In last night’s episode someone said something along the lines of ‘I’m going to drink all the wine and smoke all the smoke!’ Did Romans smoke? If so, then what did they smoke? I thought that smoking was introduced to Europe from the New World a millennium and a half after Rome takes place?
I didn’t catch that line.
From the tobacco.org website:
Prehistory: Although small amounts of nicotine may be found in some Old World plants, including belladonna and Nicotiana africana, and nicotine metabolites have been found in human remains and pipes in the Near East and Africa, there is no indication of habitual tobacco use in the Ancient world, on any continent save the Americas.
Great episode. I’m loving Lucius and Pullo.
No, Pullo was going to “do all the whores” or something like that. No tobaccky.
‘Do all the whores and smoke all the smoke’ may have been the line.
That’s what I thought I heard too; unless Titus is an incense-sniffer, I don’t know what it meant.
I’m more curious about the brain surgery we see. Titus acquires a depressed skull fracture in a tavern brawl. The surgeon incises the scalp, folds it back to uncover the injury (it helps that Titus has a military crewcut), trepans the skull with a drill, and removes the broken fragments of skull, relieving pressure on the brain. Thus far, this is definitely something that a good Roman surgeon could do. But then the surgeon puts a small round metal plate over the opening and fixes it to the skull with tiny nails before closing the scalp. I don’t know of any evidence for the procedure with the plate, although it’s certainly feasible.
Oh, well, it’s not a documentary. As far as I can tell, they’ve done very well with uniforms, costumes and sets, and the major historical events are starting to unfold nicely. Though it was a funny Flashman-type touch that the attack on Antony’s escort, which pulls triggers open war between Caesar and Pompey, happens because Titus catches the eye of a personal enemy, who tries to kill him. (Since Titus seems to have been made by the gods to efficiently dispatch people, that’s a bad move.)
History geek moment: when I saw Caesar’s men crossing a river, and realized it was the Rubicon, I got chills.
Good episode – a little lighter, more humor; I’m really getting to like Titus Pullo.
I definitely heard the line as “smoke all the smoke”, and thought it odd, since tobacco was discovered in the New World.
History geek note: there seems to be a lot of conflation of what we would call politics with religion. The ceremony in which Marc Antony is made a consul (or was it a tribune?) looked like a religious ceremony, and not just an inauguration. Cicero says that to vote a certain way would be “irreligious”. Cato refers to the “sacred” borders of the city, when he’s scandalized that Titus and Lucius are still in uniform. Comments?
So when is Lucius going to find out about his son?
I loved the attention to detail. The Rubicon is really just a big stream, and they got it just right. The uniforms, as mentioned, are excellent. They looked used and lived in, right down to the dents in the helmets.
I also like the way HBO is showing lst week’s episode, followed by this week’s. Makes it easy to catch up if you happen to miss one.
Another question: when Caesar is getting the casualty reports from the incident in Rome, it’s given as “x number in battle, y from flux”. Which sent me to my dictionary…if he meant the number who bled to death from their wounds, this seems like a distinction without a difference. If he meant that people died of dysentery…that seems somewhat unlikely (not to mention irrelevant). What gives?
Funny comment: when he tells Pullo that the cleanest whores are ‘next to the Venereal temple’ (meaning, of course, the temple dedicated to Venus).
Flux would mean dysentery, or something like it. Before the twentieth century, it was common for an army to suffer more casualties from infectious diseases than from engaging the enemy. A proper Roman camp had better sanitation than a medieval military camp of a thousand years later, but there would still be deaths from disease.
There’s been dysentery in New Orleans in the past few days; you get it anytime a lot of people are together without proper sanitation.
I liked the scene where the sheperdess is being raped by the chief Roman while a detachment of soldiers waits on him. The thing that made it notable was the attitude of the soldiers – she was being raped in plain sight of them, but they waited with the same resigned patience they’d wait for someone taking a squat in the woods. There was not the least semblance of sympathy or concern for the shepherdess. The scene did a lot more to establish the casual brutality of the Romans than any set-piece in the Arena or on the battlefield could, where brutality would be expected.
She seemed to take it in stride too, which made me wonder if rape was commonplace. Not with the legions, that’s a given, but in general.
She was especially vulnerable, alongside the road alone, with no protection.
Yeah, it was brutal, even if she wasn’t kicking and screaming.
My wife and I were discussing this. Is it a given that she was being raped, or is it possible that she’d been given a couple of coins to supplement her sheep income?
Well, at least the soldiers weren’t ignoring her and going after the sheep… 
That was actually my thought, too – that she was a semi-willing, if not enthusiastic, participant.
That’s what I thought. She seemed very bored, as if she did that all the time.
Oh yes, politics and religion were totally intertwined. Chief priests(flamines) of the State religion were government appointed officials. A triumphing general ended his parade at the Temple of Jupiter, where sacrifices would then be made. Often one of those sacrifices was the king of whatever region had lost the war. The six Vestal Virgins were state supported and I believe recieved a pension when their thirty years of service were up.
There’s more, but nope, there wasn’t any seperation of “church and state” in Rome.
Or anywhere in the ancient world, that I can think of. The very idea would have been bizarre to the ancients.
Marijuana was known in the ancient world. Herodotus reports on its use by the Scythians in his History.