governorship in Gaul, the way Caesar had before him. Gaul was close enough that Antony could swoop down into Italy if he disliked what was happening in Rome. But the post had already been given to Decimus Junius Brutus, one of Caesar’s assassins. So Antony laid siege to Decimus in Mutina (modern Modena). The two consuls, Pansa and Hirtius, and Octavian all hurried north with forces to break the siege. Antony’s army ran into Pansa’s forces and routed them, mortally wounding Pansa in the process, but then retreated as Hirtius’ troops showed up.

The two sides clashed again somewhere outside Mutina. The battle doesn’t seem to be well-enough documented to enable a full reconstruction of it, but it went poorly for Antony. Hirtius’ forces were able to attack Antony’s camp, but Hirtius was killed in the assault. Octavian performed well in the battle; when the standard-bearer was killed, Octavian took it up and carried it for an extended period. After the battle, the Republic was now without consuls. Decimus tried to take control of the troops, but Octavian refused to surrender control over them. So Decimus tried to flee to Macedonia where Brutus and Cassius were gathering troops, but he was caught and executed. Mutina helped establish Octavian as a major leader, despite being only 19, and created the conditions that forced Antony to make common cause with him against the Liberators. But it wasn’t the end of the struggle between Antony and Octavian by a long shot, since Octavian only finally defeated Antony at Actium in 31 BC, 12 years later.

 

Empire’s Version of Mutina

I was saddened to discover that instead of shelling out a couple of bucks for the DVD of this wretched miniseries, I could have just watched it on Youtube. But it does mean that you can have the pleasure of watching this shitty battle scene for yourself.

The set-up for the battle is all wrong. Pansa and Hirtius are nowhere around, having already been executed by Mark Antony (Vincent Regan), and poor Decimus isn’t even a character in the story. Instead, Antony has become a vicious tyrant in Rome and Octavius (Santiago Cabrera) has run off to Gaul and found Julius Caesar’s legendary 3rd Legion sitting around in Gaul for the past two decades. He’s persuaded them to fight. But they’re (of course) badly outnumbered; they’re just the remnant of the 3rd Legion and 20 years older than before, while Antony has six legions. (But don’t worry; being outnumbered never has any impact on the battle whatsoever.) Antony is accompanied by General Rapax (Graham McTavish) and Tyrannus (Jonathan Cake), while Octavius has Marcus Agrippa (Chris Egan) with him. None of that makes any sense whatsoever, but you shouldn’t be surprised by that at this point.

The clip opens with Antony and Rapax on horseback. Rapax is so bad a bad guy that they’ve given him black armor, while Antony is proving he’s a bad guy by ordering Rapax to kill people during a battle. Antony’s armor has at least a vague resemblance to what actual Roman soldiers wore in this period (although he’s not wearing a helmet), while Rapax’s armor is just silly. But it’s positively museum-grade compared to the nonsense that Octavius and his forces are wearing, which is just a mishmash of generic crap armor.

I couldn’t find any pics from the Battle of Mutina, so here’s how a much better show dressed their Roman soldiers

The battle takes place in a forest. While we don’t really know much about the topography of the real battle, it’s pretty damn unlikely it was fought in a forest, because forests are lousy places to fight pitched battles. The trees and uneven terrain make keeping a solid formation nearly impossible, and loss of formation was typically deadly to Roman troops. Since both sides are Roman soldiers, they ought to be drawn up in very tight ranks, shoulder to shoulder, with multiple ranks standing behind the front line. The men on both sides ought to be carrying scuti, curved rectangular shields that cover much of the body, and gladii, short swords. Some of Antony’s troops are equipped roughly the way they ought to be, but are not in proper formation. Octavius’ troops, however, are just milling around in disorganized clumps, and are carrying anachronistic small round shields.

Antony’s forces come running through the trees in a disorganized mess, some of them on horseback. In this period, cavalry was usually kept on the wings of the army, used to make flanking attacks and to prevent the opponent from maneuvering on the field. Octavian responds by ordering his men to do an all-out charge (when in reality Roman advances were done at a slow run so as not to lose formation). Octavius’ archers then begin firing into the melee, presumably killing and wounding men on both sides. So we’ve established that no one involved in the production of this miniseries knew a damn thing about Roman warfare, or in fact warfare at all.

The battle is depicted as having no formation or structure at all, with individual pairs of combatants scattered around the battlefield, and troops from both sides coming in from both sides of the screen. After killing someone, the surviving combatant then looks around for another person to attack. So each man is fighting without any support from his fellow soldiers, and can easily be attacked from behind. Antony fights from horseback with a gladius, a really dumb thing to do, because on horseback a gladius isn’t long enough to reach foot soldiers. None of the principle characters wear helmets, obviously because the viewer has to be able to identify them. Normally I can accept that convention, but here, surrounded by so much egregious stupidity, it just looks moronic.

Vincent Regan makes a habit of appearing in things I violently dislike

 

Then at the 1:47 mark, Agrippa tells Octavius “they’re rolling over us.” Octavius’ response is to shout “hold the line!” This is stupid for two reasons. 1) It amounts to shouting “fight harder!”, which probably isn’t helpful battlefield advice to beleaguered troops, who are probably fighting as hard as they can not to die. 2) More importantly, THERE ISN’T A LINE TO HOLD, YOU IDIOT! YOU SENT THEM INTO BATTLE WITH NO FORMATION! ‘Hold the line’ means ‘keep in formation.’

Then Tyrannus, using his patented Badass Two-Gladius Fighting technique kills someone who says “Hail, Caesar,” like that means something, and Tyrannus realizes he’s fighting on the wrong side and decides to start killing Antony’s men, and his soldiers decide to switch sides too, becauase they’re none too keen to be fighting under a general named Rapax, I guess, because when you work for someone whose name is the ancient equivalent of Johnny McPsychopathicKiller, you probably start of suspect he’s a bad guy and you might be on the wrong side.

Rapax is just about to kill Agrippa when Tyrannus distracts Rapax by throwing one of his swords at him. In general, while throwing swords looks cool in movies, disarming yourself is a really dumb thing to do when you’re surrounded by guys who want to kill you. Then Tyrannus says “we who are about to die, salute you,” as he kills Rapax, because that sounds really cool and sort of clever if you don’t bother to think about it at all.

Then Antony meets Octavius and they fight. Despite the fact that Antony is obviously a much better fighter than Octavius, Octavius disarms him and forces him to surrender, but chooses to be merciful and not kill Antony. Historically, it’s correct that Antony survived the battle, because, as I explained last time, the two of them created an alliance and ruled the Empire jointly for several years before having their final falling out and fighting and Octavian winning and Antony committing suicide. But the miniseries presents Mutina as the end of the whole conflict, and suggests that Octavian became ‘Caesar’, by which it means emperor, in 44 BC, rather than in 31 BC. So not killing the deranged guy who’s gone on a murder spree looks pretty dimwitted because what’s to stop him from throwing more orgies and trying to kill you with asps again? Still, the thought that they might have tried to cover the next 12 years of history and add a couple extra hours to this shitstain of a miniseries makes me glad that everyone involved just threw up their hands and called it quits after Mutina.

I feel like a need an exorcism to get this thing out of my head.

This Klingon Beauty Queen is much more authentic than anything in this miniseries

This set of reviews was paid for by Victor, who viciously  generously donated to my Paypal account and asked me to review Empire. So, umm, thanks, Victor. I think. If you want me to review a movie or show, please make a donation to my account and tell me what you’d like me to review, but please, make it something a little better than Empire, because I don’t know if I can handle another one like that. Assuming I can get access to the film or series, I’ll do a review.

 

 

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Empire: What the Hell is Going On?

Tags

ABC, Ancient Rome, Empire, Julius Caesar, Mark Antony, Movies I Hate, Octavian/Augustus, Roman Republic, Santiago Cabrera, Vincent Regan

Watching Empire has made me reflect on all the poor life choices that brought me to this moment. If I had decided to study accounting rather than history, I doubt that I would have hit such a bottom watching this wretched ABC mini-series. Still, history only moves in one direction, so I guess I have no choice but to keep going with my review.

The biggest problem with this mini-series is the plot, which lurches around like a bus whose driver is having a seizure, taking out pedestrians, street signs and the occasional parked car before careening off a cliff and exploding in a huge burst of suckage. But in order to explain what is wrong, we need to take a fairly long detour into the actual past.

 

The Late Republic

By the 2nd century BC, the Roman economy was undergoing significant change, as large numbers of slaves flooded into Italy as a result of Roman victories during the Punic Wars and its slow expansion around the Mediterranean. These slaves forced the value of labor sharply downward and helped force large numbers of citizen farmers off their farms. These displaced farmers tended to do one of two things. Many entered the Roman military, an honorable activity that helped further the expansion of the Empire, which increased the numbers of slaves and perpetuated the forces that were forcing farmers off their land. After a successful military campaign, these men hoped to receive a grant of land in the conquered region, enabling them to return to the ranks of the farmers. But that required someone to enact a specific law granting those soldiers land, and the most logical person to press for that was their general, who used his successful conquest as a stepping stone to high political office. As a result, the military became deeply politicized, with the soldiers viewing their general, rather than the Roman state as a whole, as the natural focus of their loyalty.

The other thing those displaced farmers tended to do was migrate to the cities, especially Rome, in search of employment. But because the growth of slavery had forced down the value of work, most fell into severe poverty, and so Rome developed large slums. Although these men were poor, they could do two things. They could riot, thereby destabilizing Roman politics in unpredictable ways, and they could vote.

These changes caused the development of two new political factions (too loosely-structured to be political parties). One faction, the Optimates or ‘best men’, were traditionalists who appealed to those who were uneasy with the changes taking place. They championed the traditional center of Roman government, the Senate and the consuls, and targeted their political appeal at the aristocratic elites. The other faction, the Populares or ‘men of the people’, were aristocrats who sought political support among the large crowd urban poor, who had emerged as a new factor in Roman politics. They championed the Tribunate, essentially a second parallel branch of Roman government that possessed many (though not all) of the powers of the consuls and who were traditionally much more responsive to the will of the general population. They promised various reforms designed to please the crowd, such as redistribution of land, the distribution of subsidized grain (perhaps the first welfare measure in Western history), and free entertainment in the form of gladiatorial games and other sports. While the Optimates emphasized tradition and the Populares invokes the rights of the people, both groups  were essentially ambitious politicians seeking to advance their own power.

Starting in 133 BC, the conflict between these two factions gradually tore the Republican system to shreds. Over the course of the next century, civil war became a regular problem, as ambitious generals used their armies to pursue political victory through military conflict. Assassinations, conspiracies, judicial murders and political purges, and the wholesale violation of the legal framework for politics left Rome at the mercy of whichever faction could achieve temporary dominance.

Finally, in 48 BC, Julius Caesar, the leading Popularis of his generation, defeated the last great leader of the Optimates, Pompey the Great. This left him the unchallenged politician at Rome, and he immediately set about establish political dominance. The Senate was forced to declare him Dictator in Perpetuity, essentially giving him a higher political power than anyone else, using an office that was supposed to be used only in times of crisis and which theoretically had a term limit of 6 months. Normally, the Senate would debate an issue and then give the consuls a recommendation for the consul to issue a law. But Caesar would announce an issue to the Senate, skip the debate, and just issue laws. He repeatedly made clear that he felt no respect for the Senate, and his actions, including accepting deification, strongly suggested that he intended to overthrow the Republican system entirely and establish a new monarchy.

A coin of Julius Caesar

Many of the last remaining Optimates joined with some of Caesar’s closest friends who were troubled by the direction he was taken, and formed a conspiracy to murder him. This group was led by Gaius Cassius Longinus, Decimus Junius Brutus, and his more famous relative, Marcus Junius Brutus (the guy everyone refers to as ‘Brutus’; I’ll call the less-famous one Decimus). These men considered Caesar to be a tyrant who was oppressing Rome and therefore called themselves the Liberators, determined to restore freedom to Rome.

On March 15, 44 BC, a group of about 40 men stabbed Caesar to death in the Senate house. They were in such a frenzy that several of them wounded each other in the process. The rest of the Senate fled in panic, and Brutus marched to the Capitol, declaring that he had liberated Rome. But he and the other Liberators, who had expected to receive a hero’s welcome, were shocked by the hostile reception. As aristocrats who feared being closed out of political power, they had failed to realize just how popular Caesar was with the Roman crowd. As rumors began to spread about what had happened, many Romans barricaded themselves in their houses.

Marcus Antonius, Caesar’s right-hand man, had been slowly drifting away from Caesar for a while, but seized on this opportunity to grab at the reins of power. He negotiated with the Senate and conceded an amnesty to Caesar’s killers, but at the price of their legitimizing all of Caesar’s decrees and appointments. As the crowd became angry, the Senate fearfully voted to declare Caesar a god in an effort to appease them. Brutus gave a speech denouncing Caesar as a tyrant, and for a moment, it seemed that the crowd might be mollified.

Marcus Junius Brutus

But then Caesar’s will was read out. It did three things. 1) It named his grand-nephew Octavius as the heir to his vast fortune and adopted him. 2) It named Decimus as the alternative heir if Octavius was dead. 3) It granted every male citizen in Rome a modest cash gift. (The fact that Caesar could afford to do that and still leave his heir the richest man in Rome demonstrates just how staggeringly rich he was.) These three points all mattered. The first point made it clear that Antonius was not the unchallengable successor to Caesar’s position. The second point made Decimus’ participation in Caesar’s death an impious patricide. The third point reminded the crowd of Caesar’s past gestures to them, which tipped the balance against Brutus’ denunciation of Caesar.

Violence erupted. The Senate house was burned and an unfortunate tribune, mistaken for one of the Liberators, was torn to pieces in the streets. The Liberators fled Rome and Cassius and Brutus seized control of the Eastern Mediterranean portions of the Empire, raising legions for what became a renewed civil war, the Liberators’ War.

Back in Rome, Antonius made common cause with Octavian and Caesar’s cavalry general, Marcus Aemilius Lepidus, forming the Second Triumvirate, to which the Senate cravenly turned over complete control of the government. Antony married Octavian’s sister, Octavia. To secure control of Italy, they enacted a brutal purge, the most notable victim of which was the great orator Cicero, Antonius’ personal enemy, whose head and hands were cut off and displayed publicly in Rome.

In 42 BC, the two sides clashed at Philippi in Greece, in two battles about three weeks apart. The Triumvirs won both battles; after the first Cassius committed suicide and after the second, Brutus did so as well. This battle is essentially the end of the Optimates as a group with any meaningful power in Rome.

A coin issued by Cassius, celebrating Liberty

As a result of their victory, the Triumvirs divided the Empire into thirds and ruled as dictators. In 36 BC, Lepidus and Octavian quarreled, Octavian got the upper hand, and forced Lepidus into domestic exile. Meanwhile, Antony had taken up with Caesar’s ex-girlfriend Cleopatra. He repudiated his marriage to Octavia and married Cleopatra, which triggered the final falling out with Octavian and the last civil war of the Republican period. In 31 BC, Octavian’s forces defeated Antony and Cleopatra at Actium and they both committed suicide, leaving Octavian the undisputed master of the Roman world.

Meanwhile, in Bizarro Land

In theory, this is the story Empire is telling, but any resemblance to historical facts is entirely coincidental. At the start of the series, Caesar (Colm Feore) is the dominant man in Rome, but there’s no mention of the civil war with Pompey or the fact that he’s a perpetual dictator who just runs roughshod over everyone else. The Optimates/Populares rift is reduced to ‘everyone likes Caesar except the Senate.’ which is mostly just Cassius (Michael Maloney) and Brutus (James Frain). Caesar has some sort of formal position, but he’s not a dictator, and it’s not clear what his position is, except that his title is apparently ‘Caesar’ (which is at least a half-century too early for it to function as a title instead of just a family name).

Brutus and Cassius assassinate Caesar in order to restore the Republic from Caesar’s domination, but the show bizarrely presents this as a terrible thing, because Caesar loves the people and isn’t doing anything for himself and instead is doing everything for the people. Early in the first episode, Cassius sniffs that Caesar wants to make himself a king and a god, but it’s already clear that Cassius is an envious jerk, so the show explicitly positions the Republic as a bad thing that apparently involves the Senate running things, while the dictator Caesar is positioned as the defender of democracy.

Caesar’s life and death have been read for centuries as a cautionary tale. Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar can be read as a warning against overweening ambition, while ever since the American and French Revolution, his story has been seen as a warning about how Republics succumb to tyranny. So the miniseries’ treatment of the material is startling in the nakedness of its anti-democratic stance.

Once you get beyond that, you realize that the show has no idea how Roman government actually worked. The Senate seems to be in charge, but never actually does anything, and I suspect the show thinks that people got elected directly to the Senate, rather than entering the Senate for life after being elected to almost any other public office; Caesar at one point comments that he “used to be in the Senate.” There are two consuls appointed after Caesar’s murder, Hirtius and Panza (which is actually historically correct), but they barely have any dialog and are only seen again toward the end of the series when Mark Antony (Vincent Regan) executes them for no apparent reason except to be evil. The Vestal ‘Order’ (‘college’ would be a more appropriate term) is described as having great political power but being studiously neutral until Camane (a horribly wasted Emily Blunt) decides to use their resources to duplicate Caesar’s will so everyone will know that  Octavius (Santiago Cabrera) is the rightful successor. The Senate has no soldiers of its own and has to make due by hiring gladiators, while various senators seem to own their legions.

You don’t pin a toga, you idiot!

Despite not having any troops, and despite everyone in the city hating them after Caesar’s murder, Brutus and Cassius somehow are in complete control of the city, enough so that Octavius, Tyrranus (Jonathan Cake), and Mark Antony have to flee Rome in danger of their lives and ride around trying unsuccessfully to find military allies. But later, Antony has enough soldiers to be back in the city bargaining with the Senate. He and Octavius sign a document making each other their heirs, and then he massacres all his guests at an orgy by dropping asps and wolves on them. And because of Octavius is out of the way, Mark Antony gets to be…Caesar? Something like that.

With Octavius seemingly gone from the scene, Mark Antony wastes no time in going insane and taking power. He exiles Brutus and Cassius from the city as a way to prevent Brutus from committing suicide and becoming “a martyr for Rome”. Leaving aside the fact that martyrdom was a Christian concept and there won’t be any Christians in Rome for more than half a century, exiling someone to stop them from committing suicide makes no sense whatever. Cassius comments, “we should be in Syria raising an army.” Yes, Cassius, you should be, because that’s what you actually did. But after that Brutus and Cassius mostly just disappear from the series. Not only does it make no sense logically or historically, but also it’s feeble scriptwriting to set up Brutus and Cassius as major villains and then simply hand-wave them away so the plot can focus on the struggle between Octavius and Antony. There’s no Liberators’ War or battle of Philippi, just the plot forgetting about them.

Antony and Octavian in front of bust of Caesar that looks nothing like Colm Feore

Octavius survives the poisoning because Camane does a blood-letting on his jugular vein with the help of Marcus Agrippa (Chris Egan). Normally it’s done at the wrist, Camane. Meanwhile Antony has inexplicably made Tyrannus a centurion in his army, where Tyrannus immediately starts pissing off General Rapax (Graham McTavish) by trying to be nice to the soldiers. And for no reason, Antony doesn’t have Cicero killed.

Octavian reads a story of Caesar’s ‘legendary’ 3rd Legion that was lost at the Battle of Bibracte in Gaul. He rides off to Gaul and stumbles into The Eagle of the Ninth, learning that the lost legion has somehow just been living in Gaul for the past decade without anyone noticing. So he persuades the remnants of the 3rd Legion to fight for him by letting them carve a trident into his shoulder-blade and then leads them against Antony at the Battle of Mutina, at which Tyrannus decides to switch sides and helps save the day and Octavius defeats Antony and inexplicably grants him his life, which somehow causes him the win the day and resolve the whole conflict, and then rainbows and unicorns fly out of his ass and everyone lives happily every after, because the Republic is going to get overthrown after all and Octavius gets to be the new dictator and take away everyone’s politial rights.

God I hate this miniseries.

 

Want to Know More? 

If after all this, you inexplicably want to see this steaming pile of crap, you can find Empire on Amazon.

There are lots of biographies of Augustus. The one I have on my shelf is Pat Southern’s Augustus.

Empire: Oh, God, I Can’t Take This Anymore

Tags

Ancient Rome, Empire, Jonathan Cake, Mark Antony, Roman Republic, Santiago Cabrera

More stupid crap in Empire:

No, the punishment for treason by a Vestal was not being buried up to the neck and then stoned. The Vestals were untouchable except for the severe offense of fornication. The punishment for that was being buried alive with a jug of water and a loaf of bread. The purpose of that was no specific person was responsible for the Vestal’s death, because that would have outraged the gods. Touching them, even to punish them, was unacceptable because it was seen as impinging on their chastity. Since their chastity was understood as vital to the health of the Roman state, the idea of punishing them in any way that involved physical contact was unacceptable.

No, Italy did not have a massive gladiator school somewhere in Mordor where Tyrannus (Jonathan Cake), Octavius (Santiago Cabrera), and Senator Magonius (Dennis Haysbert) could be thrown after they are captured, only to fight their way out of. Gladiators were valuable property and were not forced to live like wild animals in a mine.

No, it did not take an enormous crisis for the Senate to have the authority to appoint a new Pontifex Maximus and no, Brutus was not appointed as said Pontifex Maximus so that he could forcibly take Camane from the Temple of Vesta. The college of pontiffs elected the Pontifex Maximus from their own number, and after Caesar’s assassination, the office went to Marcus Aemilius Lepidus, who became an ally of Antony and Octavian.

No, Romans did not use medieval broadswords, even during gladiatorial training. Nor did they use medieval flails for gladiatorial training.

No, Romans did not say ‘Hail, Caesar!” during his lifetime. The phrase is a common modern misquote of the phrase “Ave, Imperator, morituri te salutant” (“Hail, emperor, those who are about to die salute you.” The only recorded use of the phrase dates to 52 AD when a group of fighters in a fake naval battle (technically these were not gladiators at all, but naumachiarii) greeted Claudius with the salutation. While widely known and misquoted today, there is literally no reason to think the phrase was customarily used by gladiators or anyone else.

No, ‘Caesar’ was not a title in this period. It was just a cognomen, which Octavian acquired as soon as he was adopted. When Cassius shouts “you’ll never be Caesar,” it’s like someone telling me “you’ll never be Larsen.” But then, we already know that movies and tv shows never get Roman names right.

No, Cicero (Michael Byrne) was not a supporter of Caesar and Octavius and an opponent of Brutus and Cassius. It was pretty much the opposite. He was politically opposed to Caesar, and Mark Antony (Vincent Regan) was a personal enemy of his. He was something of an ally of Brutus and praise Caesar’s assassination. He did to some extent befriend Octavius, but mostly as a way to play him off against Antony, and in the period 44-43 BC, produced a series of 14 Phillipic Orations against Antony.

Vincent Regan as Mark Antony

No, Mark Antony did not have a beloved dog named Sulla. How do I know this? Because Sulla was one of the optimates, the pro-Senatorial, anti-crowd factions in Roman politics, while Mark Antony was one of the populares, the pro-Tribune, anti-aristocratic elite faction (I’m oversimplifying, because many of the populares  were themselves aristocrats and senators). So naming his dog after one of the arch-optimates of the previous generation would be like Hillary Clinton naming her beloved dog Nixon. Nor is it likely that he would joke about his wife being his ‘commanding officer’, because submission to women was seen as a sign that a man was unfit to rule.

No, there were not people called ‘master assassins’ in ancient Rome. The whole concept of being a master at an occupation is a fundamentally medieval concept, only beginning to emerge in the 12th century with the guild system. The concept of people who were trained as assassins only emerged around the 12th century in the Middle East when the Ismaili section of Shia Islam was established, and even these people weren’t ‘professional’ assassins, but rather religious fanatics who went on suicide missions. And whatever assassins existed in ancient Rome sure as hell weren’t magical beast-masters who could see what their falcons saw and shape-change into wolves. This is supposed to be actual history, remember?

No, orgies were not regular features of Roman parties. While Romans had somewhat more lax rules about where and when and with whom sexual activity was acceptable than modern Americans do, they regarded unrestrained sex parties with disapproval and suspicion as something likely to erode the morality of Rome and as potentially politically subversive. Simply a rumor about such activity was enough to get the cult of Bacchus banned in Italy in 188 BC. Stories about Roman emperors such as Tiberius and Caligula throwing debauched parties were told to demonstrate the emperor’s unsuitability to rule and may well simply be slanderous inventions. Even if these stories are true, later Roman historians report them disapprovingly, demonstrating that even a century after this period, Roman culture considered sex parties disreputable.

No, there was no mass murder of Caesar’s supporters using asps and wolves during an orgy in Rome. It certainly wouldn’t have been engineered by Mark Antony, because he would have been killing off his own supporters and allies.

And no, the screenwriters of this horrid piece of dreck should not have been allowed to write a mini-series about a historical period they clearly cared nothing about.

Want to Know More?
Go take a walk instead. It’s nice out. The exercise will do you good.

Empire: Caesar’s Will

Tags

Ancient Rome, Brutus and Cassius, Emily Blunt, Empire, Jonathan Cake, Julius Caesar, Movies I Hate, Octavian/Augustus, Roman Republic, Santiago Cabrera

Empire  is quite possibly the worst thing I’ve ever watched on ancient Rome. I’ve gotten freshman term papers on ancient Rome that were way more interested in the facts than this piece of crap is. But I’m getting paid to review it, so I need to do another post on it. Please bear with me.

The plot of the series turns on the question of who Caesar’s heir will be. At the start of the series, Caesar (Colm Fiore) is correctly positioned as the dominant man in Rome, although it’s not explained how or why he got there, except that the crowds of Rome love him. Early on, Brutus (James Frain) and Cassius (Michael Maloney) comment that Caesar wants to be both king and god, statements that are fairly accurate for 44 BC. When Caesar is assassinated in the Senate chamber, he tells Tyrannus (Jonathan Cake) that his heir is going to be Octavius (Santiago Cabrera), not Mark Antony (Vincent Regan). This comes as a surprise to everyone, including Octavius, who was under the impression that Caesar despised him. Brutus and Cassius are desperately trying to get Caesar’s will so they can quash this, while Cicero (Michael Byrne) and Camane (an utterly wasted Emily Blunt) are doing everything they can to disseminate the will so that everyone in Rome will know the truth, so that the Senate will have to…make Octavius king maybe? Something like that. I’m not sure the series knows, but who cares? It’s only the main plot of the whole goddam thing.

The reality is, surprise surprise, different. Julius Caesar had no surviving children, despite three marriages, but his sister Julia did have a grandson, Octavius, who was the logical person to make his heir. So late in 45, Caesar wrote a will that adopted Octavius and bequeathing him about 75% of Caesar’s considerable fortune. The will would have been given to the Vestal Virgins, who were responsible for keeping wills, and would not have been publicly announced until after Caesar’s death. It is not known if Caesar told Octavius about the contents of his will, but it seems to me highly unlikely that the will would have been a surprise to Octavius; he was the obvious choice of heir being Caesar’s closest male relative, he was a canny and astute politician (as his entire political career demonstrated) who must have known what his position in Roman society was, and Caesar was smart enough to have recognized that he would have to groom Octavius as his successor (although he certainly didn’t foresee getting murdered just a half-year after making his will). Additionally, as soon as news of the assassination reached Octavius, who was in Apollonia on the west coast of Macedonia at the time, he immediately began to act like Caesar’s heir, ordering that Caesar’s war-chest be sent to him in Apollonia. If he was unaware of his status as heir, it’s improbable that he would have done this.

However, the series’ assumption that Octavius found his designation as heir a surprise is not an entirely outrageous one, because we have no formal evidence that he was told about it before Caesar’s murder. So I’ll reluctantly give the series a pass on this one.

(A short aside about names is necessary here. When he was born, he was given the name Gaius Octavius, since his father was from the Octavian gens. Upon his adoption, he legally became Gaius Julius Caesar Octavianus, the ‘an’ element signifying that he had been adopted out of the Octavian gens. After he achieved complete domination of the Roman political world in 27 BC, he was given the agnomen Augustus, which he consistently used down to the end of his life. There is no evidence that he ever actually styled himself Octavianus (although some of his opponents did). He preferred to refer to himself as Caesar and later Augustus Caesar, using the formal ‘Imperator Caesar Divi Filius Augustus’. However the universal modern historical convention is to call him Octavian (the anglicization of his name) for the period between 44 and 27 BC and then Augustus thereafter. Since his adoption was posthumous, the series is technically correct to call him Octavius, even though pretty much no one today ever uses his birth name unless they’re being super-precise.)

Octavian, being posthumously appalled by this series

 

According to Roman law, a posthumous adoption only applied to inheritance of property. Caesar had no legal way to pass on any of his formal political power or office, any more than John Kennedy could have bequeathed his presidency to one of his children, since in the Republic, all political offices were subject to public election and were not personal property. So what Octavian was technically inheriting was his adoptive father’s wealth and his name (since posthumous adoption typically required the adoptee to accept the adopter’s name). Informally, Octavian was inheriting the enormous goodwill the Roman crowd had for Caesar as well as the prestige of now belonging to perhaps the oldest and most glorious of all Roman gens. Since the anger of the crowd pushed the Senate to immediately declare the dead Caesar a god (something that Caesar seems to have been angling for already in the last year of his life), Octavian also acquired the huge and unprecedented clout of being able to style himself Divi Filius, ‘son of the god [Julius]’. In order to achieve his father’s political power, however, he was going to have use that inherited wealth, prestige, and goodwill to fight his way up to political power, especially because Mark Antony was the clear successor to Caesar’s military authority, since he was essentially Caesar’s lieutenant and an experienced soldier, while Octavian had no military experience to speak of, being only 18.

Whether his adoption surprised him or not, Octavian immediately moved to capitalize on the opportunity the adoption provided. As noted, he took charge of Caesar’s war-chest, sailed to Naples, and traveled north to Rome, collecting political support and a modest army along the way. He demonstrated a solid understanding of Roman politics, contacting key political figures for their support; he decision to land at Naples allowed him to meet up with Cornelius Balbus, one of Caesar’s most important supporters. At no point did he ever betray any sense that he was doing anything other than acting on his full legal rights as Caesar’s heir.

In Empire, however, Octavius is a cloth-headed idiot. When Tyrannus tells him that Caesar has named him his heir, Octavius initially refuses to believe it, and refuses to leave Caesar’s villa outside Rome until his mother warns him that he’s in a butt-load of danger and Tyrannus can protect him. Tyrannus insists on fleeing Rome entirely with no money or guards or anything else. The next morning, however, Octavius wakes up before Tyrannus, and rides back to Rome to see his girlfriend, some skank whose father is a senator but who immediately betrays him to the gladiator/soldiers who are looking for him. He gets chased, Tyrannus rescues him by magically knowing where he is, and Cicero gives them a list of supporters to track down. Then they ride out of Rome again. All of this is a real disservice to Octavian, who ranks among the savviest politicians in the history of the world.

Octavius and Camane, wishing they weren’t in this series

 

Brutus and Cassius, meanwhile, are torturing Octavius’ mother for the will, intimidating Cicero, and threatening the Vestal Virgins. They are having trouble with the crowd, which catches them trying to smuggle Caesar’s corpse out of the city, and seizes the corpse and burns it, which outrages Octavius even though it’s basically the way elite Roman funerals worked. Camane orchestrates a plan to produce dozens of copies of Caesar’s will and nail them up all around the city so everyone will know that Brutus and Cassius are dicks. They respond by lighting Rome on fire, which seems like something of an over-reaction, given that if the city is destroyed, there isn’t much of a Roman state for them to govern. Then they send an assassin after Octavius, but Tyrannus spots him because apparently in ancient Rome only assassins carry gladiator swords that are actually late medieval short-swords.

Then Octavius and Tyrannus run off to visit Senator Magonius (Dennis Haysbert), a black man who has a northern Celtic name at a time when senators were only drawn from Italy. Magonius refuses to give the gladiator/soldiers his legion (despite the fact that legions were only given to sitting or just-stepped down consuls at the authorization of the Senate). So, despite the legion Magonius owns, the gladiator/soldiers decide to make him a slave because in times of political unrest, historical accuracy is always the first casualty.

Brutus and Cassius with some woman who might be Servilla

 

Oh, and evidently because apostrophes haven’t been invented yet, the subtitles telling us where things happen never use apostrophes. So scenes take place at ‘Julius Caesar Villa’ and ‘Vestal Copy Room’.

You can do this, Andrew. You’re getting paid for this.

Want to Know More?

Well, if you insist, you can find Empire on Amazon.

There are lots of biographies of Augustus. The one I have on my shelf is Pat Southern’s Augustus.

Empire: God Help Me

Tags

Ancient Rome, Colm Fiore, Emily Blunt, Empire, Jonathan Cake, Julius Caesar, Movies I Hate, Roman Republic, Santiago Cabrera

My review of I, Claudius inspired one of my readers, Victor, to make a generous Paypal donation and request that I review the 2005 ABC miniseries Empire, which, like I, Claudius, deals with the transition from the Roman Republic to the Roman Empire. So you’re going to get a few more posts on Ancient Rome.

And hoo boy does the first scene promise a strong contrast with I, Claudius. Whereas Robert Graves was at pains to mine the historical sources for the facts, this show promises to mine absolutely nothing except old clichés. The show opens with a gladiatorial combat that works overtime to avoid anything resembling fact. The two fighters, one of whom is named Tyrannus (Jonathan Cake), are equipped with gear that is almost entirely made up; he gets two short swords because that means he’s cool. The scene repeats the nonsense that gladiatorial fights always involve the death of all but one fighter. And then after he defeats his opponent, more gladiators surprise him and he has to fight them to the death too. I’ve already discussed everything wrong with this scene in a review of a different movie. (What makes this even worse is in a later scene, Tyrannus correctly describes how a Thracian gladiator is equipped.)

Then we cut to the ‘Vestal Temple’, where Camane (Emily Blunt), a virgin priestess, is praying in front of what is clearly a statue of naked Aphrodite, which is sort of like having a statue of a porn star in a Catholic convent. But she’s making a sacrifice of flower petals, so I guess that makes everything chaste. Octavius (Santiago Cabrera) asks her if “her gods” ever answer.

The show also doesn’t care about giving its characters real names. ‘Tyrannus’ is apparently his birth name, and his son is named ‘Piso’, which isn’t even a given name (it’s a cognomen). And what the fuck sort of name is Camane? It doesn’t even sound Latin! And instead of ‘Octavian’ (short for Octavianus), the kid’s name is Octavius.

Unsurprisingly, the costuming isn’t very accurate either

Then Julius Caesar (Colm Fiore) asks Tyrannus to be his personal bodyguard, overlooking the fact that he has guys like Mark Antony to protect him, and also overlooking the fact that in 44 BC, Caesar is the dictator, which comes with a staff of 24 lictors, who were also essentially bodyguards.

We’re only 20 minutes into this thing and I already I hate it.

Then Camane milks the ceremonial goats (wtf!) and they give only blood, which means bad things are coming. She has to warn Caesar for some reason, but the Chief Vestal tells her to forget what she’s seen, maybe because she knows there’s no such thing as ceremonial goats.

Then Piso’s mother buys something for “three cents” and it becomes clear that the film isn’t even trying. Piso disappears in the market place, and I see a whole lot of manpain coming for Tyrannus.

The Praetorian Guard exists, even though it won’t be created until there are emperors, since its job is to protect the emperor. Camane warns Caesar, but he declares that he’s lived his whole life in defiance of the gods, so he’s going to ignore the omen. Then he gets into a positively absurd-looking carriage with pillars, a couple centuries before the first thing that might be called a carriage will be invented.

Tyrannus is running around the marketplace looking for Piso, because Caesar, having commissioned him to be his bodyguard, has promptly left Rome without him.

Victor, could you make another generous donation? I think this miniseries qualifies for hazardous duty pay.

Then the Senate gaks Caesar and the assassins who are trying to kill Tyrannus tell him that it was all a distraction, which is really nice of them if you come to think of it, because it means he can run to the Senate house and find Caesar dying, who tells him to protect Octavius. And then Mark Antony (Vincent Regan) shows up and claims Caesar’s crown.

For Colm Fiore, this counts as a mercy killing, because he doesn’t have to keep appearing in this turd

Mark Antony is pissed because the senators asked to shake his hand without washing the blood off theirs first. This turns out to be a faux pas on the Senate’s part, because they don’t have an army and Antony does, so they have to raise an army of gladiators, led by General Rapax (Graham McTavish), who you know has to be a bad guy because his name is Rapax.

The show has by this point forgotten that Tyrannus is a slave because he’s just running around freely, giving Piso’s mother money to sail away from Rome, and so on. Having ridden back to Rome to protect Piso and his mother, Tyrannus then has to fight a dozen soldiers/gladiators so he can get horses to ride away on. This show can’t even keep track of its own material from one moment to the next, much less know anything real about stuff that happened 2,000 years ago.

Oh, god, make this stop, please!

Mercifully, this turns out to be the end of the first episode.

 

Want to Know More? 

No, trust me, you don’t.