Episode Title: "How Titus Pullo Brought Down The Republic"
Original Air Date: September 11, 2005
Grade: B
One of the thematic threads I expect Rome to weave throughout its narrative is the question of how tradition affects the behavior of the people in this world. The Roman Republic was full of traditions, most religious, which governed everyday life. Rome was hardly unique in that, and an observer in the 1st century BC would be hard pressed not to see the hand of a benevolent deity (or seven) in the unlikely rise of a small village to global superpower status.
"How Titus Pullo Brought Down the Republic," aside from representing a significant improvement on Rome's pilot episode, is concerned primarily with exactly that theme. How our characters grapple with the web of traditions in ancient Rome is what defines them in this episode, and those same traditions play a huge role in pushing forward the inevitable break between Caesar and the Senate in Rome.
The most fascinating work here is from Lucius Vorenus, who accompanies Antony to Rome at the request of Caesar, who is hanging around with the 13th Legion outside of Italy while his consulate ticks to a close. Antony is being named Tribune, a kind of people's representative inside the noble Senate, and Vorenus and Pullo are tabbed with escort duty.
Vorenus has his own concerns: he is seeing his wife for the first time in eight years. Vorenus is the representative of tradition in this episode, a believer in the values and rituals that define the Roman Republic and earned it divine protection.
This makes him the most interesting and challenging character we've seen through two episodes. Vorenus isn't an anti-hero in the same sense as Tony Soprano or Walter White, a man who is compelling while violating the standards and mores of his culture. He is, instead, an excellent man by the standards of his time. It's just that the standards of his time are so alien and loathsome to our own.
Vorenus' interactions with his wife Niobe in this episode are cruel when they aren't awkward, clueless when they aren't cruel, heartbreaking when they aren't clueless. One of the first words out of his mouth when speaking to his wife after eight years of separation is "Whore!" See, Niobe is holding a child who is clearly not eight years old, and Vorenus' rage is only slightly assuaged upon hearing that the child is his daughter's by a young plebian boy.
These scenes with Vorenus, his wife and their daughters do a remarkable job capturing all the difficulties that would arise after an eight-year military separation. Niobe has to introduce Vorenus to his daughters. The entire domestic scene, with a crying granddaughter and a miserable wife, is alien to Vorenus, who handles it as a Roman man would: by berating and criticizing his wife.
This is all difficult to watch, but it also makes sense for the character and setting. The show's attempt to establish a dichotomy between the traditionalist Vorenus and the more iconoclastic Titus are rather clumsily handled and less effective; Titus is still in the mode where he baldly states all his motivations, and those motivations are neither particularly compelling or expressed with any great skill or eloquence.
The links betwen Pullo and Antony, on the other hand, are more interesting, as the show is better at showing Antony's disregard for tradition and cultural mores than it is with Pullo. The two are separated by status and power, but they are of a type.
We'll move past the scene with Antony having sex behind a tree while his army stands 20 feet away and focus instead on how he behaves in Rome. Rome loves its elaborate ceremonies, especially for those holding public office, and Antony impatiently has to sit while priests chant and dance around him. When it's all over, Antony's groan of pleasure is cleverly paired with Pullo's in a brothel.
Antony's primary purpose in Rome is to meet with Pomey, Cicero and Cato and work out some kind of compromise. Or, more accurately, his primary purpose is to feign compromise and provoke the Senators into moving against Caesar by being his arrogant, brutish self. Caesar's strategy works too well; Pompey puts forward a motion in the Senate to send Caesar an ultimatum with the expectation that Antony would exercise his tribunal veto.
Pompey is not particularly clear or convincing in explaining the point of this (something about sending Caesar a message), and it's one of the episode's weaknesses. Regardless, the plan falls apart when the Senate degenerates into chaos following Pompey's motion; Antony's veto is never heard or recognized, and the ancient man running the Senate insists per Roman tradition that the motion has the full force of law. "This is a religious issue, and there are no tricks in religion," he wheezes.
Pompey and Cicero find a loophole: the Senate's hearing was never officially adjourned, which means the Senate is still technically in session. However, this idea falls apart in exactly the way Pompey fears it might: a fight breaks out in the Forum as Antony heads to the Senate to veto the ultimatum when Pullo recognizes a man who helped wound him in a bar fight a few nights earlier.
Antony flees to a now-outlawed Caesar with Pullo and a wounded Vorenus, and here we get the portrait of a man who handles tradition differently than either Antony or Vorenus. Caesar exploits Rome's traditions for his own purposes, exhorting his previously mutinous soldiers by detailing the blasphemous way the people's Tribune was accosted in the forum.
This has the appropriate effect: Caesar's soldiers are outraged and rally behind their general, and he marches across the Rubicon into Italy with only the slightest hesitation. This is the first time the show really makes Caesar a noteworthy presence. Where traditions bind Vorenus and annoy Antony, Caesar knows how to make them work for him.
Notes
- The final scenes in the military camp really do an excellent job of showing Caesar as the master manipulator he was in real life. A bruised and bloodied Antony goes to wash himself, but Caesar wants the visual for his soldiers' benefit.
- Antony, Cato, Cicero and Pompey have a meeting at Atia's house. Cato: "Woman, this meeting is invisible." Atia: "Be assured Cato, I do not see you."
- Cato is outraged that Antony is wearing the red cape of a soldier within the borders of Rome, another nice little bit on Roman tradition.
- The Atia Sex Watch: Yep, she has some. With Antony this time.
- Octavia gets her first entertaining moment of the series, mocking Atia by mimicking her mother's orgasm noises. The most amusing aspect of the scene is Atia's utter lack of shame throughout.
- There's a really cool, painful scene of Pullo undergoing primitive Roman brain surgery after his bar fight, including a moment where the doctor pounds a nail into Pullo's skull. Presumably this is the future of American medicine post-Obamacare.
- Vorenus overhears his wife telling a convalescing Pullo how miserable she is. This is more than a little Three's Company-esque for my liking.
- Vorenus acquiesces to his daughter marrying the plebian after hearing that his family makes decent money driving herds of cattle around. He's initially a little skeptical about the kid, as his house is built from cow dung, but the kid assures him, "It's very hygienic. It doesn't smell at all."
- Oh, turns out the baby is Niobe's, which we find out in a last second revelation that is not nearly as dramatic as the show thinks it is.
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