Our historical lesson of the week: Don’t talk shit about the 13th.
Pretty cool gladiator battle. The arena looked a little on the small side but they made up for it with decapitation and dismemberment, and what a nice reconciliation between Pullo and Vorenus.
Next week, they say history will be made…something to do with Brutus and Caesar, I gather. I wonder what will happen.
So I guess Verenus’s term as magistrate will be over soon, eh?
makes note to self - if dealing with Pullo do not make light of the 13th. That’s about as gruesome of a fight scene you will ever see on screen.
Brutus’ mother is in the driver’s seat and Caesar is in her sights.
What were Pullo’s “employers” eating in the bar?
Eels. Tasty, delicious eels.
I thought it was mice. Tasty, delicious mice. <insert puke smiley here>
I thought I heard one of them mention mice, but thought, Nah - couldn’t be :eek:
I really didn’t expect Pullo to survive that fight. When that guy came out with the big mace, I just knew he was going to go down, with Vorenus turning away in sorrow. Shows how much I know.
As for the size of the arena, there were bigger ones, but none of stone yet. The one where Pullo was sent may have been just for executions, or small fights, not major games.
They were eating eels, but I have read that dormice were eaten. Something about being fried in oil and sprinkled with sesame seeds.
Well, I’ll just have to remember that for Thanksgiving, then.
Poor Niobe. Surely it’s beneath a world-class bitch like Atia, to pick on poor Niobe? Doesn’t she have bigger and better things to ruin?
It was mice in the early scene, and eels at the end.
You heard right. The time Pullo went for a job, they were eating mice, they said. When Posca showed up, it was eels.
Nice set up for next week. Though I wonder how they are going to ‘deal’ with Vorenus. After all, Vorenus is a magistrate and he interfered in an execution. And made people believe Ceasar ordered the hit, which he did.
Good thing I wasn’t drinking a coke just now.
I was wondering, "how many of these guys does he have to kill before someone goes, “hey, there’s entertainment value in this…”
I’m pretty sure Cassius will talk him out of it.
As I’ve read gladiatorial fights were not originally for entertainment per se. They were held as part of funeral rites. Well-off families would commision whatever number of fighters thought appropriate.
I have a feeling that Octavian will help Vorenus out of this; afterall, he wanted to save Pullo.
When Vorenus was magistrating, did the guy complaining about his piss pots being broken ask how can he make cloth without piss? What was the role of piss in cloth making?
Savory mice!
I was impressed by the gladiatorial combat, but troubled about how easily limbs were lopped off. IANAGladiator, and have zero experience with these weapns, but I do suspect that lopping off the odd limb with a hefy piece of bone in it would be more difficult than it seems to be on this show. and a lot of the time the hewer seems to be at a significant disadvantage for leverage. I’d expect a lot of severe cuts to the bone that got stopped by the bone – no less serious for gthat , even if the whole limb wasn’t lopped off, but the easy removal of limbs with short swords with probably not the best steel used from awkward spositions doesn’t seem convincing.
Great episode. Very intense - notice there has been no humour at all in the last couple of episodes? The “you look like laundry” remark is the last bit I remember.
Do you think those women who had come to see Niobe were blackmailing her about the child? Everybody in town except Vorenus must know about it. I keep waiting for Niobe’s world to fall apart when Vorenus finds out.
I thought when Antony first approached Octavia he was flirting with her. I suppose Antony will have a lot more to do next season.
I *knew *Vorenus would save Pullo.
Well, they did the same thing in Monty Python. 
Yeah, especially the last chop the got the big guy’s leg. But still, this was one of the best episodes so far. Can one of the women (or the more fashion conscious men) here tell me what was wrong with Niobe’s dress? I thought it look fine…
Somehow I think Carl Posca-Rove will figure out some way to “take care of” Vorenus, and I don’t envy Vorenus in having to figure a way out. The previews kind of made it look like:
Vorenus was planning to kill Caesar but Brutus beats him to it. I just saw someone drop a knife at the end, and it looked like Vorenus, but I could be wrong. Anyone else notice that and get a similar idea?
What was wrong with it is that it ran the risk of showing up Atia. I think. As soon as I saw her going near Niobe, I thought, “Oh, nothing good can come of this…”