Or the thing about brothels in Pompeii. Fortunately the hour about Zeus was so padded out and fluffy that I had no problem breaking from it to take a shower.
The one about Caligula was well done. I thought the one about the brothels of Pompeii was pretty decent, except at one point they said that Caligula was succeeded by Nero, which is totally wrong.
Sometimes the historians they interview go all "This is my only shot at TV and OH, CAMERAS!" that kind of bugs me. The overly expressive female historian got on my nerves for that reason. And they speculate too much about what Caligula et al might have been thinking, which bugs me, too. There's no way they could know. If they can make solid guesses, I'd like to know what sources back them up. The only work they quoted to any extent was Suetonius, and as juicy as The Twelve Caesars was, maybe there were other good sources out there. I've read that Suetonius had an agenda, and not everything he wrote was true.
That said, I would have loved a little more exploration of the nature of Caligula's mental breakdown. Could it have been schizophrenia? PTSD, as they mentioned? A tumor?
I like my history chewy, and sometimes THC misses the boat. But it was a good show. I just kept hearing John Hurt's voice through it all. I, CLAUDIUS made an impression.
Suetonius very definitely had an agenda. It was the agenda of "I want to keep my job and my head." He wrote it 80 years after Caligula was dead. The bloodline of Caligula's family wasn't related to the current emperor (Hadrian), and there was every reason to paint it as "Look at the crap the empire went through. Aren't we glad that Hadrian is returning us to a period of proper rule?"
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winterfish
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Date: 2009-08-04 02:07 pm (UTC)The one about Caligula was well done. I thought the one about the brothels of Pompeii was pretty decent, except at one point they said that Caligula was succeeded by Nero, which is totally wrong.
no subject
Date: 2009-08-04 05:22 pm (UTC)That said, I would have loved a little more exploration of the nature of Caligula's mental breakdown. Could it have been schizophrenia? PTSD, as they mentioned? A tumor?
I like my history chewy, and sometimes THC misses the boat. But it was a good show. I just kept hearing John Hurt's voice through it all. I, CLAUDIUS made an impression.
no subject
Date: 2009-08-04 06:39 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-08-05 01:20 am (UTC)