Julia C

Africa and

Perhaps the more absolutist period of the Empire (the so-called Dominate) could be compared to an oriental despotate, but surely there's no real comparison between a Greek (Athenian, you mean?) democracy and the Roman Republic. I suppose the Eklesia could approximate the Centuriate assembly in style, but really, that must be more of convenience. The Eklesia seems a natural outgrowth of the Greek agora type discussion place whereas the Comitia Centuriata is obviously militaristic in origin. Neither influenced the other if we take the traditional dates (509BC for the Republic and 504 for Athens) of establishment at face value. Roman magistrate and Athenian magistrates were completely different. A consul had significantly more power than an Athenian archon. Also significant is that the Athenian voting population was a lot smaller than the Roman. The Athenians would not dream of granting their citizenship to foreigners! There would be no Athenian Cato, Marius, or even Cicero.

Phillippi is the 6th episode of this season, not the 10th? Well, that's good. Maybe we might get to Julia's birth in 39 after all...

Sadly true. They've always "skipped" over the main historical events, but the first season always showed us peripheral events and had strong lead ins and good conclusions (like Pharsalus, which wasn't really shown). We still saw history. In this case, we see short scenes with the historical figures acting as transitions between the character drama. I'm hoping that they're just building towards the later conflict and that these brief moments are engineered to be "teasers" for what's to come rather than being the new direction of the show.

I was glad to see M

Saturninus is hardly a "noble" sort of demagogue, if there is such a thing, though.

Yeah, chronologically, it seems they skipped Cicero's whole defiant stand against Antonius. The very reason that Cicero is still considered--to this day--the defender of the Republic is because he rose to the occasion to be its greatest champion. I would have much rather seen less plotting with Duro and more Cicero in this episode. To name the entire episode after him and then dedicate a few minutes at the end (where Cicero himself is running away) doesn't give him his due credit.

I agree. And he's been absolutely fantastic so far. Not to get into the details of this season, but he seems even more perfect than he was in the first. He has a real fire in him and a sort of zeal too. He still seems very earnest, but there's a sudden deadly seriousness to him too. Though I have to say my favorite portrayal of him was in The October Horse by Colleen McCoullough. Only two after Philippi? Ohh, why must things be so close. I am torn--I suppose it's good this season is chronologically slower than the first, but only if they get renewed for a third. Otherwise it's for nought. But yes, giving the timing of the marriage, if we see Livia we'll see me. I guess we can both hope for the same thing, then!

I was expecting Octavian to fall victim to asthma during the whole brawl with Antonius. I was at the edge of my seat and was almost crying when Antonius was choking the poor kid. Poor little C

The Goddess Concord, properly known as Concordia. You can give a guess why they invoked her.

Yeah, he has to grow up. Still, I hope that Max plays him until the beginning of the triumvirate. He was only 19 when he was consul, after all, I'm sure he could pull that off! I suppose that if this season is going to Actium then he'll have to grow up. It had better, because Phillipi just won't cut it. I want to my namesake born in 39.

This is a tricky question for me. I do not condone the tactics of either Triumvirate and don't approve of mob violence. I also don't trust the unwashed masses to really know what's best for them. I do absolutely agree that the Senate ought to be the firm paternal hand guiding the Republic. However, once the watersheds were broken it was pretty silly to harken back to a Republic that was never ideal. The senators were pretty greedy and manipulative, and they needed watching. I am an obvious imperialist in the sense that I support the Augustan Principate in its theories and benevolent autocracy. I must confess, though, that if the Republic was ever as ideal as it was supposed to be in the period before the Punic Wars, then it would be ideal. So I have difficulty answering this question. Augustus, after all, was theoretically more conservative than his divine father and certainly felt that Cato Uticensis was worthy of some respect. But for all that, he still did not hesitate to use the mob to hold him up above the rest. Remember that his reign was theoretically just the ascendancy of one patrician house over the rest, which is something that they had all wanted to aspire to. It was very traditional in that respect--the only reason it seems vastly new is because no house had entirely managed it, though some had come very close. The difference is that it took them several generations, they achieved primacy by pieces and Augustus did it all at once.

I wasn't even aware that another actor was going to take over. That's a shame, Max is excellent. But no, as of the first episode, Perkis is still playing Octavian.

The episode was absolutely stunning. At this point I've gotten used to the historical liberties, and the show tends to be generally on the mark at any rate. More importantly, this show is one of the more colorful and lively representations of the Roman world, which is what I enjoy. Antonius was smashing. His character really came to his own. I also particularly enjoyed Octavian (we can now call him that without feeling bad!) begin turning those wheels in his devious little head. He's a darling! I was also perplexed by the wet nurse, so I'm finding the speculation here very interesting. Did anyone catch the Latin funeral chanting? I've only watched my recording once, so I didn't try writing it down. What were they saying?

I recently did a double-take while watching both Indiana Jones and Back to the Future. Both movies had a casting director named 'Valorie Messala' which strikes me as incredibly similar to the old patrician Valeria Messala name. It's likely that there's no real descent there at all, but it was still pleasant to find.

If I may be indulged in a speculative question of my own -- I wonder how things might've been had the child of Tiberius and Julia survived. I've always thought the breakdown of the marriage subsequent to that was something of a tragedy.

I'd argue that, under the republic, the Cornelii, Fabii,

Aurelianus--I was thinking about much the same things earlier, vis-a-vis constitutional monarchies, and I was wondering if the role of the princeps senatus could have been revised a bit. Polybius loved to remark on the perfect balance of the Roman state, but its startling impermanence was one of the problems in the system. Taking the old republican office of princeps--stripping away any Augustan connotations--and making it out to be a sort of semi-permanent magistracy would have been ideal. The position was already given to the most esteemed member of the Senate--fleshing it out and giving it an apolitical purpose could have helped provide the stability that the late republic needed.

These are entirely different hierarchies. Caste, class, and rank. Caste was not a term that the Romans used, but it is a convenient term for this discussion. Patrician and plebeian status was hereditary and could only be changed by adoption, Reges, and Augusti. The distinction became largely meaningless in practical terms during the late republic, but there was always a special distinction accorded to patricians. You simply had higher birth. Class refers to the five propertied classes that made up the Centuries in the comitia centuriata. Senators were invariably members of the first class, whereas knights were part of the first two classes. Those who did not fit into the five classes were the capite censi--their only mark on a census was that of their own person. Rank refers to the social distinction granted by offices and magistracies. Senators and equestrians were included in this via property assessments and censorial additions. Being a nobile or a consular would probably fit as one of these distinctions as well.

I've heard that the the tetragrammatic B--Basileus Basileon Basileuon Basileusin--was used as the arms of the Eastern Empire. I've never seen the logo in person, but it's a set of four Bs. I'm not quite sure how they were arranged, so I'd like to get a chance to see this logo myself. If anyone has a link to pictures, some information on how it was used, and/or a place to find such things then your help would be greatly appreciated. I'm not very familiar with the Eastern Empire.

There aren't many options for women, were there? Being a senatorial girl would have material advantages, at the cost of absolutely no personal freedom. On the other hand, being a woman in a poor household wouldn't be very comfortable. I suppose being a Roman princess would be the best approach. Something like Agrippina the Younger (minus the nastiness). The power and influence would be excellent, but marrying relatives and that sort of things... nah, I'm not so devious. There are definate downsides, of course, take a look at what happened to my namesake. Being a society lady isn't too far away from what I'm already used to, anyway.

Nero was adopted by Claudius and Claudius was the one that exiled Seneca. So essentially, yes, the line refers to Claudius. Recall that adoption was a very formal affair in the Roman world and that since one moves into the family line of his adoptive father, then that individual would definately be called the adoptee's father.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't Pompey's Mediterranean command different from Caesar's? I was under the impression Caesar's Gallic command was two seperate proconsular commands with a five year term on each. He didn't have the degree of independance that Pompey did--which makes it all the more surprising that he exceeded his authority and waged aggressive warfare.

I don't think this is necessarily the case. Sulla, ostensibly, had a reason for his march on the City. It may have been out of a lust for power, or he may have consciously felt that the use of the concilium plebis to strip commands from lawfully appointed proconsuls was dangerous to the Republic. Sulla wasn't the first ambitious general, he was emblematic of an entire breed of ambitious generals who would use various legal tricks to gain commands for themselves at the expense of others. The Principate may have been amazingly stable, but it had no accountability. It was the opposite of the republican system, really, where all the consuls were accountable after their short term of office but the limitations of the lex Ogulnia (and various others that restricted reelection) also lead to haphazard leadership. The good thing was that a poor leader would be out of office in a year, whereas an incompetent Princeps would continue to rule until he was killed or died naturally. Did Tiberius really rule the Empire when he went to his luxury resort on Capri

I think that the Republic was one of the things that was uniquely Roman. Though Augustus (in my opinion) started out with good intentions, placing a single person over the Republic/SPQR/Roma undercut the entire reason why the Roman identity was special. The Republic was something special and it made the Romans into something special. I do think there were MORE than just four problems with the Republic--it definately needed to be streamlined and made into a more workable system. As it stood, it was like a moving trainwreck--surviving on its own inertia. It's inarguable, though, that many of the greatest achievements were performed under the Republic. A synthesis of the Republic and Principate would have been ideal. The Principate was more meritocratic (to an extent--it did surpress talent in the upper classes, ironically) and more equitable for the provincials, for instance. It would have been great if all those problems in the First Century BCE were avoided, but I think they had to happen. I think that they could serve as an example of all that could go wrong, so that sort of thing would be avoided in the future. If Sulla and C