After taking three college-level courses about Roman culture, language, and history, Rome: Rise and Fall of an Empire, a documentary series produced by the History Channel, was rather underwhelming. Most of the content was historically accurate, drawing extensively from the writings of Plutarch, and including interviews with a range of classics professors from universities across America, but it was not made for serious students of Rome. The first episode focuses on the decade-long battle between the Romans and the Cimbri in the late second century BCE, and the second episode studies the gladiator revolt led by Spartacus in the 70s BCE. Actors move through scenes of military camps and battles while a narrator leads the viewer through the story, occasionally broken up by a few sentences from an expert.

    Every few minutes, the show would mention some concept about Rome; glory in battle, resistance to the new, the cursus honorum, political corruption, or the like. Each time, the description of the concept would be shallow and incomplete. Since the first few episodes (and judging by the titles, the rest of them as well) focus on militiae over domi, everything was viewed through the lens of foreign military campaigns. Additionally, the show glossed over the important fact that many gladiatorial fights were not to the death, after playing up the lengthy, rigorous training and the expense of maintaining a fighter. I know that this is better in the context of a TV show meant for a casual and easily distracted audience, but I could not help feeling a bit disappointed. 

    However, the show did manage to give me a new perspective on some particulars of Rome. Throughout Roman Revolutions, I noticed how often Roman armies would suffer a terrible defeat at the beginning of a war, before turning the tide in later battles and eventually securing victory. In the first episode, one of the experts pointed out a key reason why this happened, which I had not considered before. This reason was the yearly re-election of the consuls, combined with Roman resistance to novi homines occupying positions of power, even if qualified. The responsibility of military leadership thus fell on consuls who were often inexperienced in matters of war, and it is these untested officials who would lead the first Roman army to defeats, as Gnaeus Papirius Carbo did in 113 BCE, and as the praetors Glaber and Varinius did in 73 BCE.

    I was also pleasantly surprised by my ability to fill in the gaps left by the show. In the second episode, when the narrator mentioned Pompey’s victory over some “dangerous rebels in Spain,” I instantly remembered the key details of the Sertorian Revolt. In the previous episode, I recalled our in-class discussions about the extent to which Marius’ reelection to the consulship was a paradigm shift for Roman politics, which was briefly touched on by the show, but not explored in detail. Roman Revolutions has provided me with an excellent base of knowledge, and has prepared me well to understand and think critically about content relating to Rome.