Uncivil Liberties and Libertines: Empire in Decay MARIANNE MCDONALD 1. I’ve been a film nut from the time my parents would park me in a film theatre as their form of baby-sitting . My father invented phone vision, which was an early version of cablevision that allowed us to see newly released movies at home on our round television screen, which looked like an old Bendix washing machine. I wrote one of the earliest books on classics in cinema—and soon after, more books on the topic followed mine.1 I looked forward to seeing the films described in Ancient Rome, many of which I had not seen because I have avoided blood-fest films which invite being described with gore-filled ecstasy. (I have also avoided slasher movies, holocaust movies, and kiddie movies because they disturbed my possibly misguided sensibility .) The choices of films in Elena’s Theodorakopoulos’ book are all the work of interesting directors—some better than others, but the quality is, for the most part, high. The writers for all these film scripts are generally outstanding. Good photography also seems to be a given. As we are told in the conclusion, “Whatever the story, spectacle is never far from Rome.” The key to assessing these treatments lies in the interpretation of the portrayal of violence. Are we, the audience, admiring it? Calling for it, as we call for it in films by Quentin Tarentino, beginning with Reservoir Dogs (1992), or the series called Saw, the seventh version (2010) now in 3-d? Do Elena Theodorakopoulos, Ancient Rome at the Cinema: Story and Spectacle in Hollywood and Rome. Exeter: Bristol Phoenix Press, 2010. 199 pages, $25.00. arion 20.1 spring/summer 2012 we ask whether we moderns have all become Romans rather than Greeks? One remembers that warning in the Aeneid, 6.851–53: “Remember Roman, your art is to govern people: rule justly in peace; spare the defeated, but subdue the proud” (Tu regere imperio populos, Romane, memento. / Hae tibi erunt artes: pacisque imponere morem, / parcere subiectis et debellare superbos). The Greeks too had their empire , and their slaves. But they carved statues that breathed life, and wrote immortal poetry to musical accompaniment. Theodorakopoulos conveys well some of the ideals in these films as well as their condemnation of the excesses that Rome illustrated, particularly in its blood sports. Rome becomes , as Theodorakopoulos claims, “a symbol or metaphor for power itself” (148). Many of the films on Rome deal with whether power is centered in the hands of one, or shared in a Republic. Is the Pax Romana a shared peace with equality, or simply total domination, which rarely works for long? Social issues were important: how slaves and occupied countries were treated. Decadence is a sign of corruption, which often titillates the viewer and was included not only in “Hollywood” productions of the ’30s, ’40s and ’50s, but also (here) in Federico Fellini’s Satyricon (1969) and Julie Taymor’s Titus (1999). If there was no sex and violence in a film about Rome, audiences felt betrayed. Needless to say, the representation of women—typically as either powerful bitches controlling weak men, or whores and slaves for their amusement—did not do much to further the cause of equal rights. As usual, there were a few mother and Mother Mary types (like Miriam, Tirzah, and Esther in Ben-Hur, 1959); but if women assumed power, they often fit the Livia, Messalina, Poppaea types, or were wicked, dangerous foreigners, like Cleopatra, Queen of Egypt, and Tamora , Shakespeare’s fictional queen of the Goths. In my opinion, there should have been more discussion of the representation of women in these chapters. The chronological arrangement is good, not some theoretical arrangement that names muses, and discusses film as an uncivil liberties and libertines: empire in decay 146 afterthought. Theodorakopoulos selects dramas that replicate themes—the good man wronged, for instance, in all but the Satyricon. Slaves and the horror of slavery are the main subjects of the first two films: William Wyler’s Ben-Hur and Stanley Kubrick’s Spartacus (1960). In their own way they also deal with fascism and empire. In Ben-Hur, the...