Last night I watched the first two episodes of HBO's Rome with my brother, who had seen both previously. Rome is kind of a cross between empire porn, the O.C. (B.C.,) (Octavian's mother as perpetually naked, patrician Julie Cooper sans the humble origins and crippling sense of pudor)and The West Wing, if the West Wing had been called, oh, Ala Occidentalis and was about a lot of scheming old senators, like Cato the censor, who i used to call "Cato the houseguest" back in eighth grade, and a surprisingly handsome Marcus Tullius Cicero. Cicero means "chickpea." They portray Marc Antony as an immature, rakish womanizing asshole who makes an entire batallion wait on horseback while he copulates standing up with a shepherd woman behind them, and then concludes the encounter by purposefully scattering her sheep. What would Catullus say about that? "Hoc salsum esse putas? Fugit te inepte?" Or would he be too busy engaging in masturbatory misogynist rants against the entire female gender? (Actually, in 44 B.C., he would have been dead for a decade, but who's couning.)
(The title of this post comes from Catullus 49, in which the poet heaps praise upon Cicero only to reveal wryly in the poem's concluding lines a subversive irony by gross exaggeration. Catullus disliked Cicero, this website claims, because Cicero had delivered an invective against the woman with whom Catullus conducted a three year affair. Following the affair's conclusion, Catullus said stuff about her (Clodia/Lesbia) that would probably have made Cicero blush.)
No comments:
Post a Comment