07-02-2010, 12:43 AM
Just watched this one on 4od (link above - possibly UK only?), but I found it a bit underwhelming. The throaty narrator sounded like he was speaking through gritted teeth the whole time, and the actor playing Severus seemed to have taken his inspiration from Brian Blessed. Rather ironically, there was a Scottish archeologist claiming that evidence of large turf roundhouses proved the existence of civilisation and culture in north Britain (implication - equal to that of Rome!), and that Roman sources were therefore 'biased' ( :roll: ), but the program makers seem to have taken this Roman bias entirely seriously in their presentation of ancient Scotland as a gloomy place of perpetual rain and screaming savages...
There was no mention of Geta (which leaves unexplained that sinister Severan family portrait with the scrubbed out face), nor of Julia Domna, who accompanied the emperor on the expedition. No women at all, actually - surely a missed opportunity. The story of the wife of Caledonian chieftain Argentocoxus and her sexual competitiveness with the empress would have added a much-needed dose of humanity and colour to the gloom... The anecdote about Severus and the ill-omened black soldier was missing too: perhaps this would have been too confusing to a modern viewer primed to regard Severus as 'African', but as Britain's first recorded instance of racism (!) it would certainly have made for a more interesting and nuanced portrayal :wink: .
Nothing much about the Roman army itself - aside from serried ranks of legionaries marching 25 abreast across the moorlands with drawn swords :| . The short piece from Mr Birley about the north African irregular horsemen stationed at (I think) Housesteads was an interesting angle, but aside from yawnsomely describing them as 'special forces', like they were the ancient SAS or something, nothing more was suggested about how they might have operated against a scattered enemy. I'm surprised, actually, that the Roman army was left so vague - a few less repetitous murky 'reconstructions', and there could have been a genuinely informative precis of the workings of the Roman 'military machine' (to quote Tom Holland, who seems to have got a very nice holiday in Libya for the price of sitting on a wall in Lepcis Magna musing about Roman public relations!)
:? - Nathan
There was no mention of Geta (which leaves unexplained that sinister Severan family portrait with the scrubbed out face), nor of Julia Domna, who accompanied the emperor on the expedition. No women at all, actually - surely a missed opportunity. The story of the wife of Caledonian chieftain Argentocoxus and her sexual competitiveness with the empress would have added a much-needed dose of humanity and colour to the gloom... The anecdote about Severus and the ill-omened black soldier was missing too: perhaps this would have been too confusing to a modern viewer primed to regard Severus as 'African', but as Britain's first recorded instance of racism (!) it would certainly have made for a more interesting and nuanced portrayal :wink: .
Nothing much about the Roman army itself - aside from serried ranks of legionaries marching 25 abreast across the moorlands with drawn swords :| . The short piece from Mr Birley about the north African irregular horsemen stationed at (I think) Housesteads was an interesting angle, but aside from yawnsomely describing them as 'special forces', like they were the ancient SAS or something, nothing more was suggested about how they might have operated against a scattered enemy. I'm surprised, actually, that the Roman army was left so vague - a few less repetitous murky 'reconstructions', and there could have been a genuinely informative precis of the workings of the Roman 'military machine' (to quote Tom Holland, who seems to have got a very nice holiday in Libya for the price of sitting on a wall in Lepcis Magna musing about Roman public relations!)
:? - Nathan
Nathan Ross
