WTF was with Antony’s “do I amuse you?” tirade? Please tell me I am ignorant and Joe Pesci’s Goodfellas character was borrowing it from some speech instead of the other way around.
Apparently IRL Octavia was a devoted stepmother to Helios and Selene (she also had 3 children already when she married Anthony who himself was a father of 4). And was the real Marc Anthony reported to be drugged out of his mind?
That’s so ahistorical! But nonetheless, you gotta admire a roman period piece being able to throw in a reference to Fargo.
I enjoyed the final episode a lot in spite of being pissed at HBO for ending the great shows early and keeping crap around forever. I can’t believe Rome cost a lot more than the Soprano’s with all of the big salaries. I’m still mad that Deadwood was cancelled.
I will miss the show, but noticed they did seem to be suddenly working with a limited budget. The last heroic scenes were filmed with a cast of dozens…every shot of the joyful masses was a close shot with 30 people tops in any scene. They did wrap it up fairly well and at least there isn’t a whole lot left to wonder about.
It was a great show and sorry to see it go, just as I was sorry to see the end of Deadwood, Six Feet Under and Sex And The City - and soon the final episodes of The Sopranos.
They actually showed Cleo & Pullo having sex in season 1. Cleo had been exiled to the desert by her brother’s troops and she was waiting for them to come and kill her. Pullo & Vorenus stepped in at the last minute and saved her, after which she tried to seduce Vorenus but he went all proper Roman on her and sent Pullo in to do the dirty work. It was clear that Cleo slept with Pullo for the same reason she seduced the others - they were all powerful men who offered her protection.
From her point of view, there probably wasn’t much difference between a Caesar and soldier. An Egyptian God-Queen would not have been impressed by the distinctions between plebes and patricians.
Anyway, in terms of the show, it was not outside the realm of possibility that Ceasarion was Pullo’s boy or that he survived.
I got a completely different impression… that Cleo knew she was going to be sleeping with Caesar very soon, wanted to get pregnant by him for political reasons, and figured she might as well have sex with another roman to increase her chances.
My knowledge of the history isn’t great, but did Cleopatra really consider herself an “Egyptian God Queen”? She was a greek from a greek speaking family, right? I know the Ptolemey’s adopted the title and some of the trappings of the Egyptian Pharohs, but did they really take it that seriously or was it all for show? Did they adopt the Egyptian gods or still worship Zeus et al?
It is hard to say who she worshipped or what her self perception was. Unfortunately, we know very little about Cleopatra or other women of power at the time (I had to do a presentation on Servilia last quarter and was shocked at the paucity of information), to say nothing of your regular workaday Jane.
One thing for sure though is that it is a long way from Ptolemy I to Cleopatra. A lot Macedonian culture was probably taken over by Egyptian or generally Mediterranean culture. The whole brother marrying sister thing? Not Macedonian. Their royalty tended to be (culturally) exogamous.
Where? 
Caesarion was born 47BC, died in 30BC, that’d make him 17. We know that Ceasar ordered his death and it was so reported. But in the show Pullo did report the death and Augustus trusted Pullo completely, thus that’d good enough.
Liberal- Vorenus and Pullo were supposed to be the “best of the best” and also expert killers not just soldiers. I can completely see that happening.
And there were period doubts about Caesarion’s paternity:
http://www.tyndale.cam.ac.uk/Egypt/ptolemies/ptolemy_xv.htm
[4] Plutarch, Caesar 49.10, Antony 54.4. However, doubts were expressed about his paternity in ancient times, and also by some modern scholars. Dio Cassius 47.31.5 says that Cleopatra “pretended” that Caesar was his father. Suetonius, Caesar 52, is carefully neutral. He notes that he was said to closely resemble Caesar, but also that Caesar’s secretary G. Oppius wrote a book proving that Caesar could not be Caesarion’s father. He also says that Caesar “allowed” Cleopatra to name the child after him, implying that he did not in fact acknowledge him as his, but then notes that Antony had declared to the Senate that Caesar did acknowledge the boy as his. Nicolaus of Damascus, in his Life of Augustus 20, claims that Caesar explicitly repudiated him in his will. But it is completely clear that the question was a major political issue after Caesar’s death, because it was necessary for Octavian to establish beyond doubt that he was Caesar’s true heir, even though only his great-nephew, while it was just as necessary for Octavian’s opponents to show that he was not, so none of these statements can be completely trusted
Here’s what Plutarch said of the death of Caesarion:
*"But Caesarion, who was said to be Cleopatra’s son by Julius Caesar, was sent by his mother, with much treasure, into India, by way of Ethiopia. There Rhodon, another tutor like Theodorus, persuaded him to go back, on the ground that Caesar invited him to take the kingdom. But while Caesar was deliberating on the matter, we are told that Areius said:—
“Not a good thing were a Caesar too many.”
82 As for Caesarion, then, he was afterwards put to death by Caesar,— after the death of Cleopatra"*
So we have no details of the death. Assigning Pullo to do it and believing Pullo is acceptable.
I don’t recall all that. You could be right. I just remember that Cleo picked Vorenus first because he was the highest ranking guy there. I don’t think she was portrayed as a slut but as someone willing to manipulate men with sex for her own purposes, which sometimes coincided with Egypt’s purposes.
I don’t know for real but in the show at least, Cleo (and Ceasarion) seemed quite serious about their relationship with the Egyptian gods. I do know that some people at the time considered the Egyptian & Mid East gods to be variations on the Olympic pantheon. Herodotus called Dionysus, “Osiris”. And Isis worship was fairly big in Rome and all around the Mediterranean. IIRC, Servila was praying before Isis (wearing the cow horns of the later Isis statues) when she was kidnapped.
Anyway, I was mostly replying to Ivylass’ assertion that Cleo wouldn’t have slept with Pullo because she considered herself a god. I think in the show at least, she did consider herself so. But if we can say one thing for the ancient gods, they slept with all sorts of people.
Even the best of the best succumbs to injuries and aging. But like I said, it wasn’t just the superhero antics by those two. It was the fact that by standing back to back, they could guard only one side of the open wagon. Not a single Roman went ‘round to another side or even threw a knife or stone at the boy. They just stood around waiting their turn in the tag team. It was like a horribly conceived and choreographed Wrasslin’ match.
She whispered to her slave that she wished Ceasar were here with her now because she was “between the floods and a child would come as surely as spring.” After she says that, the slave and she exchange a look and Vorenus is summoned.
I’ve enjoyed watching the series, but the last few episodes have bothered me in that they seem to have taken way too many shortcuts.
Something that kind of bothered me about the whole thing is that approximately 19 years have passed from the beginning of the series to the conclusion. Vorenus was a Centurion at that point so he had to be at least thirty if not older. At this point Vorenus is approximately 49 if not older and Pullo is almost the same age. Shouldn’t they be slowing down especially since their injuries from a lifetime of fighting should have slowed them down.
Also, if Vorenus was indeed wounded in southern Egypt, how did the group get back to Rome? Weren’t Octavian’s men watching the ports for Caesarion. From what I recall a trip from Alexandria to Rome have taken at least a month depending on the weather? If so, wouldn’t Vorenus have either died or recovered by the time he got back to Rome?
There was a “month later” thingie on the screen when the scene shifted back to Rome. That’s what gives me hope that Vorenus survived his wound. If he lasted a month, he could be okay. Wouldn’t an infected wound or torn up innards kill somebody quicker than that? I choose to believe he was recovering when we last saw him.
That’s the way I see it, too. Any infection or peretonitis would have killed him long before, if the agony of the trip didn’t. So I think he survived.
That certainly makes sense, but Pullo seems to think that Vorenus is still on death’s door when they get back to Rome.
How long can an infection take to kill someone.
Yes. I think the assumption was that she was ovulating when she had sex with Pullo, but it would be at least a few days later when she hooked up with Caesar, so the assumption is that the kid is Pullo’s. Makes for a more interesting story.
Was the handmaid attending to Cleo the same one that we saw with her last season? She looks familiar. And was that an actual Egyptian women tied to the cart during the triumph scene or just a dummy and wig?
I’d suggest that the character of Lucius Vorenus, a primus pilus in a Caesarian legion serving from (probably) the beginning of the Gallic Wars all the way to the Ides and beyond, could mildly be described as being one of the most individually dangerous human beings living in the Roman Empire at the time. Pushing fifty with family issues would just make him especially ornery.
But I agree his making it home would not be especially likely, though better knowledge of prevailing wind currents could change my opinion on that.