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History 104A, October 14: <strong>Sex, Lies and
Rome</strong>
We have a group meeting today.
The reason why we have such grade
attendance
for a change instead of people having the write up their
papers. We will go into it near the he said, I
suspect. I forget the
question. I know it's on
Rome.
Q What do you like about Rome?
THE PROFESSOR: What do you
like about Rome.
A I thought it was one of the
benefits and the drawbacks of being
in Rome.
THE PROFESSOR: Being a
Roman citizen.
A Something like that.
Q What did you like and
dislike about the society of Rome?
THE PROFESSOR: That sounds
more like me.
The video is the BBC which stands for British broadcasting
company
production of I Claudius. I Claudius
and Claudius the God
were two
books written by the very famous British writer who wrote
historical
novels and research novels, a phenomenal anthropologist and
historian by
the name of Robert Graves. He was
the one that did such
things
historically as the white Goddess, going back and taking look
at the
mother Goddess worship. And this
was 50 years before any
feminist
program developed in our country or in England for that
matter, and really looked at his history
from the sense of the mother
Goddess
including the novels he wrote, although that's not the case
with I
Claudius. He also did a beautiful
translation of the Greek
myths, and
Seutonius, who did the lives of the 12 Ceasars. This
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particular
series is fairly well done. It
hard to break into the
middle of
anything, but I had to choose one that I gave a feel for
Rome and
especially emperors and I decided of the five disks with four
on each, I
was going to pull out the one which I talked about the
other day
with Caligular sets up the palace as a house of
prostitution.
Q Have you seen the HBO
series Rome?
THE PROFESSOR: No. I don't get HBO I don't get the
opportunity
to see
it. Has it been pretty good?
A Uh-hum.
THE PROFESSOR: I tried
taping one that came off the history
channel and
I didn't like too much. We talked
about that I think
earlier. I guess there were
others that were fairly better.
Once
that comes
out on DVD --
A I might be able to record
it.
THE PROFESSOR: That could
that would be great. I would
appreciate
it because its interesting for me obviously. Some of the
stuff they
are getting better in the United States, but the British do
a much
better job with historical, what am I going to call it?
Infotainment
is the term being used for entertainment that has
information
in it and so they tell the story that they distort it a
little and
make it a little more dramatic.
We're not too good at it.
Our only
accident infotainment is on scandal like Peterson or whatever
the hell his
name was -- what do we have, five of those, where he
killed his wife lazy, Scott, and
then of course a few years ago Amy
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Fischer,
every station had to do one of the 16-year-old who shot her
lover's
wife. She didn't die and all that
goody stuff.
I'm going to play this without any more fanfare. We won't go
through the
whole thing, why you to gel a feel more -- now remember
what I said
about Claudius. He was a stutter
and acted like an idiot
and
therefore he survived. He was
perhaps the most proficient and
because of
his deformities and created a little nievity and just
refused to
accept the kind of evil she had within her, including the
Nero who, as
you know, supposedly fiddled when Rome burned. Let's
take a look
at it for a little while.
(playing movie)
All of that is based on history.
That's the amazing part.
Obviously
entertainment form, but the facts even in throwing him into
the river
are historical. Get a feel for the
strangeness that Rome
had. Now, who knows what goes on in the Bush
White House. I'm sorry.
Don't
thorough things at me.
Okay. We have a group
meeting. I have the sheets down
here.
Obviously in
class or out of class in the outside, you can head for
your
groups. I must admit this is
liveliest class we've had since the
last group
meeting.