I think I will like this series once I figure it out. I have just rented the first season from netflix. I am on the fourth or fifth episode and I am a bit lost as to whos who and whats what. Help! Who is that sexy evil bitch? How is she related to Cesar. Did Cesar take Rome or not? Where is that Kato dude?
I recommend that you visit the HBO website about the show, which has an episode guide and character descriptions with pictures of each, so you can figure who everyone is.
You must be talking about Atia! 
Is there no episode this week? Only a rerun is on the schedule for tomorrow.
Atia.
She’s his mother.
Not yet. But soon.
Dead.
Wrong Caesar. Christopher is still on Season 1. In that context, she’s Julius Caesar’s niece.
Oops, sorry! :o
Oscars tomorrow. Normally nobody runs any competition to them…
:smack: I’m about as with-it as a Nehru collar. I will now shut up and listen to everyone. […cowering in corner…]
All excellent comments. Julius Ceasars niece, thats good to know. I’m gonna hafta watch these all again, cause I think I missed alot O’ stuff.
OK so this is very interesting. I am watching each episode multiple times. I love this history. How accurate is it? Was Ceasar an epileptic? That would certainly add to his personality. I am very much looking forward to these escapades. How historically accurate is it? Is there an actual woman by the name of Atia? I would really like to have historical sex with her so I hope the answer is yes.
Yes, there was. Atia is really the name of Octavian’s mother. However all the history books indicate that the real Atia was a perfect model of the virtuous Roman matron. Her husband (Octavian’s stepfather) was also alive during most of the time portrayed on the show.
Caesar was an epileptic. Atia existed, but was nothing like the way she is portrayed, AFAIK. The producers are staying reasonably close to history, in the broad term, but they are conflating events, compressing time-lines, and inventing wholesale any number of subplots. None of that is bad, mind you. The real thing would be next-to-impossible to tell. They have managed to do a very good job with what they have been presenting, and have stayed reasonably true to History throughout. I have my complaints, but they are for the most part minor. You won’t hit my major complaint until you get to the 2nd season episode “Philippi.” There they copped out and totally messed up an historical event that would have played out beautifully as it really happened.
In general, where the details of the actual history are known, the show stays very close to them. But when the details of historical characters are vague (like Atia), they take some liberties. And they’ve injected some non-historical characters (Pullo and Vorenus, for example) so that they have some freedom to create plot threads without the constraint of historical facts.
But when it comes to characters like Julius Caesar, Octavian, Cicero, Sextus Pompeii, and the historical events around them, they maintain a surprising level of accuracy.
I’ve also heard that they are very accurate with the background details - the depiction of Roman religion, the day to day life of Romans, the customs, the technology, etc.
If I remember right, Pullo and Vorenus DID exist, but apart from their names little is known. Apparently they were rival legionaries who ended up fighting alongside each other with the brotherhood we see between the characters in the series. Much as they didn’t actually get along, they were still sword-brothers and had one another’s backs.
As far as Niobe and Eirene and the Collegium and the rest, uh, that’s pretty much HBO. 
I’m pretty sure that’s beyond my early season 1 knowledge so (Sticking thumbs in ears) NANANANANANANANANANANANANA!
Just a side correction, Kato is a comic relief minor character in The Tragical Historie of Orenthal James Simpson, no doubt to be written in the near future by an enterprising neoclassical dramatist. 
Cato was a Roman statesman who stood in opposition to Caesar, and ended up suiciding. He was named after his great-grandfather, the implacable foe of Carthage during the Punic Wars.
Actually they aren’t. You should know who Niobe is. She’s Vorenus’s wife.