Roman Empire: Reign of Blood

It's okay, they've taken some liberties with historical facts, but then again that's nothing new. I'm on the 2nd episode right now.

It is pretty well established fact that Cassius' revolt occurred when Commodus was 13 years old and too young to assume the throne. They portray him as a mid-20's frick up who only wanted to bang whores. He was too young to rule as emperor at that point, which was one reason for his mother to seek Cassius' help... not because she knew her son was unfit to rule. That just makes for a more intriguing program.

Yes, much of history is skewed and from the perspective of the victor, but the Roman's went to great lengths to provide meticulous accounts of the goings on in their empire. Things such as birth year and the year of a revolt are generally accurate.

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The problem with the "big 3" (shitty Roman emperors that everyone knows their names) - Caligula, Nero and Commodus is that the public gets them all jumbled up in our collective minds.

Were any of them as bad as Valentinian III? Probably not. But outside of historians, nobody knows about Valentinian. But everyone knows Little Boots, the fiddler and the wannabe gladiator. It just is what it is.

Enjoy it for what it is - entertainment in the key of history.

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The third century never gets much play in popular culture, but it was pretty much one horrifically bad emperor after another for almost sixty years until Aurelian finally came along. Caracalla and Elagabalus by themselves probably deserve shows or screen depiction.

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The third century never gets much play in popular culture, but it was pretty much one horrifically bad emperor after another for almost sixty years until Aurelian finally came along.

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You're right, of course, but the chaos itself is much of the story, not the numerous "Emperors" that had either joint reigns, or disputed reigns, serving from a few days to 4 or 5 years, that was the rule throughout the century, at least until Diocletian to finish out - even after Aurelian, there was instability and high turnover until 284 (and even Diocletian named a co-emperor and "junior" co-emperors - most likely in a consensus building effort to restore something like stability.)

Diocletian is intriguing in and of himself, but there isn't enough drama there to entertain the modern plebes.

I will never watch it because I cannot stand the incestous frick. Yes, Gladiator jaded me.

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love to see a movie one day on Constantine or Diocletian. You can make an entire epic series just on their lives.

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I'd love this. There are countless interesting battles, events, personalities throughout history that have gotten scant attention. It's why I'm always frustrated that we get non stop WW2 movies at the exclusion of anything else.

One would think that Constantine's story would have a viable market due to his significance in Christianity

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Yes, much of history is skewed and from the perspective of the victor, but the Roman's went to great lengths to provide meticulous accounts of the goings on in their empire.

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Not really. Much of the major histories were recorded by seven or eight sources such as Plutarch, Dio, Suetonius, Livy, etc. They were detailed in certain aspects but many were recorded decades later or biased towards a Roman-favored narrative. The years of the monarchy prior to the republic are mostly conjecture, even to the Romans themselves. Every piece of source material that survives describing the story of Spartacus can be compiled into around 15 pages, with only a couple devoting more than a paragraph.