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01.08.2007 | HISTORICAL CONSULTANT JONATHAN STAMP SETS THE SCENE FOR THE SECOND SEASON OF HBO'S EMMY®-WINNING EPIC DRAMA SERIES ROME, KICKING OFF JAN. 14
"The second season of ROME begins on the same day the first one ended, which is the Ides of March, the 15th of March, 44 B.C., when Caesar was assassinated," says co-producer Jonathan Stamp, who has served as the series' historical consultant from the beginning. "Then the season will span the years 44 to 30 B.C., through the story of Antony and Cleopatra."
Possessing a Master's Degree in Classical Studies, Stamp came to ROME with more than a decade of experience making BBC documentaries, many of them on the ancient world. From materials used in everyday Roman life to the sometimes-confounding tangle of historical events that govern the story lines, his role on ROME is to ensure that the show is authentic, which does not mean a slavish recreation of the past, but an accessible adaptation that stays true in spirit to the way things were.
As season two follows the shock waves from Caesar's murder, a number of key themes will emerge, notes Stamp. "Politically, the big question is who Caesar's heir will be. According to the will, his appointed legal heir is Octavian, to everyone's surprise - and to the bitter disappointment of Antony."
But naming the callow and lightly regarded Octavian as ruler hardly settles the issue of succession, setting off jockeying for position among the various competitors for power. Explains Stamp, "The three camps are Brutus-Cassius, the tyrannicides who killed Caesar, Octavian and Antony. Although there's overt hostility towards Brutus and Cassius, the antagonism between Antony and Octavian is covert.
"Octavian is keen to assert himself, but at first he's just laughed at because he's a young boy," continues Stamp. "Caesar has surprised everyone by picking him - I think it's one of the clearest indications of Caesar's genius that he selected Octavian as his heir. Choosing your successor is one of the most difficult things to do. If you look down the corridor of Roman history from there, the choice of successors is almost always a catastrophe."
But Octavian will survive and ultimately triumph in season two of ROME, thanks to what Stamp describes as "an extraordinary combination of tenacity, astuteness and brute force. Eventually there is something monstrous about him - his mother Atia and sister Octavia certainly know what he's about."
Another kind of vast change is looming as well. While the elaborate polytheism of traditional Roman religion still commands the devotion of most citizens, the second season of ROME will offer a glimpse into the rise of monotheism by exploring the city's Jewish community, as seen through the eyes of the character Timon. Notes Stamp, "Although we are still in the pre-Christian era, it's on the horizon. There are indications of the Jewish community in Rome as early as 250 years before the birth of Christ, which makes it one of the oldest Jewish communities on earth.
"At the time of our story, the Jews were not regarded as threatening, although there was a hint of a clash between Roman religion and monotheism in the air. The crucial thing is that the Jews did not evangelize - they didn't go around saying, 'You should only believe in one god, and it should be ours.'
"As a result, the establishment had a kind of uneasy truce with the Jews - they got themselves into a bit of hot water by being too close politically with Caesar, and it wasn't a good thing to be closely associated with a dead dictator. And they were very prominent at Caesar's funeral, because Caesar had cut them all kinds of breaks. But in many ways, they were largely assimilated."
The oft-chronicled saga of Antony and Cleopatra comes to the fore in the latter half of the season. Stamp acknowledges the challenge of bringing a fresh twist to the tale, saying, "Everyone's heard of Antony and Cleopatra, but we have a slightly different take. In our story, Cleopatra is not Antony's only passion. He also retains a yen for Atia, and these unresolved feelings add interesting emotional complexity. The crucial element of the story is the dissolute hopelessness that both Antony and Cleopatra sank into." Stamp observes that their toxic relationship can even be regarded as an ancient forerunner of the one that consumed ill-fated '70s punk rockers Sid and Nancy.
Continues Stamp, "He imbibed the local culture in Egypt and came to believe himself the incarnation of the god Dionysus, while she identified herself as Isis. But there was enough of the Roman in Antony, even at the very end, that he was never able to leave it behind."
HBO's Emmy®-winning epic drama series ROME kicks off its ten-episode second season SUNDAY, JAN. 14 (9:00-10:00 p.m. ET/PT), exclusively on HBO.
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