# Rome 10/9 (open spoilers) **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [October 10, 2005, 2:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rome-10-9-open-spoilers/325490 "2005-10-10T02:54:19Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 5\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Tamerlane](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tamerlane/32/7602_2.png) [@Tamerlane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tamerlane)\ **Post date:** [October 11, 2005, 1:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rome-10-9-open-spoilers/325490/41 "2005-10-11T01:03:19Z")
> [@Rubystreak](#): > > Having watched this ep and read a little about Pharsalus, we were wondering: was it simply a case of superior generalship by Caesar that won that battle? Or was it luck? Or something else? Is that even an answerable question, considering that the victor writes the history? The sketchy way it was portrayed in the ep doesn’t make it clear at all, obviously. When Pompey described it, he blamed it all on cowardly horsemen rolling up his flank, but what would enable a small group of reservists to repulse a larger cavalry unit? Anyone who knows more about these things able to fill me in? It came down to a combination of three things: 1. Caesar, though heavily outnumbered had a higher overall quality of troops. 2. Pompey was past his prime and blundered when things turned against him, and 3. Caesar really was the superior commander. Pompey basically made the very orthodox approach of massing all his calvary and light missile troops on one flank, where they would have a massive superiority and be able to overwhelm one corner of Caesar’s army and roll it up. Pompey’s description from the episode laid that out. What he left out is that Caesar, seeing what Pompey was about, set a trap. He deliberately weakened his lines of infantry, stetching them out to match the whole front of Pompey’s army ( to make them harder to flank, but more vulnerable to frontal assault ), then further stripped them of the very best of his troops to form that reserve, which were screened and concealed behind Caesar’s calvary. Caesar needed those front lines to just hold long enough, which owing to their quality they did. Meanwhile Pompey, seeing Caesar’s seemingly orthodox maneouver of deploying his inadequate calvary to counter Pompey’s overwhelming flanking force, took the bait and launched them. Pompey’s calvary did their job and were in fact starting to turn Caesar’s flank, when the hidden reserve of elite infantry counter-attacked, caught Pompey’s force by surprise, routed them, then proceeded to turn Pompey’s flank as he indicated. At that point, while the battle was probably lost for the day, Pompey might have held the better part of his larger army together and maybe made an orderly retreat to fight another day, but he seemed to have panicked and retreated to his camp, while his army was left behind to be cut to ribbons and dissolve. - Tamerlane ---
**Author:** ![alphaboi867](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alphaboi867/32/3898_2.png) [@alphaboi867](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/alphaboi867)\ **Post date:** [October 11, 2005, 3:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rome-10-9-open-spoilers/325490/42 "2005-10-11T03:01:34Z")
> [@fiddlesticks](#): > > Brutus is “like a son” to Caesar. However, Servilia is Brutus’ mother. So it is possible that Caesar was Brutus’ real father. Naturally, neither man acknowledges this though. Officially, he was a descendent of Brutus Junius, who helped overthrow last kings of Rome, making his relationship with Caesar all the more uncomfortable. Caeser didn’t begin his affair with Servilla untill Brutus was about 10 years old. Brutus wasn’t his biological son, but he was _like_ a son to Caeser. ---
**Author:** ![jsc1953](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/5daacb/32.png) [@jsc1953](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jsc1953)\ **Post date:** [October 12, 2005, 4:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rome-10-9-open-spoilers/325490/43 "2005-10-12T16:10:25Z")
A little late in posting, as I just saw this episode last night. I really like Titus. When he’s facing death, and says that it’ll be nice to see his mother again…awwww. He’s just a big softie. (Which leads to questions about Roman’s view of the afterlife, which I thought were somewhat vague, and evolved much later than this story is set). I watched with subtitles, just for fun; and the guide-with-the-nose was apparently speaking Italian. You would think it would be Greek; and are the producers trying to say that Italian was evolving in parallel, simultaneously with Latin? I also (like the OP) appreciate the references to the gods (I love Vorenus’ comment from last week, that they’re perfectly safe because the proper offering was made to Triton). I like how Atia says “Graces…” in a context where we would say “goodness…” ---
**Author:** ![fiddlesticks](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fiddlesticks/32/18129_2.png) [@fiddlesticks](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/fiddlesticks)\ **Post date:** [October 12, 2005, 4:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rome-10-9-open-spoilers/325490/44 "2005-10-12T16:40:03Z")
> [@jsc1953](#): > > I watched with subtitles, just for fun; and the guide-with-the-nose was apparently speaking Italian. You would think it would be Greek; and are the producers trying to say that Italian was evolving in parallel, simultaneously with Latin? I watch this show with subtitles on for clarity’s sake. I think that was a goof on the captions part. The man with the silver nose was seemingly a non-native Latin speaker, as he and Pompey had trouble communicating (or at least he pretended to have trouble speaking Latin, he had no trouble with Vorenus later). Given that they were in Greece, I presumed his native language was meant to be Greek despite what the captions said. ---
**Author:** ![Baker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/bb73d2/32.png) [@Baker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Baker)\ **Post date:** [October 12, 2005, 5:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rome-10-9-open-spoilers/325490/45 "2005-10-12T17:26:03Z")
If that was Italian, or a sort of pidgin, then it may have been an attempt to show dialects other than Roman Latin. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rome-10-9-open-spoilers/325490.md?page=2)