Rome/Empire review part 1

Something awful happened a few weeks ago: I finally reached the last episode of the last season of The Wire. This was bad because it meant I would have nothing to do in the evenings, except maybe try to get a social life, which of course would be absurd.

Gratuitous picture of Hadrian's Wall

Happily Mithraea came up to visit around this time, and we took a long-overdue trip to Hadrian’s Wall. Later we were in HMV when I noticed a Rome-themed drama I’d never heard of – Rome: Blood and Sand. I bought it on the strength of the box art, and because the blurb on the back said:

ROME boasts “powerful acting,” says the Wall Street Journal, with a hot young cast that includes [a bunch of people you’ve never heard of] and Emily Blunt. Filmed entirely in scenic Italy, ROME tells the thrilling story of a hero’s rise amidst the greed, blood, and lust of anctient [sic] Rome.

Emily Blunt struggling to cope with so much powerful acting

So I paid my eight pounds Sterling and walked home, clutching the DVD excitedly.

I was already intrigued by the name of the mini-series, because there’s another show called Rome, and also a show called Spartacus: Blood and Sand. What could this be? A bizarre mish-mash of the two? A cheap attempt to cash in?

Actually, both. It was hard to find on IMDB, because the show, broadcast in 2005, was originally called Empire, not Rome. In fact the DVD menu screen still has the title Empire. So changing the title on the front of the box to Rome and ripping off the subtitle Blood and Sand is a pretty transparent attempt to trick idiots (like me) into buying it.

Now I am confused

We’ll put aside for the moment the fact that the blurb also claims that the first emperor Octavius was Julius Caesar’s nephew, rather than his great-nephew. The box art is unintentionally hilarious for another reason: the tagline.

Really? Because I assume that this is referring to the hero of the mini-series, Octavius. And unless Wikipedia has been lying to me all these years, didn’t he found the Roman empire? Maybe ‘one man’s fight to found an entire empire!’ just doesn’t sound as good.

So even before we pressed the play button, the signs were promising. And it would only get better. This show, which on the surface looks like a tacky TV mini-series, turned out to be a radical re-interpretation of Roman history. It has changed everything I thought I knew about the founding of the empire. For instance, I never knew that the young Octavius fled from Rome, was taken into slavery, and was then sent to the ‘Combat Dungeons of Arkham’. My education was about to begin...

Roman Holiday

Mithraea and I went on a Roman roadtrip a couple of weeks ago and visited a few piles of stone. Here are some photos.

A very tidy ruin

This is Wroxeter. It's near Shrewsbury, which has two claims to fame: 1) It's the setting for Ellis Peters' series of novels about the medieval monk-detective Cadfael, and 2) nobody knows how to pronounce it (I've heard Shroosbury, Shrowsbury, Shoosbury).

Wroxeter is now just a pile of crap in a field, but it was once the fourth biggest city in Roman Britain. The big piece of standing masonry, known as 'the Old Work', was a wall of the civic bathhouse.

What ruins should look like

A bunch of people recently built a replica Roman villa on the site and filmed the process for a multi-part Channel 4 reality documentary, because nowadays people will watch any old shit about something being built or renovated. The gimmick of the show was that the people who built it were regular 21st century builders who, naturally enough, had no idea how to build a Roman villa, and had to learn from scratch on a tight budget.

Mithraea and a replica Roman villa

They even got the 21st century builders to do the decorating. For comparison, here is a genuine Roman fresco from Pompeii.

Amazing

And now from the Wroxeter Roman villa:

Less amazing

It's a bit like what Roman villas would have been like if Roman villas had been built by children. We also checked out the medieval church in the nearby village, but only because its builders used Roman columns and stone when constructing it.

Spot the Roman columns

We went to Caerwent in south-east Wales, another old Roman city which is now largely abandoned. It has a lot more to see than Wroxeter, and the remains were even more impressive than I was expecting. The south side of the city wall has survived amazingly well - to give you a sense of scale in the next photo, Mithraea is about twelve feet tall.

The missing brickwork is the part Mithraea ate for lunch

Quite a lot of Caerwent has been excavated and left exposed - a temple, the forum and basilica and a some townhouses. Here we see Mithraea walking along an actual Roman street. You can see the drain and building foundations and everything.

OMG WHERE IS MY HOUSE GONE LOL

Not far from Caerwent is Caerleon, whose highlights include a pretty awesome Roman museum stuffed full of stuff, and a very well presented section of the legionary bathhouse which includes an olympic-length swimming pool for the Roman legionaries to practice swimming. Also visible was a massive amphitheatre which was full of kids drinking cider and eating crack.

Next we headed for the Cotswolds, a pretty corner of England where all the well-heeled wankers of Londinium built their country homes, thus pricing locals out of the housing market. This is Great Witcombe.


In olden times it supposedly looked more like this:


A little to the west is Chedworth, an even more impressive villa. Unfortunately much of it is covered with scaffolding as it's undergoing a huge refurbishment that won't be finished until 2012. We were so mad we kicked over a bunch of hypocaust piles. Here's a reconstruction though:


And a lizard we saw:


All in all, I learned a lot about the Romans, and I saw the first lizard I've ever seen in Britain, so it was definitely worthwhile.

House and Housesteads

This is my mascot at the kitchen window. I was going to put him at the front of the house but I was afraid people might think I was some kind of flag-waving nationalist, and I'm never going to make that mistake again.

I found this pot in a charity shop and was instantly smitten. Not only is it perfect for storing teabags for easy access, but it can be used to reflect my inner mood. For example, if I hear some good news, such as that HBO have given the green light to a 5-season remake of the 90s sci-fi cult classic Babylon 5, I can have the pot like this to express my joy.

If, on the other hand, I hear some bad news, such as that HBO have decided not to give the green light to a 5-season remake of the 90s sci-fi cult classic Babylon 5, I can turn the mug around to express my anger and sadness.

I also went up to Hadrian's Wall today. The last time I went I was 17 and cycling the length of Britain with Dunk, and we stopped one night at a Youth Hostel near the Wall and in the evening I walked up to take a look at it, was disappointed to find that it was the size of a garden wall, and then pulled a calf muscle to boot. This visit was better.

Here's a text exchange I had with Mithraea, who shares my reasonable infatuation with all things Roman. (I apologise in advance for the obscenities, but it was an emotionally charged moment for both of us.)

TARQUIN: I'm sending you this text from hadrian's wall. I am literally standing right on the actual fucking wall with a boner the size of the parthian empire.

MITHRAEA: That is totally fucking awesome. I hope you have your gladius out and your helmet too. Marcus Aurelius would be proud!

TARQUIN: I am stabbing every scotch person i see.

MITHRAEA: I hope you scream "remember mons graupius!" at them in latin as the blade sinks in.