I was reminded by social media that HBO’s Rome aired for the first time 20 years ago today, on August 28, 2005. For all practical purposes, 1999 to 2008 seems to be the peak of historical TV series and movies: Troy, Master and Commander, The Patriot, Gladiator, Deadwood, Kingdom of Heaven, Apocalypto, Passion of the Christ, Flags of Our Fathers, Letters from Iwo Jima, Band of Brothers, Enemy at the Gates, The Last Samurai, and even foreign films such as Downfall and Malena. As historical fictions, despite some artistic freedom, they were mostly true to source material, aesthetically pleasing, and not stupidly “woke.”
It was also when millennials such as myself were coming of age, and neoconservatism was at its zenith. Rome is undoubtedly the standard against which every such series is still judged. Beautifully created by John Milius, two soldiers—Lucius Vorenus, played by Kevin McKidd, and Titus Pullo, played by the now-departed Ray Stevenson—find themselves at the end of an order and beginning of the next. As the republic of Rome was dying to give birth to an ever greater empire, America after 9/11 was getting into its own imperial adventures.
A history professor of mine once told me that the story of Rome is ever resonant because nothing happening around us is new, but has in some way already happened in the span of two thousand years of Roman history. In a way, we are still relitigating all major political battles, the questions of power and the questions of loyalty.
One of the most memorable moments of the series is when Caesar marches into Italy; Marc Antony comments that he seems unflappable entering Rome as a bloodstained conqueror. Caesar answers calmly that he’s glad it appears so. Political action, even then, was about propriety and prudence and not just bravado. What the public sees is as important for a politician as what a politician actually does.
Is governance by a swarm of faceless midwit technocrats truly better than one Caesar? What if you’re not in the good graces of Caesar, and James Madison’s (and Cicero’s) warning comes to pass? Who holds real power? In a republic, power should be in the hands of the people’s representatives: Cum potestas in populo, auctoritas in senatu sit, as Cicero said. Nothing more or less. And yet we get a choice of unchecked rampant populism, sometimes through the basest form of democracy, and sometimes through rank technocracy, and a senatorial class without virtue or good faith. A statue of Caesar—C Ivlio Caesari Dict Perpetuo—is still standing in old pagan Rome next to the Colosseum, just as Madison’s statue is in the Library of Congress in the new Rome. Both silently mock bureaucracy. The debate, even after 2000 years, isn’t quite settled.
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HBO’s Rome ran for two seasons and was abruptly discontinued. The official cause was that it was expensive and had low ratings. An average episode cost around $9 million, and it showed. The dedication of the actors were also evident. Ray Stevenson bought Tom Holland’s Rubicon and distributed it to fellow actors as research material. “We had a field trip to Pompeii too—walked along the streets, looked at the graffiti that existed at that time,” Stevenson said at an interview. “It was my first time in Rome and to actually walk the streets and sit in places like Campo Di Fiore and Piazza Navona and close your eyes, you hear and smell a mixture of accents and food. A real melting pot, which Rome was then too.”
It is dreadful how historical fiction has deteriorated into memes and slop for our dopamine-addicted society. It is a disservice to current and future generations. Between the ahistorical, woke adaptations of the lives of Anne Boleyn and Cleopatra on the one hand and online anons lecturing how every successful empire or society was ethno-nationalist (a laughable contention on its face) and harassing historians who dare to challenge the mob on the other, it is a deranged time to live. But Rome remains. The success of the series was partially due to its time. The two eras of good historical art were the 1950s to early 1960s (Ben Hur, The Guns of Navarone, The Ten Commandments, etc.) and the early- to mid-aughts. The former came in the formative years of the Cold War, and the latter in the immediate aftermath of 9/11. Good historical art often always comes with a positive, optimistic, and unifying interpretation or narrative.
But the other part is that good art needs to be based on truth. Of all the moments from the Rome series, and there many, one particular and relatively insignificant one stands out to me. Lucius Vorenus’ speech in Aventine for local magistrate election ahead of Caesar’s triumph, was interrupted by a heckler who called him a ginger knob. “I’ll not deny, friend, I have a Gallic look about me, but I’m as solid a Roman as anyone!” he replies. Vorenus reminds everyone that he has shed his blood for Rome, and his forefathers before him. Loyalty to the land beneath one’s feet should be the ultimate measure of citizenship—as then, so now.
