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Rome: Cicero and Pullo
The BBC is rushing through the second season of Rome -- two episodes a week, which is better than not showing it at all, of course. Sunday was "Philippi," and I spent Monday writing about Brutus and Cicero. I think I've seen it three times now, and I still don't like the way they handled Cicero's final scene. No blame to the actors, who both do an amazing job with it, but superlative acting isn't quite enough to salvage it for me. I think that for me, the problem is Pullo's innocence. The whole sequence really highlights Pullo's ability to walk through some pretty horrible stuff and keep himself untouched by it, which is something we've seen before, but I think always in context of Pullo's lack of illusions about himself. Pullo knows that he's a killer, and doesn't see a problem with that, but in the first season especially that means that he's always taking a step back from the rest of the world: it's Vorenus, he thinks, who deserves a happy family life, who deserves to live in the sunshine. Not Pullo.
But here, in this scene with Cicero, in the whole picnic idea, is Pullo trying to have it both ways -- he's the killer, still, but he's also out in the country with his wife, with his friend and his friend's children: he's not separate from that world. And so when he stands there and asks Cicero for some of the peaches to bring back to his wife, it's horrifying and incongruous: Pullo is doing something truly horrible, and for once he has no idea that he's doing so. He's determined not to see it.
In the short term, of course, Pullo is wrong -- all that happy normality is going to be pulled out from under him when Eirene dies and Vorenus goes to Egypt with Antony. There's something just as terrible lurking in that sunny courtyard for him. But in the long term, Pullo's innocence -- whatever you want to call it, his ability to walk untouched through history -- is confirmed. At the end of the series, he's taken the place he thought belonged to Vorenus: Caesar's favor, Vorenus' children, even his own stolen son. He gets the happy ending, at a price.
The thing about Cicero's death, in the series, is that I'm not sure what it should mean: is it just the horrible contrast, the polite assassin and the politician's hard-won self control? In the historical tradition, Cicero is killed by men he defended once: men who owe him a favor, in that peculiarly Roman sense, such that their involvement here is a symbol of just how terribly wrong things have gone. With Pullo... well, the political meaning is gone, and that's typical of the show, and my greatest complaint about it, the bizarre sidelining of political history at its most vital and meaningful. And that's why my instinct is that the scene would have worked better for me if Vorenus had done it, because Vorenus and Cicero are on the same side, both believing in the republic, both aware of what is happening to it. Vorenus would have done it, but he would have known what he was doing, and what it made of him, and of his world.
I almost talked myself into liking the scene, as I wrote this, and then I talked myself out of it again. Oh, Rome, why must you hate political history so?
But here, in this scene with Cicero, in the whole picnic idea, is Pullo trying to have it both ways -- he's the killer, still, but he's also out in the country with his wife, with his friend and his friend's children: he's not separate from that world. And so when he stands there and asks Cicero for some of the peaches to bring back to his wife, it's horrifying and incongruous: Pullo is doing something truly horrible, and for once he has no idea that he's doing so. He's determined not to see it.
In the short term, of course, Pullo is wrong -- all that happy normality is going to be pulled out from under him when Eirene dies and Vorenus goes to Egypt with Antony. There's something just as terrible lurking in that sunny courtyard for him. But in the long term, Pullo's innocence -- whatever you want to call it, his ability to walk untouched through history -- is confirmed. At the end of the series, he's taken the place he thought belonged to Vorenus: Caesar's favor, Vorenus' children, even his own stolen son. He gets the happy ending, at a price.
The thing about Cicero's death, in the series, is that I'm not sure what it should mean: is it just the horrible contrast, the polite assassin and the politician's hard-won self control? In the historical tradition, Cicero is killed by men he defended once: men who owe him a favor, in that peculiarly Roman sense, such that their involvement here is a symbol of just how terribly wrong things have gone. With Pullo... well, the political meaning is gone, and that's typical of the show, and my greatest complaint about it, the bizarre sidelining of political history at its most vital and meaningful. And that's why my instinct is that the scene would have worked better for me if Vorenus had done it, because Vorenus and Cicero are on the same side, both believing in the republic, both aware of what is happening to it. Vorenus would have done it, but he would have known what he was doing, and what it made of him, and of his world.
I almost talked myself into liking the scene, as I wrote this, and then I talked myself out of it again. Oh, Rome, why must you hate political history so?
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What remains is how he comports himself in terms of his duty to himself as a human being. He is a philosopher and a Stoic at that; he needs to carry himself with grace, fulfil his duty to his slave and die with dignity. Pullo allows him this, killing him with an efficient stroke, allowing him to settle his affairs and his mind, treating him with respect over the peaches. For me, the scene works because they both act with dignity - imagine how different it would have been had Octavian and Antony sent one of the criminal gangs from the Suburra to chop him to bits.
Cicero appreciates that he has been allowed a 'name' killer; Pullo says 'less stuck up than you'd think'. Both behave as well as is possible in the circumstances, which are horrid - it is one of the points where we are reminded that these people are aliens, but that sometimes aliens have more grace than we might manage.
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imagine how different it would have been had Octavian and Antony sent one of the criminal gangs from the Suburra to chop him to bits.
Of course, this is basically what happened to him: one doesn't need to imagine it! One of the sad things about not having Fulvia, in this universe, is that we didn't get a scene of her sticking pins into Cicero's tongue.
Obviously, my perspective is a special one: I'm a Roman historian and a political historian, and I care about the res publica in a way that most people presumably don't. Still, I think it's interesting that you found the scene alien, whereas I found it insufficiently Roman.
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Generally, he seemed to me to believe in the Republic but not always know what that meant he should do in practical terms, and it often ended up coming off more like a lack of integrity than they probably intended. Then the clarity of the only thing he could do in that scene lent him far more apparent integrity.
As for Pullo...I'm not sure he doesn't see that what he's doing is horrible, at least to the same extent he always has. He's simply at a point where he believes that and the family world can exist side by side. Which is really a pretty reasonable thing to believe, since he learned it by being who he'd always been while living with Vorenus and his family and learning to behave in that environment. If that worked, why shouldn't this? Especially when almost everyone there -- with the exception of little Lucius and maybe Vorena the Younger -- knows exactly who and what he is and is still willing to accept him in that family-man role.
As you point out, what he hasn't learned yet is that they can't be kept safely parallel indefinitely. He saw Vorenus' household implode, but the origin of that was within the domestic sphere, with Niobe's lie.
Oh, Rome, why must you hate political history so?
*chuckle* Because it's really just a big splashy soap opera, and trying to comprehend it as anything else will make even my decidedly layperson head hurt? :: sympathetic pats ::
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Because it's really just a big splashy soap opera, and trying to comprehend it as anything else will make even my decidedly layperson head hurt?
I know, I know. I just wish they hadn't gone on and on about how accurate they were being while at the same time having this disregard for historical narrative. I mean, I'm all for having good drama rather than poor but accurate history, but Rome drives me up a wall, sometimes.
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Did they? I saw some claims to "authentic," and I think I automatically parsed it as "Hey, look, we know everything wasn't pristine white! Literally or figuratively!"
I may have seen something claiming actual accuracy, rolled my eyes, and promptly forgotten about it. It's a very handy aptitude I'm very thankful for. :-}
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