1

 

               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

                                                                                                         2

 

          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

                                                                                                         3

 

          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.