HBO’s Rome – Episode 18

The Battle of Philippi, as imagined by HBO’s Rome, is a bloody affair moving in slow motion. The bloodiness is probably accurate although I suspect the movements of those involved were quite a bit more frantic.

Cassius and Brutus both die fighting rather than through the suicide route, although I guess you could call Brutus’s actions suicidal. Brutus is noble to the end. He refuses to retreat when surprised by the combined forces of Octavian and Antony. He tells his remaining troops to save themselves, requesting one officer to “tell my mother something suitable” before wading into the advancing enemy legionaries.

The battle follows a housecleaning back in Rome by Octavian and Antony to eliminate enemies and accumulate wealth. Octavian comes up with the idea but Antony carries it to a level that appears to bother Octavian and clearly upsets Agrippa. Atia even convinces Antony to do away with the father of Octavia’s friend Jocasta whom Atia considers a bad influence. Talk about the pot calling the kettle black!

It’s Vorenus and the collegium gangs that get the job of eliminating those on “the list.” As a reward the gangs are entitled to all the loot they can carry. Vorenus suggests they use the windfall to feed the people. This idea is received with less than overwhelming enthusiasm.

Included on the list is Cicero whom Pullo gets the job of eliminating and then nailing Cicero’s hands, as Antony promised would happen, to the senate door. On the domestic front, there seem be a number of plots being hatched. Memmio, a rival gang captain, appears to be working on something involving Vorenus’s older daughter and a gigolo type character. Gaia, a female hard ass slave, looks like she’s constantly scheming. After getting blown off by Vorenus after a night of sex, Gaia seems to be making plays for Pullo, to the distress of Eirene, and Mascius, the ex-soldier that is Vorenus’s number 3 man. I originally thought she might become the Niobi replacement but perhaps I was wrong. Lyde is trying to convince Vorenus that his older daughter should be allowed to marry but Vorenus, hard nose that he is, is convinced that no man worth having would accept a wife that had been forced into prostitution. Eirene is pregnant, Agrippa got it together with Octavia, Atia has figured out that Agrippa and Octavia got it together and Atia has mentioned the M word for the second time to Antony. Oh yeah, and Timon appears to now see eye to eye with his brother and now they both sound like siccari including beating on the elders considering bribing the Romans on behalf of Herod.

A lot of stuff happens in an hour on this show. So where is it all going? With Philippi dispensed with by episode 18, what’s going to happen in the last 6 shows? Clearly it’s going to be Antony and Cleopatra getting it together, Atia getting royally pissed over that, the battle of Actium and the asp. One wonders how they’re going to handle the little problem of Caesarion. Historically Octavian had the boy eliminated. In the show however the boy is possibly the son of Pullo and I wonder if that's going to have any impact.

On the home front, I have no idea. I don’t know whether we’re heading for a happily ever after kind of ending or a total catastrophe. At the moment, a total catastrophe seems more likely. And where are they going with this Timon and his brother subplot?

Like last year the show is following a very rough outline of history while playing fast and loose with the details. This allows you to have a handle on the general direction the show is going to take without knowing either how it’s going to get there or what’s going to happen when it arrives. That keeps you guessing which is what I find enjoyable about watching the show. We shall see, what we shall see I suppose.