lesbiassparrow

I was just wondering how they will do (or if they will do) some of the historical events of the last years of the Republic. Below the cut is a list of things I am currently wondering about. No actual Rome spoilers, but if you don't know Roman history I guess, er, I could spoil you for that. Don't read if you want to be astonished about things like who marries who. :)

1. Antony and Octavia's marriage. And the hope that everyone had that their child would solve things - until she turned out to be a girl. While he treated her poorly, I think that there is enough evidence that it didn't really fail as a marriage until he threw in his lot totally with Cleopatra.

2. Antony and Cleopatra. I guess they will go the romance route for this, though it seems to have been a business arrangement for them at the start at any rate. The one thing I really didn't like about last season was Cleopatra, which I felt has got to be the worst characterization *ever* of her. Including some of the wilder silents.

3. Octavian and Livia. Running off with another man's heavily pregnant wife and moving in with her before you were married because you're not sure that the marriage would be legal? If Rome dumps that storyline and his first marriage one too, I'll be disappointed heavily.

4. The banquet of the 12 gods. Where Octavian and his cronies celebrated dressed as various gods. Shocking, irreligious, and surely a great scene. But they've made Octavian so calculating (which he surely was) that I am not sure that they will ever manage to give him a wild side.

5. Octavian going over to the Senate's side for a bit. They really hoped to use him and it wasn't until later that they realized that he was no controllable.

6. Maecenas and Octavian. Supposedly there was a bit of wife-swapping there. Well Maecenas swapped his wife, at any rate. And Octavian used him as his collection agency: supposedly people used to burst into tears when they got letters from Maecenas because it meant that their land was being confiscated.

7. The death of Cicero. The show doesn't have much time for him, but his end is too tragic. Careening all over the place at the end of his life, only to end up being killed on Antony's orders by (supposedly) a man he had defended on a charge of parricide.