I'm sure that there is some discussion going on here and there, but it's all rather disorganized and decentralized.
Yeah - this is why I get a bit frustrated. There is this LJ comm but I don't find the discussion there very stimulating - I'd rather find people's LJs (like yours although it was not through "Rome" that I found yours) and talk about the show there...
I'm so thrilled with what they've done with Brutus' character -- I thought he'd be a complete waste of space, kind of laughable, but he's really not. He's come into his own so well! And really, if I can feel sympathy for Brutus, anyone can.
Ha ha! Do you mean THIS Brutus or Brutus historically or what? I think they've done a marvellous job with him too because as I said, originally he seemed like a bit of a joke, and I had no idea he'd end up being one of the tortured people who is just trying to what he thinks is right ...
It looks inevitable that Rome would succumb to autocracy, that the Senate was incapable of maintaining its position, but I think that's really hindsight. I mean, it certainly wasn't obvious to most Romans at the time. I don't think that they thought that their political system was moribund -- and I don't think that it was.
No, of course, you are very right about this and I defer to your vastly greater knowledge of the subject - I just mean that after the earlier period of dictatorship under Sulla, it seems clearer that the system that worked OK governing a small city-state didn't work quite so well when it was meant to rule a large empire (and I feel like, and please correct if I'm wrong, because as with 90% of things I am kind of talking out of my ass, Sulla himself destroyed so much of the substance of republican form that they were left only with emptry forms?) Also, of course, it was quite a long-ago shock to my system to realize that "republic" and "democracy" were not synonymous (I got over it but you know ... Hee!)
I completely agree about the non-inevitability of history - you may know I have studied a much later period than yours, but one of the the huge "what ifs?" in what I do is "What if Stauffenberg's assassination attempt in July 1944 had succeeded in killing Hitler?" and a corollary one is "what if an earlier conspiracy in 1938 had succeeded in deposing him from power"? Nothing really is inevitable and a lot of stuff would have come out very differently, of course...
Um, sorry to ramble/rant on about that for so long. I probably think about it too much.
Hee! no, I love that I'm getting your expertise for free on LJ while your students have to pay for it :p And I love that we get to you know, DISCUSS stuff and I'm not here rolling my eyes going "I don't THINK incest was really common in Rome" ;)
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timeasmymeasure
no subject
Date: 2005-11-14 11:37 pm (UTC)Yeah - this is why I get a bit frustrated. There is this LJ comm but I don't find the discussion there very stimulating - I'd rather find people's LJs (like yours although it was not through "Rome" that I found yours) and talk about the show there...
I'm so thrilled with what they've done with Brutus' character -- I thought he'd be a complete waste of space, kind of laughable, but he's really not. He's come into his own so well! And really, if I can feel sympathy for Brutus, anyone can.
Ha ha! Do you mean THIS Brutus or Brutus historically or what? I think they've done a marvellous job with him too because as I said, originally he seemed like a bit of a joke, and I had no idea he'd end up being one of the tortured people who is just trying to what he thinks is right ...
It looks inevitable that Rome would succumb to autocracy, that the Senate was incapable of maintaining its position, but I think that's really hindsight. I mean, it certainly wasn't obvious to most Romans at the time. I don't think that they thought that their political system was moribund -- and I don't think that it was.
No, of course, you are very right about this and I defer to your vastly greater knowledge of the subject - I just mean that after the earlier period of dictatorship under Sulla, it seems clearer that the system that worked OK governing a small city-state didn't work quite so well when it was meant to rule a large empire (and I feel like, and please correct if I'm wrong, because as with 90% of things I am kind of talking out of my ass, Sulla himself destroyed so much of the substance of republican form that they were left only with emptry forms?) Also, of course, it was quite a long-ago shock to my system to realize that "republic" and "democracy" were not synonymous (I got over it but you know ... Hee!)
I completely agree about the non-inevitability of history - you may know I have studied a much later period than yours, but one of the the huge "what ifs?" in what I do is "What if Stauffenberg's assassination attempt in July 1944 had succeeded in killing Hitler?" and a corollary one is "what if an earlier conspiracy in 1938 had succeeded in deposing him from power"? Nothing really is inevitable and a lot of stuff would have come out very differently, of course...
Um, sorry to ramble/rant on about that for so long. I probably think about it too much.
Hee! no, I love that I'm getting your expertise for free on LJ while your students have to pay for it :p And I love that we get to you know, DISCUSS stuff and I'm not here rolling my eyes going "I don't THINK incest was really common in Rome" ;)