Joseph DeMartino
Senior HTF Member
I'm surprised there have been no threads about this much-hyped mini-series. Maybe everyone had the same reaction to the sheer awfulness of it and decided it wasn't worth writing about. But I thought I should post this warning as a public service, in case anybody missed it and is thinking of watching the later chapters. Empire is a big steaming pile, part Rome: 90210, part cheeseball Gladiator rip-off and clearly concocted by people who learned their history watching Mr. Peabody and Sherman on their juants in the Way-Back machine. (Come to think of it, Mr. Peabody did a better job of getting his facts straight. I apologize.)
Anybody who really wants to learn something about how the Roman Republic became an Empire, and only then acquired an Emperor, but who prefers the drama of fiction to the quieter pleasures of history, should read Colleen McCullough's impeccably researched Masters of Rome novels. But stay away from Empire. As drama it is silly and overwrought. As history - well I my jaw kept dropping at the obvious and pointless errors from the opening frame. I think this film piled more idiotic historical inaccuracies into the first 30 minutes than most Hollywood "histories" do in two hours or more. Apart from a handful of too-prominent-to-get wrong figures they didn't even get the names right, nor the relationships (Octavian was Caesar's grand-nephew, his niece's boy, not his nephew), nor the character's ages.
(Cicero is presented as a elderly fellow who even calls himself an "old man" in his one brief exchance with Caesar. Cicero was born in 106 B.C., Caesar in either 102 or 100.)
The names of the supporting characters are clearly made up and don't even sound like Roman names of the period. I forget what they call Caesar's sister, her made to be Octavian's mother, but it certainly isn't her actual name which was Julia - just like all the other women of the gens Julia, the clan to which Gaius Julius Caesar belonged.
Chatting up a Vestal Virgin, as Octavius is seen doing, would be to risk getting yourself and her killed. And Octavius certainly would have known this as his Uncle Gaius was Pontifex Maximus, chief priest of Rome, and as such lived in one half of a state-owned temple/house. The other half was the headquarters of the Vestal Virgins, and they were under the care and protection of the Pontifex Maximus.
Granted this is historical drama, not a doumentary, but surely some resemblance to actual historical events and people is to be expected. Especially when the real events are as dramatic as they are. Even setting aside the wholly-invented and truly pointless gladiator plot, they manage to completely restage Caesar's death, replacing the real warnings that history tell us he got with an invented psychic Vestal and placing Octavius at Caesar's house on the fatal morning. Then take the assassination itself, one of the best documented events in all of ancient history, and totally alter the location, the sequence of events and even the time of death (leaving Caesar conveniently alive to speak some invented last words to the guardian gladiator who never existed.)
For anyone who knows anything at all about Caesar this is like watching an Abe Lincoln biopic in which the President strolls down to the theater lobby for some popcorn where Booth shoots him, or a version of JFK where the motorcade passes unharmed through downtown Dallas and Kennedy gives his speech at the Dallas trademart before being shot on his way back to Love Field. Your first reaction would be "WTF?" and your second would be "Why bother changing that detail? What was gained?"
Not only that, but with the death of Caesar the only half-way interesting character in the movie was gone. Octavius is being played by a bland pretty boy as - well, as a bland pretty boy, which by all accounts he most emphatically was not. (Although he certainly had none of the charisma of his famous great uncle he had a certain charm and was damned smart and totally ruthless when necessary. The TV version is none of these things.)
Let me just finish by saying that I won't bother watching the second hour before cleasing my TiVo of this abomination.
Regards,
Joe
Anybody who really wants to learn something about how the Roman Republic became an Empire, and only then acquired an Emperor, but who prefers the drama of fiction to the quieter pleasures of history, should read Colleen McCullough's impeccably researched Masters of Rome novels. But stay away from Empire. As drama it is silly and overwrought. As history - well I my jaw kept dropping at the obvious and pointless errors from the opening frame. I think this film piled more idiotic historical inaccuracies into the first 30 minutes than most Hollywood "histories" do in two hours or more. Apart from a handful of too-prominent-to-get wrong figures they didn't even get the names right, nor the relationships (Octavian was Caesar's grand-nephew, his niece's boy, not his nephew), nor the character's ages.
(Cicero is presented as a elderly fellow who even calls himself an "old man" in his one brief exchance with Caesar. Cicero was born in 106 B.C., Caesar in either 102 or 100.)
The names of the supporting characters are clearly made up and don't even sound like Roman names of the period. I forget what they call Caesar's sister, her made to be Octavian's mother, but it certainly isn't her actual name which was Julia - just like all the other women of the gens Julia, the clan to which Gaius Julius Caesar belonged.
Chatting up a Vestal Virgin, as Octavius is seen doing, would be to risk getting yourself and her killed. And Octavius certainly would have known this as his Uncle Gaius was Pontifex Maximus, chief priest of Rome, and as such lived in one half of a state-owned temple/house. The other half was the headquarters of the Vestal Virgins, and they were under the care and protection of the Pontifex Maximus.
Granted this is historical drama, not a doumentary, but surely some resemblance to actual historical events and people is to be expected. Especially when the real events are as dramatic as they are. Even setting aside the wholly-invented and truly pointless gladiator plot, they manage to completely restage Caesar's death, replacing the real warnings that history tell us he got with an invented psychic Vestal and placing Octavius at Caesar's house on the fatal morning. Then take the assassination itself, one of the best documented events in all of ancient history, and totally alter the location, the sequence of events and even the time of death (leaving Caesar conveniently alive to speak some invented last words to the guardian gladiator who never existed.)
For anyone who knows anything at all about Caesar this is like watching an Abe Lincoln biopic in which the President strolls down to the theater lobby for some popcorn where Booth shoots him, or a version of JFK where the motorcade passes unharmed through downtown Dallas and Kennedy gives his speech at the Dallas trademart before being shot on his way back to Love Field. Your first reaction would be "WTF?" and your second would be "Why bother changing that detail? What was gained?"
Not only that, but with the death of Caesar the only half-way interesting character in the movie was gone. Octavius is being played by a bland pretty boy as - well, as a bland pretty boy, which by all accounts he most emphatically was not. (Although he certainly had none of the charisma of his famous great uncle he had a certain charm and was damned smart and totally ruthless when necessary. The TV version is none of these things.)
Let me just finish by saying that I won't bother watching the second hour before cleasing my TiVo of this abomination.
Regards,
Joe
