THE HBO series Rome, which was made in collaboration with the BBC and aired from 2005 to 2007, was such a popular success that a film version is in the works with Bruno Heller, producer of the TV series. In the meantime, past episodes are still shown on HBO 2.

According to a reader named Diana, the lavishly produced TV show, filmed on a five-acre lot in Italy and billed as an “intimate drama of love and betrayal,  masters and slaves, and husbands and wives,” panders to modern female audiences with wild distortions of Roman history. It also underscores the dark side to the contemporary fascination with ancient Rome.

Diana writes:

A few years ago HBO and BBC TV collaborated on a  blockbuster, highly-touted miniseries on ancient Rome, focusing on the crucial transitional period from the Republic to the Empire. The series was touted as being a genuine, historically accurate depiction of life in ancient Rome, as opposed to the fake, artificial products of “Holly-Rome.” The first season focused on the events leading up to and culminating with the assassination of Caesar in the Senate The second season focused on the consequences of that act, and the rise of his adopted son Octavian as the first emperor.

As a counterpoint to all the comings, goings, and doings of the patrician political class, the series focused on two real, historical plebeians: a legionary (infantryman) and a centurion (officer), both of whom were soldiers mentioned in Caesar’s chronicles of the Gaul campaign. (Caesar apparently pointed out these two otherwise unremarkable commoners because they had put aside personal difficulties to save one another’s lives with exceptional bravery.)

I am not an expert in ancient Roman history. But I can smell horse manure, and every time my antennae went on alert, I looked up the record on the Internet and discovered that my gut was right.

In the interests of brevity I will focus on two aspects of the series that I found most dismaying: the portrayal of Roman women and its depiction of sex.

I will deal with the second issue first and more briefly. Quite simply, the producers of the series depicted sex gratuitously, hideously, continually and mean-spiritedly. In the entire series there are a few brief scenes between the Centurion Vorenus and his wife, which showed a relationship that combined sex with love. Interestingly, these scenes were short and abbreviated, as if the producers knew that audiences would be uncomfortable watching a man and a woman actually making love. Otherwise, nearly every episode featured a sex act that was violent, perverse, and ugly. There was one scene of an older male slave sodomizing a younger male slave that was completely dramatically unnecessary. It could easily have been cut from the episode with no harm to the narrative. All of the sex scenes were told from the point of view of the male character. One scene fused sex with violence to such a degree that it actually did cross the line into actual pornography.

The series’ producers touted Rome’s historical accuracy. This is false. The female characters’ actions were entirely fictional. I’m not opposed to a little embellishment for the sake of drama. But in this case, the reality was completely at variance with the depiction in the series. Suffice it to say that the three main female characters: Servilia (Brutus’ mother and Caesar’s great love); Atia (Octavian’s mother) and Octavia (Octavian’s sister) were nothing like what was depicted in the series. Atia, for example, was shown as a scheming, licentious, sadistic murderess. In reality, she was a religious woman who didn’t want her son to go into politics.

(Parenthetically, I must say that there were numerous historical inaccuracies. Three spring to mind: Roman soldiers were not allowed to marry until retirement; and the naming conventions were all wrong. It’s not nitpicking to point out the latter. Roman family names were important to patrician identity. The third inaccuracy was scandalous: the producers invented an affair between Mark Antony and the aforementioned Atia. Never happened. Couldn’t have happened.)

WHY did the producers feel they needed to lie so much about the historical record? The answer is depressing.

I believe that the producers felt they had to appeal to a modern female audience, and that showing a Roman matron behaving the way most of them did would be boring and depressing. What modern female audience wants to watch a religious mother dissuade her son from political intrigue? Or take Octavia, Atia’s daughter and Octavian’s sister, a married woman during the entire time the series allegedly covered. In reality she had a spotless reputation (not an easy thing to have in any age!). She is shown as being a bisexual drug addict whose careless gossip leads to the murder of Caesar.

Like the real Atia, the real Octavia, I’m afraid, would be considered dull by a modern female TV audience. Worse yet, no one would believe that she was a virtuous woman. When virtue doesn’t exist, who can be virtuous?

In light of the Fort Hood massacre, the admiration for this series seems even more disturbing to me. In thinking about why Rome was so popular amongst a certain set, the following occurred to me.

There is a certain sneaking admiration for the Romans amongst moderns. Yeah, they were brutal, but they sure could run an empire. OK, empires are bad, but….hell, they sure knew what to do with an enemy. Kill them, plow the village with salt, and conquer. Need information? Gouge an eye out.

I don’t suggest that this is straightforward. it’s very confused so I can’t draw a straight line between modern liberal fraudulence and a taste for an ancient, a-moral rapacious empire. But that’s my interpretation: while liberals enjoy the porn, they vicariously admire the sheer macho balls of this imagined people.

Laura writes:

Here’s an interesting detail about Rome from Wikipedia:

When Bruno Heller met with HBO executive producer Anne Thomopoulos, he wanted to pitch an idea about “white-trash America.” Thomopoulos then [asked] if he wanted to pitch an idea about “white-trash Rome”.  Heller replied: “Love ancient Rome.” After a while they started talking about their “love” for I, Claudius a BBC series about ancient Rome released in the mid 1970s.

Their intentions are clear and they fit well with Diana’s excellent observations. The comparison with I, Claudius would be comical, if it weren’t so outrageous. I, Claudius showed the depravity of ancient Rome, but also vividly portrayed its good and virtuous characters.

Clark Coleman writes:

Here are a couple of questions for Diana:

1) Why would a decent person be using their dollars to support HBO?

2) What hope is there for our culture if decent people keep supporting such organizations as HBO?

Laura writes:

Is there anything good produced by HBO? I don’t watch it so I don’t know.

A male reader writes:

I am not a regular viewer of HBO — I don’t even subscribe to it. But I do wish to point out that HBO aired Band of Brothers, produced by Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg. It is also airing their The Pacific next year, a series about the Pacific campaign during WW II.

Diana responds to Clark:

Are you implying I am indecent because I watched a show produced by an outfit you dislike? Nevertheless, I will respond to your questions below.

“1) Why would a decent person be using their dollars to support HBO?”

I don’t support HBO. I don’t have cable. I avoided cable even when I was a member of a gym, where cable was ubiquitous. I watch very little television, and avoid most contemporary movies because they are violent, stupid junk. However, I do like popular entertainment, and I belong to Netflix because you can get great old movies for a nominal monthly sum.

The series was on from 2005-2007 (I think). I Netflixed it recently, hence my burning anger at its inaccuracies and distortions.

I expected a bit of sexing up and embellishment, but I had absolutely no idea that the series would be as appalling as it was. Yes, I watched every episode but more as a reporter than a customer. If I were to criticize it honestly, I had to watch the whole thing. Also, I’m an eternal optimist and kept hoping that it would redeem itself.

Nope. Each episode was worse than the last.

2) What hope is there for our culture if decent people keep supporting such organizations as HBO?

As I said, I don’t support HBO. But I also think that one of the problems of conservatism is its crankish insistence on ideological purity. I think that our society has a lot of good in it, and some very good people watch HBO. I’m not one of them, but I don’t judge or condemn people because they watch HBO series.

Actually, I’m not sure how many Americans really did watch or like the show. The show was very well-reviewed by our idiotic “critics.”  That tells you more about them than it does about the audience.

Laura writes:

This show won awards and accolades, so many that it is now being made into a movie. The fact is, millions of people watch HBO. When viewers are surrounded by approving commentary on cultural junk, some are persuaded to abandon their own better judgments or uneasiness. Decent people need to find decent reviews. Conservatives should spend time, though not excessive amounts of it, examining the intentions of the writers and producers of this stuff.

Ancient Rome offers virtually endless dramatic potential. There will always be demand for new explorations of it. I could see innocently ordering this series and then the mounting horror, fascination and rage at its vulgarity. It makes you feel like you’ve been mugged. 

Laura adds:

I’d also like to note that Diana offered something in her review that was rare and that is largely missing from cultural commentary today: a convincing look at the psychological and moral climate that produced this highly-touted show.

Clark responds:

I was assuming that Diana was an HBO subscriber. As she suspected, I intended my remarks as a slap in the face, for which I apologize due to my mistaken assumption. My words did not properly apply to her.

As for the subject of HBO, the fact that they show some good things does not impress me. I hear Playboy magazine published some informative interviews. So what? At some point, we have to ask ourselves whether our dollars are going to fund the lowering of our culture. The “South Park conservatives” phenomenon was discussed online about a year ago. I think there are many conservatives who don’t really know what kind of a society they want to conserve in the first place, and they are in some cases too young to remember a better, finer culture than the one we have now.

Movies, TV channels, magazines, even billboards and TV commercials that would have had an earlier generation rising up in protest are now excused or ignored by even very strong, moral, Christian conservatives. Yes, that was a little gratuitous sexual innuendo in that TV show during the family hour, but we expect some of that these days, etc., etc. Our parents would have given the TV station manager an earful, but we are used to it. That movie I took my kids to should have been rated R, but it wasn’t, so I will just quietly hope they weren’t harmed by it and grumble a bit to my friends and neighbors. Our parents would have had a brief meeting with the theater manager and gotten a refund and left. This is why I phrased my questions rudely; we have a lot of people who need a slap in the face to wake them up.

Laura writes:

The issue of how parents should react to this onslaught of garbage and pornography is of course separate from the question of whether HBO productions made for adults should be honored with articulate reviews. But, since Clark has brought it up, I think it is generally too late for the sort of protests he advises. Withdrawal from popular culture is the only honorable response by parents at this point. What does that mean? It means homes without TVs altogether or with supervision by parents that is so strict, children are never left on their own with the TV and all shows are screened in advance. It means no movies in theaters except possibly those that are rated G. It  means seeking out other families who share these goals and finding alternative activities around which to build a life. It means creating a haven for the next generation without popular culture altogether.

Diana responds to Clark’s last comments:

Although I took exception to Clark’s tone, and I think his question should have been posed in a more temperate fashion, the question does bring up something important, to wit: What on earth does a person who wants to pay attention to the culture DO nowadays? Do you become an isolated crank, listening only to recordings of classical music, watching only moves from before 1970? I feel that everything I see is a cultural ambush.

Now that I’ve seen this disgusting HBO series, I really am leery of renting anything else from them, partly for moral reasons (don’t feed the beast) and partly because ROME was a warning – if this is the best, what of the rest? If I had to have cable, I’d inquire about excluding HBO from my subscription price. (Whether that’s possible or not, I don’t know.)

I’m still aghast that this show was not only produced, but that not one dissent was registered in the generally breathless reviews it received.

Let me give a specific example, which I excluded from my original remarks. I said that the fictional character of Atia was a distortion. I didn’t say how much. I will now. In the series, Atia is depicted copulating with her lover naked in front of her adolescent son; arranging the contract murder of her son-in-law; physically brutalizing Servilia; disgracing herself in public with unseemly displays of violent emotion; and consistently using the grossest profanity. She has literally not one redeeming character except perhaps a low animal cunning. That’s your HBO Atia.

This is the real Atia.

In his Dialogus de oratoribus, Tacitus notes her to be exceptionally religious and moral, and one of the most admired matrons in the history of the Republic:

“In her presence no base word could be uttered without grave offence, and no wrong deed done. Religiously and with the utmost delicacy she regulated not only the serious tasks of her youthful charges, but also their recreations and their games.”

I felt ambushed when I saw this, and I do hold HBO (and the other producing entity, BBC) responsible for purveying historically illerate porn. I am disgusted with our so-called critics for going along with the sham. But HBO and BBC are hardly alone in this. I’m beginning to feel betrayed by the entire culture.

Laura writes:

There are too many treasures from our past to give in to despair. Read Sophocles or Euripides. Rent I, Claudius or BBC drama productions made for TV twenty or more years ago. Read the short stories of Dorothy Parker. Go to the art museum. Listen to great music. This is not the life of a crank. This is the life of someone reveling in our heritage.

Michael S. writes:

Diana wrote:

What on earth does a person who wants to pay attention to the culture DO nowadays? Do you become an isolated crank, listening only to recordings of classical music, watching only moves from before 1970? I feel that everything I see is a cultural ambush.

Hey, now. What’s wrong with listening “only” to classical music? When I was in high school all I listened to was classical music (symphony and opera — mostly Wagner and Verdi). That changed when I got to college, and for the most part, I’m not sure that that particular form of cultural adventurousness or openness was worth it.

Rita writes:

Diana wrote:

What on earth does a person who wants to pay attention to the culture DO nowadays?

I think perhaps it’s difficult to switch over to more wholesome and intelligent fare at first, just as a person who is used to eating junk food all the time doesn’t appreciate fruits and vegetables at first. Once you get used to real nourishment or the better music and film though, you’ll wonder why you ever wasted so much time eating (listening to or viewing) crap.

Clark writes:

I touched on two different issues in my earlier reply: the level of protest that certain things would elicit in a previous generation compared to our own, and conservatives using their dollars to support the decline of our culture. You have to have a certain critical mass of protesters in order to succeed, and I agree that this is unlikely to be the case today. Controlling your own environment is the way to go, as Laura mentioned.

As for the morality of supporting the enemy with our money, my comments stand and I believe that conservatives need to spend a little time thinking about it.  How can we complain about the depravity of our popular culture while supporting the depravity financially?

 Laura writes:

The fact that there is good among the dross, as both Diana and Clark mentioned, keeps conservatives coming back for more in the hope that they don’t have to take a more radical stand. It’s important to remember this: There will always be some good in popular culture. Unfortunately the overwhelming preponderance of the bad and immoral requires a rejection of the good that is there.

I’d like to restate my earlier First Law of Popular Culture, mentioned in the discussion of Kate and Jon Gosselin:

The more absorbed a person is in popular culture, the more removed he is from his own culture.

Many conservatives and thinking people justify staying abreast of popular culture with the argument that they must stay attuned to the times and the world at large. This is wrong-headed. Popular culture removes people from their real cultural habitat, deprives them of deep pleasures and furthers the decline of our civilization with breathless speed. There will never be a day when in order to reject it and improve it we won’t have to also toss out some decent movies and TV shows as well.

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