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Inside the Episode
With Jonathan Stamp
Twenty three stab wounds, the autopsy stated, and still not dead. Left for dead, certainly, alone in a pool of blood. Caesar lay for three hours, the ancient records state with horror, slowly dying on the Senate House floor.
Three hours. That's nothing. We've left him there for the best part of twelve months. But now the show is back —and once again it's the Ides of March, 44BC.
As dates go, the Ides — 15th March 44BC — is right up there on the history A-List. An absolute world-changer. It also happens to be one of history's greatest 'What-ifs?'
You know 'What-if's'? What if Hitler hadn't decided to invade the Soviet Union in 1941 and had conquered all of Western Europe, including Britain instead? What if an army under Charles Martel hadn't defeated an Islamic army at Poitiers in 732AD and France had become completely Muslim, just as Spain had done? What if Robert E. Lee had been victorious at Gettysburg?
And what if the counsel of Cassius rather than Brutus had prevailed on the Ides of March, 44BC, and Mark Antony had also been hunted down and killed?
Writer Bruno Heller decided to make the first episode hinge on this question.
Cassius, in a very pragmatic and very Roman fashion, was determined that Antony, Caesar's staunchest ally, had to die along with that 'tyrant' in the name of liberty. Brutus overruled him.
Brutus' principles were his strength, but were also to prove his weakness. And it's the weakness that really registers here. The first time we see him he is in a Macbeth-like state of shock, directly after the assassination. Director Tim Van Patten drives the point home, with that close-up of Brutus' shaking hands in the water bowl, the image made all the more powerful by his mother, Servilia's, unnervingly steady grip upon him. She is all resolution, where he is all doubt.
Brutus holds firm, just, and Antony is spared. Whether from principle, or simply because Brutus has no stomach for another killing, we're no longer sure. The crucial point is that Cassius is thwarted.
But had Cassius had his way there would have been no Mark Antony to deliver that famous speech in the Forum over Caesar's cadaver. We don't know exactly what he said, (it's Shakespeare who gave us 'Friends, Romans, Countrymen...'), but the sources all agree that whatever it was, it had the desired effect.
At a stroke the people had turned against Brutus and Cassius. Within a month these senators were forced to leave Rome, and they never returned — a fatal loss of initiative for their cause.
It opened the way for Antony to try and plot his course to be Caesar's heir apparent. Something he did so ham-fistedly that within weeks he was on his way to alienating the Senate and power-brokers of Rome. They started to look about for a figurehead they could use against Antony, believing that by that means they could get him out of the picture and re-establish their hold on power which Caesar had done so much to weaken.
And so into the picture steps Octavian, Caesar's great-nephew. He had been named Caesar's heir in the great man's will. But no one took that, or Octavian, seriously. He was eighteen, completely untried. In the scene in which Posca reads the will, Antony's disappointment at being overlooked is palpable, but so too is his complete disregard for Octavian. He is a boy, to be patronized, nothing more. Antony is as yet incapable of seeing him as a threat.
The Senate too believed Octavian would be their puppet. Big mistake. Caesar had understood better than any what Octavian was really made of. It would take the rest of Rome some time to find out.
But we as an audience get a tiny glimpse of Octavian's precocious acumen in the scene where he somehow persuades Atia to stay in Rome. It's Octavian who has the brains to see that, in killing Caesar, Brutus and Cassius have undermined their own constitutional position. And it's Octavian who finds the simple words to bring his mother round. "If the will stands you are mother to the richest man in Rome. If it is broken, Servilia will have that honor".
When Antony took up arms in a final desperate bid for power it was Octavian whom the Senate dispatched to deal with him. Again they believed they could rein him in once he had won the required victory. Again they had made a mistake.
Antony was the making of Octavian. Without him as an enemy, and as the story unfolds later an ally, the young man could never have overcome the almost impossible odds he faced to attain power. Octavian would never have become Augustus, Rome might never have had its first Emperor, indeed never really have had an Empire.
And all because Antony was allowed to live. It's one of the most remarkable stories in all the remarkable history of Rome.
Documentarian and historian Jonathan Stamp is a former Executive Producer in the BBC History Department and acted as Consultant and Co-Producer on Rome.
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Rome Logo Tee
An HBO SHOP(SM) exclusive features a soft cotton construction with the Rome logo across the front.
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Rome Fact
Immediately after birth, Roman babies were
not considered officially 'alive' unless physically
picked up by their father, (the Latin word for this was 'sublatus'). If the father did not pick the child up it was considered not to exist and was thrown out with the rubbish.
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"Passover"
