Yet More Spartacus...

It's still juicy. Episode 5 was great, although the name was a tad misleading overall and the opening dream sequence made me feel cheated because it would have been very fitting. Nevermind.

What I do worry about though is the next series and how they'll manage to portray the landscapes required for the Servile War instigated by Spartacus. The set at the moment is incredibly small and there is a large amount of CGI involved. Move into the fields of Italy and following a roving army means it becomes significantly more difficult.

How shall the Roman armies be depicted? How will the battles and landscapes be done? How will the show handle being without a certain bloody fantastic John Hannah? What form will the character of Crassus take? (decadent miscreant, no doubt).

Another point it that the Ludus presents such an interesting setting for the series, and I can't help but wonder once it's been removed if the show will lack a certain anchor point which has served it well.

All that said, they have created a rather captivating show and I have no doubt they'll manage to script a second series filled with as much sex and violence as series one and the current mini series. I'm already excited about it and Gods of War hasn't even finished!

Spartacus: Gods of War.

So, Spartacus returned to our screens a couple weeks back (I've seen the two thirds of the mini series that have been broadcast already) in the form of a 6 episode mini series that serves as a prequel (prelude?) to the first series, Blood and Sand.

The mini series was initially meant to plug the gap opened up by Spartacus getting cancer (not the real Spartacus) and needing time to recover before season two (scheduled to get going in Autumn this year). As it turns out, his cancer has returned and Spartacus has been recast. That's all by-the-by, though, but I sincerely hope he gets better for good.

Anyway. Gods of War has been epic thus far. Most folks felt Blood and Sand took a while to find its feet, but I think GoW (from now on, to save my weary fingers) hit its stride right from the off. It's a frothing affair sticky from blood and sweaty from the sordid sex. John Hannah (SPOILER: brutally killed at the end of the first series) is a raving lunatic once again, and his role basically makes the show. He roves around the place ruthlessly scheming and plotting, and the show takes the interesting angle of having his father come back to take control of the Ludus, which has - so far- transpired to be an excellent story line.

As a kind of origin story for the Ludus seen in the first series, it's worked really well. As always with prequels, the force of what's going on comes from the fact that we know what comes next. The various characters are seen before their *current* form and it's interesting to see why they are the way they are (which in most cases is totally understandable given what's gone on so far).

Bugbears: every important Roman is depicted as the worst kind of pervert, and they cast the creepiest looking actors to portray important politicians, so much so that it's hard to watch them. One particular actor in episode three had such a vulgar way about him that I practically knew he'd be examining slave girl hymens before the episode was over. This is, of course, the nature of the show, and so it's hardly surprising.

Can't wait for the rest of the mini series and season two later this year.

Scotland.

I'm off back to Scotland for the summer (two months-ish) where I'll be living and working in Edinburgh (teaching) before buggering off back here to CZ.

I don't know how much I will be able to post (depends on how busy I am - but it's looking hectic now), although I will try to post whenever possible. I doubt I'll be doing many classically related things, sans a visit to my old university (Glasgow) and maybe a quick peek at the numismatic collection (providing my lady isn't too against it!).

I haven't had a great deal of time to read anything new, and much of the classical news kicking around touches on things I've basically written about before - pedestrian finds "sexed up" to get funding, nobody having a genuine clue where Cleopatra's tomb is, but having a damn good time telling everyone they do anyway and other bits and pieces - and so I've found it difficult to write anything about them.

Apart from random ruminations, the only things I've done recently that can be tangibly related to the classics are: read Beard and Henderson's "Classical Art" (although I got sunburnt while doing so, and as a result my feelings for the text have slid down somewhat); I watched the entire first season of Spartacus: Blood and Sand - which I totally dug. It was very entertaining and blood thirsty to a fault.

I was surprised how good it was, to be honest. I expected it to be absolutely trash, but Spartacus was well cast and John Hannah was sensational as he practically chomped away at the scenery. Throw in the completely OTT sex scenes intertwined with unbelievable violence (taken so far that it becomes comical, pretty much) and it was a great show. I'm looking forward to the prequel and the eventual sequel very much.

I also (re)watched HBO's Rome for the umpteenth time (I really can't recall, but it's definitely 6 times, minimum) and I enjoyed it as much as I always do. I was a bit cerebral with my attack on the depiction of Agrippa last time I watched it, but he still rankles with me. It's just such a wonderful show. I always have a distinct sadness when it's over, for the protagonists (fictive as some are and a mix of fictive and real as others are) always feel like friends come the end of 22 hours viewing and not only do we depart from listening to their tale, but they are all in fact dead and died some 2000 years ago. I suppose it's a mixture of feeling quite close to them (as bizarre as it sounds) and then immediately realising the distance between us is enormous.

Anyway. I hope the very few that stumble across this post have a wonderful summer.

Spartacus Blood and Sand: Not so bad after all?

Surprisingly the most recent low budget recreation of the ancient world, Spartacus: Blood and Sand, is actually pretty damn good.

I saw the first season in full a while ago (from U.S TV) and I was surprised how fun and interesting it really this. The teaser trailers made it look ultra low budget, faux stylistic and a little silly, and while that's all pretty much true - they've actually managed to make a pretty decent TV show that gets better as the first season goes on. That seems to be the consensus among many people - it's surprisingly not bad and it gets better episode by episode.

I'm a huge fan of the BBC'S I, Claudius and HBO's Rome, both of which are immensely well done shows that capture the essence of the classical world in different yet interesting ways. I suspected Spartacus would be a cheaply done 300 in episodic form - entertaining enough but missing something. I suppose I was wrong.

The show basically chronicles the rise of Spartacus and his reasons for initiating the servile rebellion. Since we know very little of the real Spartacus (such as one can now exist), most of this element of the show is fictive. The context it's set in (late Republican Rome) is, of course, not fictive, and the show does reasonably well in rendering the period in which Spartacus operated.

It's been remarked that the moral behind Spartacus' rebellion (betrayed by a Roman, his wife in slavery) is quintessentially modern in conception, which is true I think, but it does give some pathos and motivation to the character (despite said motivation being very similar to that of a certain Maximus Decimus Meridius, give or take).

It seems the show has been popular enough to continue, although they are making a prequel (which has to be entirely fictional) owing to the lead actor, Andy Whitfield, developing non-Hodgkin lymphoma, as opposed to a sequel.

If the sequel is made, I wonder how they'll characterise the defeat of Spartacus at the hands of Crassus, and if it'll essentially be Kubrick's Spartacus all over again. There is some mileage in romanticising characters who face the nefarious might of the Roman state and are unceremoniously crucified along the Appian Way, but it's curiously modern. I'm supporting the Romans here - and history does too. Despite the several servile wars - they were all crushed - slavery continued for centuries and Spartacus is nothing more now than a figure fit for embellishment in low budget TV shows. Kind of sad, really.

That idea, though, is ever so slightly cerebral, which I can be guilty of, and it really shouldn't take too much away from enjoying this show!

In other business, I'm reading a book about the ancient novel and I'll hopefully put something up about that soon.

Future plans.

My head is currently full of thoughts for what to post here, so much so that I've decided to make a post (both to serve my own memory and to act as a signpost) that covers some of the things I'd like to write about in the future.

1 - I'm currently reading a book on ancient technology, which I find very interesting. I've been meaning to read something on the topic for a while and now I've got round to it. I feel a little out of my depth commenting on the scholarly side of the work (although I may well try anyway), and so my focus will be a more general review of the book and some other thoughts. I expect to post this in the next week.

2 - I would like to re-watch Kubrick's "Spartacus" and comment on it's historical veracity, characterisations and any other issues arising from the viewing. I'm interested in making this blog varied, and so don't want to stagnate with purely reviews of books.

3 - On a related note, I'd also like to choose a character from HBO's excellent "Rome" TV series and comment on the historical deviations and characterisation. At the moment I'm leaning towards Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa, as the Agrippa in the show differs greatly from the Agrippa of record.

4 - I'm very much aware that most of my focus so far has been on Roman history, especially the late Republic and early Empire, and so I'd like to incorporate some other periods/areas into my writing. The obvious one is to include something Greek, which I certainly plan to do, and also to visit the end of the Roman Empire, for which Adrian Goldsworthy has kindly released a book on very recently.

5 - I'm considering re-working some of the essays used during my Masters, especially with an eye to "upgrading" them. The topics were disparate, and so I think they could be interesting.

6 - I would like to read more classical authors. I've read much of the classical corpus at some point or another, but never with a mind to write something afterwards. I currently live over 1000 miles from by book collection, and so this point may need to wait until November when I can retrieve some of those books.

7 - Finally, I am in Rome from next week, and shall be taking photographs and notes, which I intend to add to this page.

These, then, are my plans. Hopefully all will bear fruit. Note, entries in italics have been completed in some form.