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Son of Hell
Inside the Episode
With Jonathan Stamp
So, just in case you hadn't realized from Season One, you'll have gotten the message now: Don't cross Lucius Vorenus.
If you weren't convinced by his Carrie homage in the first episode — that image of him staggering down the street like a blood-spattered zombie, with Erastes Fulmen's severed head in his hand — then his performance as a 'Son of Hades' in front of Rome's underworld kingpins will have convinced you. Best pick your fight with someone else.
No wonder Pullo is horrified at the dark road his friend is taking. For ordinary Romans like him the gods were ever-present, always in need of placation, and terrifyingly real. An alliance with the divine forces below, (Hades is the ancient Greek word for the Underworld), was no empty pose, but an invitation to destruction and disaster.
Vorenus doesn't care. And, as he himself says, it seemed to work. After all, the world he is trying to bring to order is a ruthless one requiring ruthless measures. You want to run Rome's collegia? You'd better be a scary dude.
Which brings us to our word of the week: collegium. (That's the singular form. The plural is collegia.) It's a Latin word and it means something like 'club' or 'guild'.
In Rome, and everywhere throughout the Roman world, there were collegia. Any trade — from rowboat men on the Tiber to glass-blowers or slipper-makers — could form a club, a kind of trade union, and it would be called a collegium. It had its own rules, its own finances, (members had to pay dues), its own meeting place. It was a form of belonging, and of protection—both very important in a sprawling, lawless exponentially expanding city like Rome.
Because trades tended to be concentrated in the same district — all the lace-makers on a single street for example — collegia tended to have a geographical identity too. That's the reason for the references in the script to different areas of Rome, like the hills of the Aventine, the Caelian and the Oppian. These tended to be dominated by a particular collegium.
For a long time the collegia had functioned without attracting too much attention from the authorities, but in the years before Caesar's death that had changed. Ambitious politicians had made use of them to control Rome's mob and they became criminalized in the process. They started to operate rackets, most obviously protection rackets. They were deliberately armed, until they were effectively paramilitary organizations.
The problem became so serious that Caesar had tried to ban all but the most venerable collegia shortly before he died. He partly succeeded, but in the chaos that followed his death they exploded back into life. Order could only be kept on Rome's streets with their say-so. Which is where men like Vorenus came in.
So if you want to get a grip on the role that the self-styled 'Son of Hades' has accepted, think of it this way. He's the Jimmy Hoffa of the Aventine.
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
The Romans practised human sacrifice in times
of acute emergency? During the war against Hannibal several Gallic slaves, both male and female, were buried alive beneath the Forum to appease the gods and turn the tide of the war.
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"Son of Hades"
