I believe the proper thing to say here is ‘Don’t Fuck with Servillia’. Breaking to Atia at their meeting was just plain COLD, though I can’t say that Atia didn’t deserve it.
Very well done stabbing scene there. No ‘Eu Tu Brutus’, which Shakespeare added, and you could see how difficult it was for Brutus, to the anguished scream at the end.
Poor Vorenus. He seemed like he was trying to calm down and Naobi flings herself from the railing. Though it seems Pullo has found love. They’ll probably join with Antony when he goes after Brutus and Cassius, and then… who knows.
I wish I knew more about Roman history - I’m hoping Vorenus gets to take out Servillia in the Season Two opener (coming to your home in spring 2008 if we’re lucky :smack: )
If there is a second season I see Vorenus letting his daughter choose her own husband, after what has happened to him.
I also liked that Caesar didn’t/couldn’t speak during his assasination.
I don’t know what Servilia will actually do, but after the look Octavian gave her I’d back off. Methinks a lot of them will underestimate that young man.
As much as Atia deserves it, I think Servilia is going to be sorry in the end, considering Octavian’s future and that look he gave her on the way out. He’s no one to be trifled with either. At this point, I have no sympathy for Servilia. She’s outdone Atia with her schemes and life-wrecking.
Amen. My god, that was horrible. I really like the guy and he was just finding his place in the world. I guess that’s the price of being a public personality-- no secret goes untold.
That was a bit of surprise ending to the show.
I imagine we’ll see the whole Antony/Octavia and Antony/Cleopatria triangle go down, and the rise of Octavian. Should be fun. Hope we don’t have to wait for 3 years for the next season.
The whole assasination scene was very close to how Suetonius described it in *Twelve Caesars. Suetonius makes note of the (probably apocryphal) rumor that Caesar had said “Kai su, Teknon” (Greek for “You also, my son?”) but seems not to believe it.
I thought that the expression on Caesar’s face when he saw Brutus with the knife expressed his sense of disappointment and betrayal beuatifully. He might not have said Shakespeare’s line out loud but he said it with his face. It was a wonderful piece of acting by Hinds.
What a bummer that Niobe killed herself. Voernus’ life is coming aprt at the seams right as Pullo is starting to regain some hope in his own life.
Good scene with Servillia and Atia at the end. Atia totally got out-bitched for the first time in her life. Servillia better watch out for Octavian, though, Something tells me that he’s going to land on his feet, and that’s one kid you don’t want pissed at you.
I dunno–I didn’t like it much. The ending seemed rushed. The whole Pullo/Eirene thing at the end bugged me, and the Niobe thing seemed sort of predictable.
I enjoyed much of this series but the Niobe’s son story line was poorly done. Everyone in town would have known that she was pregnant and probably by whom. You can’t exactly hide that. Plus, didn’t she almost tell Vorenius and he shushed her and said that the past was the past. The slave girl falling in love with Pullo at the end made no damn sense either.
That said, the sets and the dialogue were great and the growth of the friendship between Vorenius and Pullo and how they showed their loyalty to one another was funn to watch.
I hope that there is a second season. That kid who plays Octavian is great.
There will be no more first run HBO drama series through the Holidays. Does anyone know what is coming in January. I think that The Sopranos and Deadwood aren’t scheduled until later in the year.
Is anyone else annoyed that the series has been so busy with soap opera that they’ve done almost nothing to show us what drove Brutus and his associates to assassinate Caesar? They talked a lot about his being a tyrant, and we see that he did have a political enemy or two killed, but otherwise he was portrayed as a rather pleasant, reasonable, and even forgiving fellow.
Are we supposed to know our history well enough to just take it for granted that he deserved to be offed?
It’s just one of the reasons why this series hasn’t grabbed me as much as most of the other original HBO shows.
Actually, I thought they made it quite clear what their motivation was. He made himself dictactor and appointed compliant senators and even expanded the senate to include 100 additional senators (who were chosen for their loyalty to him).
Both Deadwood and The Wire are billed as having new seasons in 2006. Those are my two favorite shows, so I’ll be happy whichever comes on next.
Upon consideration, I have to agree with hajaro– how would Niobe be able to hide her pregnancy from everyone she knew? Why wouldn’t someone have spilled to Vorenus earlier? He did have considerable enemies well before he became a senator. I also didn’t quite buy Niobe’s suicide. She just didn’t seem the type, and I’m fairly certain he would have forgiven her eventually. I also found Eirene’s change of heart towards Pullo a bit shocking. It reminded me of Oz, when that female doctor fell in love with Ryan O’Riley, even after he had her husband killed.
This is something about Rome that struck me-- every bad thing that happens to a man seems to be due to his love for a woman. Brutus killed Caesar via a spurned Servilia’s manipulation, brought about by Atia. Servilia also convinced Octavia to commit incest with her brother, earning his emnity and screwing up his and his sister’s lives. Pullo’s degeneration came about due to his despair that Eirene loved another man. Vorenus’ happiness was destroyed by his love for a faithless wife. Antony’s downfall will be Cleopatra, who also brought about Ptolemy’s ruination. Seems like women are bad news in this show. Hmmm.
The show began as Caesar was defeating the Gauls, which would be around 52 BC. Caesar was murdered in 44 BC, so it would have been a span of 8 years.
The show tried to depict that passage of time. For example, when Vorenus arrived home, Niobe’s son was an infant. In the last scene where he’s holding Niobe, the boy appeared and he seemed to be about 8.
Octavian was 19 when Caesar was murdered, and I think he became a consul of Rome pretty much right away. Caesar named him his heir in his will, so he had some standing right out of the gate. The next decade or so saw a lot of jockeying for power between Octavian and Antony. Octavian slowly gained the upper hand and eventually controlled Rome. He earned the title of Augustus in 27 BC, when he was 36.
I’m sure he was thinking about it, but there’s no way he would have done it. I think she knew that too. It seemed to me that it was remorse and self-recrimination that caused her to jump, not fear of Vorenus. In fact, I think she knew he wouldn’t kill her-- she seemed more concerned that he was going to hurt the little boy than that he was going to hurt her. I wondered if maybe her suicide was a way to force him to accept the little boy, cementing it her death. In any case, as with most suicides, I suspect if she’d just held out a little longer, things would have resolved themselves, painfully but surely. Ah well. Very sad.
Was I the only one who thought he was gathering courage to kill himself? As a soldier and Senator, I thought that having his honor compromised in such a way might be too much to bear. Additionally, the writers took time to contrast his character with Pullo’s - Pullo would have killed her. I never got the feeling Niobe was in danger in that scene.
Yeah, I was thinking the same thing. Or, rather, I wasn’t sure if he picked up the knife in anger at Niobe or wiht the intention of doing himself in. That was a sad ending. Vorenus is being swept along in the current, with not much control over his life. I’ve been wondering all along how Vorenus could NOT know the truth about the kid. Someone surely would’ve told him, if only out of *shadenfreude *as he started to rise in power.
What are those long stick-like things that Caesar’s body guards (or whatever they are) carry around throught the streets. Are the weapons or just some sort of ceremonial objects?
