So I’ve been watching Rome, and in the second season, when Caesar has crossed the Rubicon and entered Rome, he’s trying to get everybody on his side, including the priests. At one point, in conjunction with offering a lavish bribe, he says to a priest, “Oh, I don’t know much about religion, I’ll leave that to you priests, I’m just a simple soldier.” Not delivered as a joke, either.
:smack:
Did the writers research the character at all?! Caesar never would have said that and hoped anybody would buy it. Gaius Julius Caesar knew a lot about the Roman state religion. As a boy/teenager he was the Flamen Dialis, the chief priest of Jupiter. (He was removed from that office under Sulla’s dictatorship because the family of his first wife, Cornelia Cinna Minor, had been proscribed by Sulla. The Flamen Dialis had to be 1) a citizen of patrician rank and 2) married to one. His wife was no longer a citizen.) Later, as an adult, but long before he took up soldiering, he was elected Pontifex Maximus, the supreme priest of the state religion (yes, it was an elected office) – and he held that office for the rest of his life. If he wanted to get the priests on his side, he need only remind them that he was already the boss-priest.
Second episode* I think you mean, not second season.
At any rate if you’re going to let that bother you, this series is going to give you apoplexy in short order :D.
It’s really well done show, with lots of good acting, nice set design, curious little Roman cultural tidbits sprinkled around and well-managed story lines. But in terms of strict historical accuracy…well…it’s TV.
Just to give this series a little more love, I have to say that not only are Ciaran Hinds’ Caesar and James Purefoy’s Antony my favorite characters in the series ( even ahead of the principal protagonists ), I think they might be the best versions of either character conceived for TV or film, if perhaps not stage. Really excellent work by both gentlemen.
It sounds, from your description that these were largely political offices, and that one didn’t need any particular religious knowledge or devotion to attain them. If that’s correct, this doesn’t sound like an error to me - he’s telling the priests that, as their ostensible boss, he’s not going to interfere with how they run the temples. Therefore, they should support him, rather than someone else, who might be more of a meddler.
Yea, its a great show, but the actual history is at best, highly compressed. Your “major nitpick” is pretty minor compared to a lot of the other stuff.
Examples just from Octavian’s family: Octavian had a step father during most of the period covered by the show, and his mother should be dead for much of the time she’s depicted as a major character. And Octavia should have a mess of children, including some by Mark Anthony.
Well, one thing: Caesar was a snarky, snappy, sarcastic son of a bitch. He might well have thrown that line out at the priests, knowing it was an outright lie, because he understood (correctly) that religion no longer had a damn thing to do with who controlled Rome. Political power in Rome now flowed from the blade of the gladius, not from the whims of priests. It no longer mattered that Caesar had been a priest because priests no longer mattered. I think it’s reductive to assume that Caesar literally believes that the priest doesn’t know the history here, or that if he wanted the priests on his side, he could simply tell them what to do. Eager subordinates are more enthusiastic than grouchy ones.
Also gone are Octavian’s first two marriages and his daughter Julia, which is problematic considering how important she and her descendants (including Caligula and Nero) were. One reason they were stricken from the plot is a third season was expected but the series was cancelled a few episodes into the second, so they tried to get to post-Actium at a mad dash instead of in two seasons; that’s also why the kids don’t age at all right. (Atia’s second husband being stricken, though, was just to re-create Atia out of whole cloth as a '80s soap opera diva.)
Atia of the Julii was based on Octavian/Augustus’s wife, Livia Drusilla, and not his mother. The real Atia Balba Caesonia was a model of Roman matronhood according to ancient historians. That would however be rather boring to watch and then we wouldn’t get to see Octavian marry his mother.
This show is one I’ve watched dozens of times and I remember the scene clearly. He’s saying in a tone that clearly states “Support me and you’re going to continue being in charge. Why would a simple guy like me want to mess with things that we both know only a wise man like you could manage.” The scene basically went over the OP’s head. Gaius as presented in the show is one of the smartest motherfuckers I’ve seen in any series, even if he does wind up stabbed to death.
Caesar was playing politics. “Oh, me? Oh, what do I know? I’m just a poor simple soldier, not wise and learned like your fine self.” He was buttering him up because he was bribing him, and telling him that Caesar wasn’t planning on interfering with the priesthood’s shenanigans in the city. With, of course, the implicit threat that a sword through the gut would be another way we could handle this.
Rome, for some reason, caused me a lot of “ah-ha!” moments when I realized these were the great-great-great-great grandfathers of the men who created and ran the Mafia.
Were they, though? I know you’re probably not entirely serious, but just how close are modern Italians (yeah, I know, the Mafia is from Sicily ) to Ancient Romans with all the migrations of various peoples? Are they genetically "the same "? For one thing, there seem to have been more red heads in Italy in antiquity.
ETA - this isn’t rhetorical, I really want to know, and should know, but don’t. Yet.
Well, in a broad sense, yes. Most currently living Europeans are related in some way when you go back that many generations, so that should hold true for mafia bosses also. That’s not to say they’ve necessarily lived in the same area for all that time, however.
No, there was no division between “official” priests and “religious” priests, which is what you are implying. The College of Pontiffs were actual priests and the Pontifex Maximus was the chief priest. Of course, like the Pope (who also uses the title of Pontifex Maximus), his duties were mostly administrative, but, like the Pope, he still conducted ceremonies himself.
In short, there was no aspect of the Roman religion of which Caesar could have professed ignorance. And all the priesthoods were “political offices” in the sense you are using the term; they did not require any particular “religious devotion” in a Christian sense, only that which every good Roman citizen was presumed to have. There were no prophets or mystics or saints in the Roman religion, it was all a matter of tradition and ritual.
Spiritually, at least . . . BTW, I just learned of a new Italian movie called Caesar Must Die. It is set in a prison where the prisoners are staging a production of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar.
Ummm… because reminding people that you’re the boss always works in politics and real life and nobody ever takes it the wrong way (… until you get stabbed by a bunch of them).
I’m in the Roman camp that he was just playing a nice, soft-power, game.
