Mary Beard: Hollywood Lied to You About Ancient Rome. Here's the Truth

They had an outline of the story for several more seasons, and the showrunner has described how it would have gone. I am very, very grateful they decided to stop when they did -- they were about to ruin the show.

Indeed. I wish I had been able to see this when I was taking high school Latin in the 90s, at least the school-friendly version (if it exists)

Possibly the best thing John Milius has done -- I said what I said!

It’s available here https://bigthink.com/series/full-interview/myth-truth-ancien...

I have a DVD set of old UFC events - I think UFC 1 to 84 or something - and I remember in one very early event in Japan the commentators talk about how silently focused the crowd is. Of course, some people do find Japanese culture extremely creepy, but many would say the same of ancient Rome.

I wouldn't actually expect to see those norms in Roman culture, given how Latin is naturally a very flowing language and I've never heard of Romans valuing silence like the Spartans (or Japanese for that matter). But I wouldn't consider it particularly strange either - to me, making noise during a tense, violent event seems far stranger.

Opera, symphony, etc weren't the affairs we see today throughout their history: the quiet sterility is a modern behavior — and my understanding that it used to be quite a bit more like, eg, movie premiere crowds that made noise in response to the show.

I think the emphasis is on the class structure, formality, etc. rather than saying the Coliseum followed modern theatre etiquette. And the according comparison about status of attendees, etc.

The assumption that the Anglo idea of being well mannered, quiet and not rowdy at such an event is wrong IMO. The Roman upper classes probably got loud and very obnoxious by our standards, but assuming that the Romans perceived that as “low-class” is probably not correct

Reading up Reissanance everyday-drama novellas from Spain/Italy in the 1600s/1700s but being placed into the Roman Empire would actually yield a similar society and behaviour than anything made from Hollywood.

Romance and picaresque dramas weren't that dissimilar to love epics from the Classical times. And ofc treasonry, backstabbings, and the like would be the same today, 300 years ago and millenia ago.

The townsfolk shouting and laughing against a poor dude being burned down between logs wouldn't be that different to similar peasants reacting in the same way to slaves fighting at the Circus.

And you don't think she knows this? She's clearly fascinated with the Romans, despite all she finds unappealing about them. Which can easily be said about a lot (most?) of history. Based on books and TV, WW2 is possibly the historical period that draws the most attention, which doesn't mean the historians (or their readers) "love WW2."

I agree but the argument is better framed as Mary Beard is a modern scholar with a rigid intersectional world view that is highly moralistic and highly judgmental from the perspective of modern norms around violence, feminism and racism. She sneers down on Roman notions of virtue and patriarchy.

I think its interesting to talk about both aspects. The romans wrote the history so we don't think of them as an evil empire - but they were pretty darn evil. Their society was supported entirely by millions of slaves, many of whom had life expectancies of just a few years.

They were also super rad and organized, both are true.

> think their achievements are amazing

> She sees them as patriarchal and violent.

Both of these things can be simultaneously true. They are not inherently contradictions.

Weird right? My wife studied Nazi Germany, and doesn't really like the Nazis either.

History is messy - we can and should learn from those that came before, both the good and bad. One can both admire the things the Romans accomplished while simultaneously despising the way they went about accomplishing them. It isn't a contradiction.

To add on: this is how history has mostly always been transmitted to the masses. Plays and ballads and folk tales and other entertainment. History as serious study has normally been an elitist (I mean that descriptively, not pejoratively) pursuit.

At the same time, narratives (fictional or not) are how we understand the world, its history, its politics, its art, and it's even how we understand our own personal history, and how we reason about events around us, and what might transpire in the future.

It's not really possible to remove ourselves from this fact of being human. We can of course create a narrative about removing ourselves from narratives and experiencing the world directly, but that's not it.

This is the actual original link: https://bigthink.com/series/full-interview/myth-truth-ancien...