Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Entertainment/2023 April 25

= April 25 =

Why do most movies, TV shows, documentaries, and re-enactments portray the Romans speaking British English?
Most movies, tv shows, documentaries, and re-enactments portray the Romans speaking with British accents which in unlikely since Ancient Rome is what we now know as modern-day Italy. 95.144.204.68 (talk) 16:23, 25 April 2023 (UTC)
 * They could have them speak Latin, with English subtitles, but that doesn't seem ideal. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 17:47, 25 April 2023 (UTC)
 * Your premise is not established. Where did you read that "most movies (etc) portray Romans as speaking with British accents".  Can you show us where you read this statistic, so that we can learn more about this?  -- Jayron 32 18:02, 25 April 2023 (UTC)
 * The IP has a history of asking controversial questions. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 18:23, 25 April 2023 (UTC)
 * It's not really controversial, it's just malformed. It's an unanswerable question of the plurium interrogationum kind, in the sense that "It is committed when someone asks a question that presupposes something that has not been proven or accepted by all the people involved."  In this case, the asker has made a presupposition which they take to be true, but which has not been established as true.  That's why I would like to know where they read the information.  If we know what their source for the statement is, perhaps we could help them interpret that source or use it to find more information.  If they don't have any source of the information we can follow up with, then perhaps it isn't a valid presupposition, and then we have no question to answer.  Not controversial, really, just something we need more information about to be useful.  -- Jayron 32 18:34, 25 April 2023 (UTC)
 * IP's question reminds me of the 1979 film Caligula, which starred well-known British actors like Malcolm McDowell, John Gielgud and Helen Mirren as Romans in Caligula's time. As far as I recall, they didn't seem to bother altering their natural accents. But then the film wasn't exactly concerned about historical accuracy in general. BorgQueen (talk) 19:18, 25 April 2023 (UTC)
 * In America, the posh British accent is considered prestigious, so Hollywood considers it appropriate for high-ranking Romans. Scurrilous dogs like Barabbas (Anthony Quinn), on the other hand, speak American English. (The shocking shortage of fluent Latin-speaking actors makes this a necessity.) Clarityfiend (talk) 19:50, 25 April 2023 (UTC)
 * Many Hollywood films like the Gladiator (2000 film) portray the Romans with British accents, which is historically inaccurate because Romans are basically the ancestors of modern-day Italians. Even HBO's Rome (TV show), which according to the directors is meant to be "historically authentic" portrays the Romans with British accents. 95.144.204.68 (talk) 21:22, 25 April 2023 (UTC)
 * Maybe they should all talk like Chico Marx. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 21:38, 25 April 2023 (UTC)
 * In silent cinema they talk like Harpo. --Error (talk) 18:25, 26 April 2023 (UTC)
 * About the Romans being the ancestors of Italians, that depends of definitions. After the 212 Edict of Caracalla most of the free people in the empire were Roman citizens including non-Latin speakers. Several centuries earlier, only the inhabitants of the city were "Romans". Genetic history of Italy explains the different origins of modern Italians. --Error (talk) 18:25, 26 April 2023 (UTC)

It's not that far-fetched a question. When I watched Gladiator I wondered why Joaquin Phoenix had a British accent.Maineartists (talk) 21:48, 25 April 2023 (UTC)


 * When I watched HBO's Rome I was expecting the characters to sound like Tony Soprano but was surprised to hear them have British accents. 95.144.204.68 (talk) 21:54, 25 April 2023 (UTC)
 * You may be confusing the Mid-Atlantic accent with a British accent; see further the section . --Lambiam 21:56, 25 April 2023 (UTC)


 * Googling the subject, here's an answer from 7 years ago. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 22:08, 25 April 2023 (UTC)


 * I imagine the reason upper class people in historical dramas have upper class English or American (i.e., transatlantic) accents is that it shows their social status. It's not only Rome, but other countries as well, with the notable exception of colonial America.
 * It's particularly jarring for dramas placed in England before the 19th century, when no one spoke with anything resembling a modern upper class English accent.
 * Note too that the Italian language had not been developed and Romans would not have sounded like them. Even if they did, dramas set in foreign countries rarely have their characters speak with a foreign accent.
 * TFD (talk) 22:31, 25 April 2023 (UTC)
 * I'm not getting mixed up with a Mid-Atlantic accent at all. Many Hollywood movies portray the Romans speaking in Received Pronunciation accents, which is a modern occurrence when compared to the Romans. When you really think about it, the Italian accent is more closer to what the Romans sounded like rather than the British accent. 95.144.204.68 (talk) 14:52, 26 April 2023 (UTC)
 * Good luck proving that. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 16:17, 26 April 2023 (UTC)
 * Brutus, Casca, and Mark Antony all use American accents in Julius Caesar (1970 film). -- Jayron 32 17:57, 26 April 2023 (UTC)
 * Ha! That's because like Liam Neeson in any film he's ever been in, getting Heston, Robards and Vaughn to speak in a British accent would be nothing short of a miracle! Maineartists (talk) 21:13, 27 April 2023 (UTC)
 * Heston and Robards attempted British accents. Hard to say what accent Vaughn was attempting. Whether or not they were successful, I leave to you. Gielgud, who played Caesar, and Riggs have British accents as did most of the actors. TFD (talk) 21:35, 27 April 2023 (UTC)
 * Heston made a reasonable fist of a British accent as General Charles Gordon in Khartoum. But in Ben-Hur he never drifted far from American. --  Jack of Oz   [pleasantries]  12:24, 28 April 2023 (UTC)


 * Matteo Rovere has The First King: Birth of an Empire and Romulus (TV series) in a mixture of Old Latin (not Classical Latin) and reconstructed Proto-Indoeuropean. Some of the actors seemed to me be reading their phonetic lines as if it were Italian. --Error (talk) 18:13, 26 April 2023 (UTC)
 * In Barbarians, the Romans spoke Latin (in spite of my username, I can't vouch for the quality), while the eponymous barbarians spoke modern German. Favonian (talk) 18:48, 26 April 2023 (UTC)


 * One exception was John Wayne's Wild-West accent for the centurion at the Crucifixion in The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965). An apocryphal story goes that the director, unhappy with Wayne's first effort at "Truly, this man is the Son of God!", asked him to "say it with awe". The next take went "Awww, truly this man is the Son of God!".  Alansplodge (talk) 17:45, 27 April 2023 (UTC)
 * And don't forget Edward G Robinson's authentic performance as Dathan in The Ten Commandments! Maineartists (talk) 21:16, 27 April 2023 (UTC)
 * Robinson was actually Jewish. At least he spoke in his normal voice. Imagine if he had effected a Yiddish-type accent. Oy! ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 22:50, 27 April 2023 (UTC)


 * There's always Derek Jarman's Sebastiane with all-Latin dialogue, but it's not for everyone. MinorProphet (talk) 20:54, 27 April 2023 (UTC)
 * Also more well known, is the use of Latin in The Passion of the Christ by the Roman characters. One of the criticisms is that, as a province of the Eastern part of the Empire, the centurions, soldiers, and officials would have likely spoken Greek instead (even among the upper classes in Rome itself, Greek was commonly spoken.  The Last words of Julius Caesar were spoken in Greek, for example, Shakespeare notwithstanding).  -- Jayron 32 12:07, 28 April 2023 (UTC)
 * Well are there any films, documentaries or TV shows that portray the Romans speaking in Italian accents. 95.144.204.68 (talk) 19:01, 28 April 2023 (UTC)
 * I remember some Astérix movies where the Romans speak French with an Italian accent, the Gauls speak standard French, the Britons speak French with an English accent and the Egyptians speak French with a North-African accent, which was the native accent of the Algerian-French actors. In real life, the Gauls and Britons would have spoken something closer to Breton or Welsh, but you don't want to make things too hard for the audience in a movie based on a comic. In most Italian movies set in ancient Rome, I expect the Romans to speak Italian. PiusImpavidus (talk) 09:26, 29 April 2023 (UTC)
 * In the Italian adaptation of Asterix Romans talks in Romanesco dialect, which is indeed very funny, while Gauls speak standard Italian. The same thing happens very often in other non-historically accurate movies, cartoons or advertising in Italy. --82.52.31.81 (talk) 15:12, 29 April 2023 (UTC)
 * Fabiola (1949 film), Scipio Africanus: The Defeat of Hannibal, Attila (1954 film) all portray Roman characters speaking Italian. -- Jayron 32 15:16, 1 May 2023 (UTC)