Talk:Rome (TV series)/Archive 2

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Episode entries

Is it really necessary to have separate articles for each episode? Most are messy and incomplete, and could be summarised in a couple of sentences in the main article with links to the HBO site/fansites, where quotes, trivia, screenshots, etc. belong. Njál 22:38, 30 November 2005 (UTC)

Many are incomplete - and given the scope of the layout for the episodes, they are going to be growing a long time yet - but I would contest the "messy" tag. The form and layout has been evolving over the last couple of weeks, but I think the form and layout are both stable, and functional.

While I agree that most television shows don't need to have this level of integration into a Wikipedia - Rome is a bit unusual in that it is so heavily historically based. The historical background of the episodes can be done uniquely here - as the historical material is already part of the Wikipedia.

Is it possible to have brief "couple of sentence summaries" in the main article? Of course - but the in-depth historical background notes would flood the main article (and I would argue that's not what the main article should be taken up with), and replicating the historical background notes offsite would mean copying large swathes of interconnected information out of the wiki.

Frankly, given the depth of coverage that such material as Harry Potter is given in the Wikipedia, the coverage being given to Rome seems mild. Note: I'm not picking on Harry Potter. It's an example of something that is almost totally self-contained and could be replicated in it's own Wiki elsewhere with little or no problem. Rome, while being "only" a television show, is strongly linked into the historical information in other parts of the Wiki.

Beowulf314159 23:04, 30 November 2005 (UTC)

Lest you think the connections are all one way - I've already had to write a historical article that was missing (and it was missing - there were links to it in other articles, just no article) to explain something that occured in one of the episodes of Rome. It's a bit rough, but I have to dig out the classical sources again before I polish it up. Beowulf314159 00:14, 1 December 2005 (UTC)

Women

Is it just me? I noticed it in ep 1 when Atia took Octavia to Pompey ... and now I'm watching ep 4 with all the feasts, and it's true for Servilia, Atia, Phyllis the honor guest's wife ... It looks like whenever women "dress up", for formal or festive occasions, they dress and make up to look like trollops, and not from a particularly fancy brothel either... Is that historical fact, or just the series makers' conceptions? --Svartalf 23:35, 9 January 2006 (UTC)

Screenshots?

Do we really need the screenshots in the table here?

I appeciate the effort put into it - but the table links to the individial episode articles, and they contain screen shots already.

Beowulf314159 02:18, 15 January 2006 (UTC)

Can we see what the general consensus is before its deleted?--CyberGhostface 02:27, 15 January 2006 (UTC)

I actually like the screenshots, it makes it look more uniform to other show pages. Sfufan2005 02:52, 15 January 2006 (UTC)

I like em, I say keep. NeoRicen 03:55, 20 January 2006 (UTC)

a blister of a matter

Another inaccuracy which could have easily been avoided : Where in Tartarus is Octavius' bulla (or those of Octavia and the two Vorenas for that matter)? Children of Roman citizens used to wear those large lockets until they came of age... but the series includes several characters who are both of good family and not yet adult, and none of them wear them... It's doubly weird in a series where Roman superstitions and religious practices make regular cameo appearances. --Svartalf 23:16, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

How does this relate to the article? MagnoliaSouth 14:40, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

Screwed Up Tables

This is how my browser looks like when you keep it with the new format. [[1]]

File:Screweduptable.JPG

It stretches the screen and seriously messes up the format.

That is why I say it looks 'screwed up'.--CyberGhostface 23:59, 4 February 2006 (UTC)

I wasn't objecting to reverting - although it would have been better to fix the formatting problems. What I objected to was you reverted without looking - and you wiped out several unrelated content changes. Which is why I put the changes back peicemeal - so you can tell what changes are what. - Vedexent 00:30, 5 February 2006 (UTC)

I'm not that good with HTML so I wouldn't know what to change without screwing everything up. But for the record, I think its the realigning column headers to match cells that messed up the episode guide table.--CyberGhostface 00:47, 5 February 2006 (UTC)

Historical Characters

I'd like to propose that all the character pages be merged with their historical counterparts. I haven't seen enough interesting info on any of the character pages to warrant an encyclopaedia entry but I grant that there is potential for discussion of a few eg Marcus Junius Brutus. (Also, many of the side bars seem to be incorrect wrt class. eg Pompey, Cato and Brutus are down as Patrician when they were Plebian. I don't remember this being mentioned on the show at all.)

Any useful information comparing these dramatical characters with the historically accepted versions should be placed in a separate page, Depiction of Historical Characters in Rome (TV series). The current titles with "(character of Rome)" can be redirected to the appropriate section of that page.

If we don't do this we're asking for an infinite list of stubs with titles like like Gaius Julius Caesar (William Shakespeare character), Gaius Julius Caesar (Colleen McCullough character) and Augustus (Robert Graves character)!

Or, if there is too much info for a single page contrasting all the real characters, a section titled "Fictional Portrayals" could be added to each of the historical pages cf Cato. This would allow for all the other portrayals without a multitude of half-finished pages. Nick 17:50, 17 April 2006 (UTC)

Honestly, the Rome characters are all dissimilar enough to their historical counterparts as to deserve completely separate entries. Merging would cause confusion. Best solution is to include a link to the historical counterpart so interested persons can compare truth with fiction. --Svartalf 20:04, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

Really? Is Pompey really all that different from the historical Pompey? He seems to mostly do the things the historical Pompey does, and the interpretation of the character is one that seems plausible from the historical sources. It's obviously a fictionalized portrayal, but it doesn't seem different enough to warrant an entire page on the subject. A paragraph in a "fictional portrayals" section of the Pompey article would seem sufficient. BTW, the show definitely does mention that Pompey is a plebeian - Brutus (whose technical plebeian status is, indeed, mentioned) makes an ass of himself in the first episode when he realizes he's said something insulting about plebeians in front of Pompey, himself a plebeian. Cato and Brutus, however, are clearly portrayed as being patricians in the context of the show, which isn't at all clear on the difference between a nobleman and a patrician (except in rare cases - they have to admit Antony as a plebeian because he's tribune of the plebs. Cicero and Pompey's humble origins are noted, although Cicero also is somehow outraged by Vorenus, et al, being raised to the Senate). john k 21:21, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

And Augustus suffers from definite age discrepancies, Cato is quite loosely based on Cato Uticensis, Pullo and Vorenus are definitely different from their historical progenitors, to the point of destroying any historical plausibility, Atia is gratuitously turned into a nasty, conniving, promiscuous creature that is not supported by any historical sources (of couse, those are scant and it would have been hard to give any accounts contradicting the official versions while the Julio Claudians were in power, and after that, it was too late to have accurate ones)... No, it's definitely better to treat the historical and the fictional as separate characters than to try and cram both versions into the same article. It makes for a much clearer organisation of material. --Svartalf 00:12, 28 July 2006 (UTC)

Discrepancies from history are commonplace in historical fiction. The question is, are the versions of the characters who appear in the TV series significant enough to have their own encyclopedia articles, separate from the historical character's their based on? We don't, for example, have separate articles for the portrayals of historical characters in I, Claudius, although they deviate from historical fact on occasion, and I'd argue that I, Claudius is more culturally significant than Rome. For that matter, we don't have separate articles for the versions of historical characters featured in Shakespeare's Julius Caesar and Antony and Cleopatra, although they're unquestionably more culturally significant than Rome. Surely it would be better to note the characters' appearance in the series, together with any historical inaccuracies, in the articles on the historical characters? Otherwise we could end up with an article for "Julius Caesar (Asterix character)" or "Marcus Aurelius (character of Gladiator)". --Nicknack009 08:36, 28 July 2006 (UTC)

Departures from truth

First of all I think this should be "deviations from history"

-It is quite unnecessairy to note that the show is in English, it is common knowledge that Romans spoke Latin, therefore this point should be removed -Miles refrence could stay, although quite a minor thing to have on the article -Modern cursing: this is similar to the first point, although many Latin curse words had similar meaning to our modern curse words, so the show therefore captures more of a sense of the way Romans used insults. -As for Modern thinking being transparent in characters: this point should just flat out be removed, as it is not explained in the section, and shouldn't be concidered a devation from history.

This section needs quite alot of change KurtFF8 19:20, 17 May 2006 (UTC)

The section might be struck entirely. Historical inaccuracies are already part of the individual episode descriptions. - Vedexent 21:25, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

I agree, although perhaps there should still be note of major changes the series makes, for instance, Caesar wasn't assinated in the Senate floor, but behind a theater. Details like that should be included in this article I think KurtFF8 23:36, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

RAI coproduced the show

Just a note to tell everybody that this very fine show wouldn't be as we know it whitout the efforts of their italian partner RAI. Check www.rome.rai.it.

Can anyone confirm or deny that RAI was a co-producer? They are not credited in the program credits, or in any of the HBO/BBC literature on the show - Vedexent 22:27, 23 June 2006 (UTC)

just check www.rome.rai.it (get an italian dictionary). Or ask any italian people who has actually viewed the show, aired this spring on Rai Due. Or, much better check this. http://www.ufficiostampa.rai.it/UFFICIO_STAMPA_MAIN_DETTAGLIO_NEWS.aspx?IDSCHEDAARCHIVIONEWS=37586 (Remember to use babelfish...;-))

--213.156.52.106 19:59, 24 June 2006 (UTC)

OK, but the cynic in me wonders why HBO and the BBC don't credit RAI (or why RAI is not suing for lack of credit) should this be the case. I can see RAI being credited with the Italian Language version of the program - for the translation, editing, etc. - and thus get local production credit, but still not be producers of the original series. I have not been able to locate any information about RAI's "coproduction" of the series outside of RAI's own website - which makes me suspect a little "creative padding" of the RAI resume' - i.e. we provided the studios, and are broadcasting (an edited) version of the series, therefore we get "production credit". - Vedexent (talk • contribs • blog) 04:48, 25 June 2006 (UTC)

I don't agree with your not NPOV (IMHO, of course ;-)) view about this point. It's not only a matter of collecting easy evidences (as corporations' press releases....do we really think they're UNBIASED?!?), but it's also a matter of interpreting them: two evidences of the same event/thing/person with different viewpoint combined together make a much better NPOV entry in wikipedia than a biased one. So, according to this simple encyclopedic rule of thumb (and it's a rule of thumb of democracy, too!) it's better leave this entry as is.

Ah, one more thing...about "suing for lack of due credits", I can tell you cynically, that italian people have different customs about settling these small matters and court litigations aren't part of them, especially when billions of dollars moves from US to IT to pay all bills due. ;-)

--151.24.25.17 12:20, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

Sorry - but as I can't find anything put out by HBO or the BBC confirming this, I think this should be taken back out, unless someone can provide other evidence. - Vedexent (talk • contribs • blog) 22:41, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

Use google and babelfish together for looking for other evidences. The one which were provided are enough IMHO... ;-)

--151.24.25.17 12:20, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

Depiction of legionary fighting

As has already been pointed out in the Trivia section of the article:

"Battle scenes in Rome depict authentic Roman infantry fighting techniques including the tightly-packed "Roman Wall" of shields, gladius thrusting techniques above and below the "shield wall", and the rotation of troops on the front lines every 30–45 seconds. "

The rotation part makes perfect sense. Having a soldier in the first line fight until he dies and his fellows do almost nothing until it is their turn in the first line seems at best to be a waste of human life. Yet, this is how ancient fighting is generally perceived. Taking turn makes much more sense. Close combat will exhaust you quickly and no matter how skilled you are, when you are exhausted you rapidly become much slower. If you are not rotated away by when, you are pretty much dead meat. I read a piece of historical fiction where the legion was described as fighting in this way, but when the author, Vibeke Olsson, kindly referred me to the original source, Livius, it seemed to talk more about the entire centurias rotating from hastati, to princeps, to triarii. Is there anyone who can find us an ancient source that claims indivídual roman soldiers actually took turns being in the front row the way it is depicted in the TV-series Rome? Is there someone who knows of a scholars' debate on the subject? Some SCA try-outs to see if it actually works? Please write and tell me at dag@mensa.se so I can present this source/debate/whatever in wikipedia (or you could write it yourself in the article about Rome the TV series, the article on Roman infantry tactics or the article on Roman Legion).

Sensemaker