HBO\'s "Rome" to present more realistic look at the

[Bill Altimari]

Thanks, Tarbicus. That settles that. He's a multi-award-winning TV writer/director with a fine Classical education but no refereed publications on the subject, at least as far as we can tell. Fair enough, but that's not the impression conveyed in the HBO documentary. "Historical consultant" usually does not mean a career BBC person, and "affiliated" with the British School at Rome is vague enough to mean anything. This is a co-production with the BBC, so Mr. Stamp is not a "consultant" at all but an in-house employee. He is certainly not an outside arbiter of historical verisimilitude, as implied. I'm looking forward to seeing the first episode, but the whole build-up to it smacks of smoke and mirrors. Very unfortunate when one considers how much real energy has clearly been put into it by a lot of dedicated people, most especially John Milius, as rousing a storyteller as there is today. The PR people would have been well advised to heed the advice of cowboy sage Texas Bix Bender, who once remarked, "When a job speaks for itself, don't interrupt."