Heraclius was the greatest Commander of his day, unfortunately for him, Khalid Bin Walid came along and stole his crown. Same as Pompey actually, he lived long enough to see someone better.
Maybe Ceaser would have ended up a footrest in Persia if he had lived?
I liked Octavian when he was portrayed by the teenager Max Pirkis. In the first episode when he explains to Titus Pullo and Lucius Vorenus why his great uncle Julius Caesar doesn’t care if they recover the eagles. Or later on when Caesar releases Pompey’s son with a peace proposal, Octavian asks him why and quickly grasps the reasoning. Marc Antony, like Sonny in “Godfather” with the Sollozzo drug deal, is too thick and emotional to realize what he is doing. Later after Caesar is assassinated Octavian realizes the box the conspirators put themselves in and gets Julia and Antony to stay in Rome. The adult Octavian was too often a mask plus the second season was a bit too rushed to finish it properly.
Here’s Appian talking about the battle of Munda. It’s 45 BC, it’s the final battle of the civil wars:
Do you picture Ciaran Hinds’ gloomy Caesar doing that? Maybe, but damn, it’s a stretch. As I said, I want him a lot more flamboyant and audacious.
Oh, piffle - Appian wrote almost 200 years after Munda. What actually happened of course is that Caesar calmly laid down a set of orders, said “now go do it”, then had a quiet little picnic while the battle raged :D.
Yeah, okay - I have to agree that Hinds’ portrayal was a bit bloodless relative to Appian’s version. But I still liked his performance.
Also I agree with Jim’s Son - first season Octavian as really quite good and a very believable prodigy. Second season was a thorough-going disappointment, despite that rather transparent attempt to liven him up by creating a consensual BDSM relationship with Livia.
Heraclius was solidly competent in the field, but IMHO is a bit overrated as a general - he got thrashed a number of times. What he was really good at was strategic vision and exploiting fissures in the enemy ranks. He did an excellent job playing off Persian factions against each other. Sadly for him that skill didn’t come in that handy against Arab zealots who could not be divided against their own by the time he encountered them. Though his negotiating did come in handy when he was sacrificing territory for time to try and rebuild beyond the Tarsus.
But yeah, inevitable hagiography aside, Occam’s Razor does suggest Khalid ibn al-Walid was a hell of a general and better than anyone the Byzantines or Persians could put up against him.
Well, it’'s not just Munda, either, it’s his whole personality. When you think about it, Caesar is always doing crazy shit. He’s constantly painting himself into corners, knowing that he’ll have to come up with some kind of bizarre portal technology to get out. That’s the strategy for his entire political career, really. He’s running up massive debts while bribing and intimidating his way into position, willingly making lots of powerful enemies along the way, so that he can get in a position to conquer something massive (like Gaul), get a ton of loot and cash, popular support, and loyal crack soldiers. Then, he’ll use some combination of those to get out of the jam he’s now in.
He’s playing with high stakes. And, as I say, he’s a gambler who’s trusting his luck. March on Rome with just a single legion? Alea iacta est, indeed. That’s not cold calculation. It’s: “Damn, that’s a gamble! I’d have to be nuts to do that. OK, let’s go all in!”
Or run the odds on, say, Alesia. OK, we’re outnumbered, what, five to one? So, a Roman legionary is worth two Gallic tribesmen. But, we have Caesar’s veterans, so make it three. Then, we’ve built ourselves a great defensive position. I guess we can do four to one. The final part? Add Caesar’s luck. OK, we can take them. I really think that’s how his mind works. And, of course, he’s right.
Then there’s stuff like the stunt he pulls on Cato at (if I remember this right) the time of the Cataline conspiracy. Caesar is advocating clemency for the conspirators, while Cicero and the conservatives want them dead, so Cato is suspecting that Caesar is involved somehow. At one point, Caesar receives a letter during a senate meeting. Cato jumps on him, thinking it’s some secret conspiratorial message, and demands the letter read out loud. Turns out it’s a love letter to Caesar, from Cato’s sister.
I don’t see even a younger version of Ciaran Hinds punking someone like that. Actually, right now, I think I want to cast some kind of action hero version of Jim Carrey, if such a thing exists. Only more intelligent and charismatic. Not sure who fits that description, but I’m open to suggestions.
Or, what the heck… Jim Carrey can be serious, too. I’ve seen Spotless Mind. And he’s about the right age for late career Caesar now, isn’t he? So, should I cast the least likely Caesar ever?
Yeah, maybe I shouldn’t go too far with that. 
Although, I have decided on a rock & roll soundtrack. And that I’m sticking with.
Or, I dunno. Maybe I’m just having one of my moods. Actually, maybe my real complaint is that Rome is treated too seriously, in general. Certainly the Late Republic, and certainly Caesar’s generation, which sometimes strikes me as some kind of weird punk rock scene, only with togas.
I was away for one weekend and this thread went in many directions. I must share on two points
You are entitled to your opinion and you make a very reasonable case for practicing if history. But as it happens, the professional historians don’t agree.
I am a historian - by education, no by profession - and I was taught that there is endless discussion about what the topics of study and analytical methods of history as a science should or could be. But the few things everyone agrees on are:
Serious ‘if history’ is IMO beyond anyones capabilities. To illustrate: someone once made a study of how the US would have developed IF there were no rail roads. He did point out some interesting side effects that tend to be overlooked (eg the additional migration of rail workers to the Wild West from both the Eastern US and China). But he was also forced to presume that enourmous canals would be dug instead of the railroad tracks we know …
Then a few thoughts on the HBO series Rome:
I also had a much more flamboyant type of Caesar in mind than Ciaran Hinds, but this was probably a well considered choice: all the more room for Mark Antony, Titus Pullo, Cleopatra etc. I haven’t a clue if the real Mark Antony was anything like James Purefoy’s portrayal, but I loved it!
I’m not going to argue with critics of the portrayals, incorrect ages and dates in Rome, but any such dicussion obscures the fact that it was revolutionary in the way it portrayed ‘daily life’ in ancient Rome, most prominently in its use of the colors brown and red: blood, gore, manure, mud, smoke, dust etc - as opposed to the usual 19th century idea of Rome with clean and nearly empty streets and white marble buildings and statues.
I am not a historian, just a guy who dicks around on the internet, but the basic problem with “what if” history is obvious enough even to me: The results are unverifiable. Which is why I feel guilty about saying “what if”.
That said, and to get a bit introspective for a moment here, I’m noticing that the only “what if” questions I care about are those that illustrate some point about what did happen. I don’t particularly care how history might have played out in the long run if Caesar hadn’t been assassinated, or if Antony had won at Actium, beyond how those questions can help say something about the historical Caesar, Antony or Augustus. So in my case, I guess it’s a mental trick or rhetorical device to think about actual history, not to go off in some wild speculative direction.
Still probably not the best methodology. Maybe I should work on avoiding it more.
Yeah, I guess that’s the problem with a more accurate Caesar: He would overshadow everyone.
Although, really, isn’t that the entire point of Caesar? He overshadows everyone. Seems to sum him up.
Anyone who studied Latin inevitably comes to hate Cato after translating the *In Catilinam. *My guess is that people involved in writing and casting just needed some outlet for this hatred so they made him into a sour conservative intellectual who can’t keep up with modern times - as opposed to Caesar and Mark Antony. Comparable thing happened when Monty Python was writing the ‘Romanus eunt domus’ / Romani ite domum’ scene from The Life of Brian …
Psst…Cicero was the one who wrote In Catilinam. As far as I know, nothing written by Cato still survives.
Don’t overstate your position. Some professional historians wouldn’t agree with me. And some wouldn’t agree with you. There are plenty of professional historians who have no problem with speculating on historical what-if’s.
gaaah … I goofed big time indeed :smack:
But someone was describing Cato as a throwback conservative, so I immediately got Cicero (the one from Rome) in my head. So … everything I said about Cato (IRL or in Rome) is about Cicero really.
But I’m still puzzled. Was Cato even in that series? Wasn’t he dead and buried by Caesars time? And if we have nothing written from him, how do we know about his infamous Ceterum censeo (delendam esse Carthago)
Huh? We’re talking about Cato the Younger, not Cato the Elder. Which I thought would be obvious.
Do you want another cup of coffee this morning?
We have plenty of stuff by Cato the Elder: De Agra Cultura (On the Cultivation of Fields), his manual on farming, Origines, his history of Italy, and then extracts from a letter to his son, and some speeches he made.
Well, with that weird confusion cleared up (hopefully), there is a point about Cato (junior) that I should have noted in my post on him upthread: He has a family history to live up to, and he’s consciously modelling himself on his stoic and curmudgeonly ancestor. Which is a very Roman thing to do, and which obviously goes a long a way in explaining the younger Cato as a person.
Maybe the *Rome *creators thought: “This young Cato is just a wannabe old Cato, anyway. Let’s just dump him, and instead bring his grandpa in through a time machine.” 
And Mae West (the month is spelled wrong!)
Frederick March
June Allyson
In fact, there are many books/articles in said books written by professional historians which are Alt/hist or what if speculation.
