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Agreed -- it's One of my favorite series and definitely worth a watch/rewatch. While not totally historically accurate, it manages to not feel cheesy which is a huge problem with series in historical settings.That's canny, I just got done listening to Caesar and Augustus biographies back to back. It's funny how wrong the show characterized some of the individuals. Octavian wasn't a sperg, Atia and Octavia weren't hoes, Cato as an old geezer and so on. I mean, I get why they added that shit, but it's still amusing.
I'd say what seperates Rome from most other shows and films set in the period is how much it tries to make the setting feel real. They really took an effort to add a lot of detail and atmosphere to make it all look so interesting and believable. Little touches like all the little rituals and shrines and gods they worship. It might not be 100% historically accurate, but it is one of the most historically authentic shows I've watched. It feels like a real, lived-in world instead of a sterile set with some fag actors in it. You've got later shows like Spartacus which thought that peppering tits and swearing in every scene was what makes a show feel 'gritty' and real but that didn't work. That doesn't mean that they're bad or anything, just that I'm always acutely aware that I'm watching actors, instead of getting drawn into a historical setting in the same way Rome did.
It manages to maintain a serious feel throughout, which can be hard when you have people running around in togas, etc.