TV Review: Rome- “Deus Impeditio Esuritori Nullus” (No God Can Stop A Hungry Man)

I apologize for not being able to get the review up sooner, but I did not see the episode until Monday night. But its done at last. Hopefully I will not bore you with my ramblings about how much I love Rome, since I tried to keep it short. So, enjoy.

The Episode

Anyways, the episode is, in a word, brilliant. Gaia finally gets what she deserves, Memmio is locked up in a cage for years, and Antony has gone decadent in the clutches of Cleopatra. Atia and Octavia travel to Egypt, only to be asked to leave, while Pullo shows himself to be a decent leader. Posca is, as always, awesome. There are quite a bit of plot packed into this episode, but it handles is exceptionally well. So, it’s probably one of my favorite episodes in the series.

10/10

The History

Once again, we run into quite a bit of problems. Rome has not gotten any more accurate in its second-to-last episode. So, here’s a (incomplete) list of what struck me as wrong about the episode.

1) The episode seems to take place around the year 33 or 32 BC, the first year of the new civil war. The problem is, Lepidus the other triumvir, is still around (Octavian mentions sending the legions to Lepidus, so he won’t have to feed them). The problem with that is that by that time, Marcus Lepidus was no longer a triumvir – he was forced to resign by Octavian in 36 BC (I won’t go into the details of why, let’s just say it came in the aftermath of a rebellion led by Pompey’s son, none of which is mentioned in the series).

2) By the way, this episode marks the 20th year since the start of the show (“The Stolen Eagle” took place around 52 BC). Yet, none of the characters except for Octavian look any differently.

3) I have already gone into great detail why Alexandria should be a Greek, not an Egyptian city, but I think it bears repeating. Alexandria was founded by Alexander the Great, it was Hellenistic throughout, and native Egyptians were not welcome there.

4) And speaking of Egyptians, let’s mention Cleopatra. She, of course, was not an Egyptian, but, she actually bothered to learn the language of the people she governed- a first in the 300-plus years of her family governing Egypt. The series, of course, turns her into a bimbo, using sex to keep Antony in line. The reality was far different. Some time ago, Roderick T. Long of the blog Austro-Athenian Empire has posted Plutarch’s description of her (and thus saved me the effort of going through my books, and typing it up). You can find it here

[H]er actual beauty … was not in itself so remarkable that none could be compared with her, or that no one could see her without being struck by it, but the contact of her presence, if you lived with her, was irresistible; the attraction of her person, joining with the charm of her conversation, and the character that attended all she said or did, was something bewitching. It was a pleasure merely to hear the sound of her voice, with which, like an instrument of many strings, she could pass from one language to another; so that there were few of the barbarian nations that she answered by an interpreter; to most of them she spoke herself, as to the Ethiopians, Troglodytes, Hebrews, Arabians, Syrians, Medes, Parthians, and many others, whose language she had learnt; which was all the more surprising because most of the kings, her predecessors [= the Ptolemies, i.e.Greek-speaking Macedonian conquerors], scarcely gave themselves the trouble to acquire the Egyptian tongue ….

The guy who posted this calls her “a female analogue of Julius Caesar: brilliant, charismatic, and ruthless” and I agree with that. A much different person from the one we see in Rome.

5) The will of Mark Antony did, in fact, exist, according to Suetonius, and was opened and read to the public, but most of its provisions were known already, since in 34 BC, Antony   publicly proclaimed Cleopatra and Caesarion co-rulers of Egypt and other places, and his own children by Cleopatra to also have various kingdoms. Here is a map that shows who got what, if you’re interested.

6) Atia should be long dead by now.

4/10

That’s all, folks.