HBO’s Rome – Episode 19

This show is pretty good at surprising me. Either that or I’m just not all that good at predicting how plots will be developed.

On the historical front, Octavian and Antony divide the empire, with Antony taking the east and Octavian the west, but Octavian only accepts this arrangement after an agreement is put into place that all revenues are to be shared. This was a good move considering that most of the wealth of the empire came from the east. Lepidus, almost contemptuously, gets thrown Africa, minus Egypt of course which was the single richest province in the empire. As an interesting side note, in the first century CE there were two third class provinces in the empire. Judea, because it was such as dump as to be below the dignity of the Roman upper nobility to govern, and Egypt, because it was so rich that no one of the upper nobility could be trusted to govern it.

On the domestic front, the writers seem to be aiming for the elimination of any character than had any significant role in the show. Servilia and her loyal slave exited stage left by gutting themselves in front of Atia’s house. Talk about employee loyalty!

Memmio’s gigolo based plot has reached fruition and he now has Vorenus’s oldest daughter as a spy. The slave girl Gaia, and Pullo’s wife Eirene, are on the outs and Eirene insisted that Pullo beat Gaia for insubordination. Do I have to tell you what the “beating” evolves into? In the final scene Gaia is buying a concoction clearly intended to abort a pregnancy. The open question is whether the potion is for her or intended as poison for Eirene to terminate her pregnancy. My bet is it’s intended for Eirene because everybody on this show seems to be a total louse. The one admirable individual was Brutus and he died at Philippi in the last episode.

But the real surprises were the wedding bells, two sets of wedding bells as a matter of fact. In the first Atia, adding insult to injury, arranges a marriage between Octavia’s now destitute friend Jocasta and Caesar’s ex-slave Posca.

Then, the topper of them all, after a falling out over a bribe from King Herod to Antony that Antony, in violation of the agreement to share all revenues, tries to hide from Octavian, Atia suggests that a wedding between the two families would sound the right note of reconciliation. Of course what Atia means is her and Antony, but what Octavian and Antony negotiate is a marriage between Antony and Octavia.

Well, that’s certainly historically accurate. Antony and Octavia were married so apparently my thought that they were going to skip that whole bit as too complex, and substitute Atia for Octavia, was wrong. If you’re keeping score you’ll notice that I’m wrong an awful lot in my predictions on this show.

It’s the wedding that brings the most confusing of the side plots, that of Timon and his brother, to something of a crisis. Herod is one of the wedding guests and Timon’s brother insists that this would be a good opportunity to assassinate Herod. Timon tentatively agrees but then realizes that he has a wife and children to worry about, and the chances of surviving an assassination attempt are about zero, so he backs out. This leads to a scuffle over a knife and Timon’s brother is accidentally, and it appears fatally, stabbed. Was it that they had some time to kill or what? This subplot appears to have gone nowhere.

Things don’t look good on the domestic front. Vorenus, Pullo, Eirene and Vorenus’s offspring don’t appear to have much of a happy future ahead of them. On the historical front the rough outline is Antony leaves for Egypt and dumps both his wife Octavia and his mistress Atia for Cleopatra.

Poor Octavia hasn’t fared well in the show. From her portrayal you’d never know that this was a woman that was highly respected during her lifetime for her nobility, her humanity and for upholding the traditional Roman feminine virtues. This is no knock on Kerry Condon who plays Octavia, but rather a criticism of the character Kerry is asked to portray. Now we’ll have Octavia in a loveless marriage ensnared in the growing hostility between her brother and her husband. If the writers give her a chance, Octavia might be able to exhibit some of the those virtues noticeable absent up till now.