Caesar is elected emperor by a castrated Senate and he celebrates by providing five days of feasting and games. He publicly executes one of his prisoners, the “King of all the Gauls” and the discarded body is later given a proper funeral by what I can only assume are Gaul-loyalists. Servilia continues to plot against Caesar and has enlisted the help of Pompey’s son, Quintus, along with an old friend, Casius. The three write an anti-Caesar statement and sign Brutus’ name to it, which pisses him off to no end. He’s mostly concerned with how Caesar will react, but the big man is cool with it.
More and more, “Rome” is less about the politics of the time and more about the life and times of Titus Pullo. His fierce loyalty combined with his brutish decision making make Titus by far the most intriguing character in the series. Just when you think the guy is a big teddy bear, he goes and kills a slave because the guy was going to run off with who he thought was his girl. I was expecting him to react, but I wasn’t expecting him to REACT. Titus slams the poor boy’s head into a stone column five times before relenting, but it’s already too late. Now that his dream of retiring to the country with his slave girl is impossible, it appears that he may go over to the dark side, and take a job in Rome’s seedy underworld.
Lucius is a fish out of water in the world of politics and is troubled when he learns that the magistrate elections aren’t on the up and up. If nothing else, the man is honorable, so it will be interesting to see how mired he gets himself in politics, which seem to be corrupt no matter what year it is. He seems especially hurt when he and Titus have it out (over Titus’ killing Lucius’ slave in front of his children) and Titus calls Lucius out on his political flip-flopping. Lucius banishes Titus and it appears that the friendship is over, for the time being anyway. Before Titus leaves he apologizes to his slave girl. It’s quite the statement about the violence of those times, that a man thinks that an “I’m sorry” is going to have any effect on a stunned widow. Poor guy, now we know why she looked so distant while they got it on last week.
