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The Mother of All Battles
Inside the Episode
With Jonathan Stamp
"How ill this taper burns" says Brutus. I love this scene. I've seen it done on stage so many times, and love it always.
The candlelight flickers against the sighing sides of the tent and the apparition materializes. Just a suggestion in some productions, in others a full-on ghoul in white. A real ghost? A projection of Brutus' guilty mind? As always in Shakespeare we're left unsure.
"Art thou some god", asks Brutus, "some angel, or some devil.
That makest my blood cold and my hair to stare?
Speak to me who thou art".
And the Ghost: "Thy evil spirit, Brutus".
"Why comest thou?"
"To tell thee thou shalt see me at Philippi".
As ever, Shakespeare got it. He read Plutarch, the Greek biographer of both Brutus and Caesar, and he really got it. This is the psychological pay-off in "Julius Caesar", the heart of that wonderful play. On the eve of the decisive battle Caesar re-appears to his assassin, to warn him he has not escaped. Brutus could never escape the remorse of killing the man he had loved. It stalked him for two years. And in the end it was to claim him. At Philippi.
In Roman history Philippi was indeed the turning point. Before it some dream of the Roman Republican ideal was still alive, but after it was extinguished forever. With the victory of Marc Antony and Octavian a new era dawned. For five hundred years Rome had prided itself on its freedom, its self-determination, on not being a monarchy. It had expelled a foreign King to govern itself. Now, exhausted after a hundred years of civil war, its idealism, and its ideals, were spent. It would accept any condition, pay any price, if there would just be peace. Peace it got. But it was also to get an Emperor, a new King.
We made Philippi 'Rome's' biggest production number for a reason. It was not just the largest clash of arms in all of ancient history – significantly more than 200,000 men fought to the death on that plain in northwest Greece – but also one of the most important turning-points in the story of Rome.
A week of filming, 400 plus extras a day at a quarry near Rome in 100 degree heat, seven months of rendering and special effects, two weeks in the sound edit. We felt it was worth it — for an event that changed history.
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
At its height the Roman Empire stretched from
Scotland to the Sahara and from the Atlantic Ocean to Afghanistan, an area that now contains more than 50 modern sovereign states?
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"Philippi"
