The Further Adventures of Lucius Vorenus & Titus Pullo

Netflix has at last delivered the first disk of Rome’s second season. I will admit it: I go into happy fanboy mode at the receipt of new episodes.

It’s like The Sopranos for Pagans. There are no really sympathetic characters, but you can’t take your eyes off them.

Especially Lindsay Duncan’s Servilia–perhaps because she resembles the former provost of my university, whom we used to refer to as the Dark Queen.

I asked my rhetoric class yesterday if any had seen it, and only one hand went up. (Just as well, perhaps. Our textbook talks about Cicero, but he doesn’t come off all that well in the series.)

Likewise, when I used a clip from The Sopranos to illustrate Machiavelli’s maxim for rulers that it is better to be feared than loved for a class of freshmen, many had never seen the show. Kids these days! I thought everyone but us got HBO. But getting it does not mean watching it, I realize.