Ovidius Naso

Sometimes, these games just aren't fair. I've had similar things happen. In Rise of Nations I had my opponent outnumbered 10 to 1, but he bribed them to run away and I was slaughtered. Also, spies and bad morale have sent my armies into gridlock or worse. The way battles actually shake out can be really weird and have nothing to do with troop strength. I remember when I read Caesar's Commentaries, it seemed like his whole plan was to never fight, and never lose any of his men. He'd just position himself in superior positions, forcing his opponents to make mistakes and move to worse and worse ground, until they surrendered without a fight. Dude loved beseiging people, fighting not so much. If I recall correctly, Hannibal had troop morale problems too, so he'd set the local armies who allied with him in the center of his formation and set his Numidian cavalry on the wings and maybe some of his other troops behind the locals. Thus if he was flanked he could trust his own troops and the less trustworthy troops would be hemmed in by his loyal troops and couldn't flee.

Another from Suetonius, The Life of Claudius. Seems his family liked to play tricks on him when he'd nap after meals: They used also to put slippers on his hands as he lay snoring, so that when he was suddenly aroused he might rub his face with them. http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Suetonius/12Caesars/Claudius*.html I was also reminded of certain trompe l'oeil style floor murals designed to give the illusion of an uneven floor. Or the graffiti found at Pompeii and Herculaneum where people accuse each other of being eunuchs, pedophiles, and joke about their bowel movements. http://www.kashgar.com.au/articles/The-Bawdy-Graffiti-of-Pompeii-and-Herculaneum

I love Roman comedy. Plautus and Terence with their misers, swaggering soldiers, clever slaves, twins, mistaken identity, and cross dressing. Petronius' Satyricon is hilarious too with it's mock Odyssey and protagonist who's name translates as The Crotch. You have the last words of Vespasian, joking about the Roman public's tendency to deify dead emperors Væ, puto deus fio, "Oh dear! I think I'm becoming a god!" I've also enjoyed the Pumpkinification of Claudius by Seneca the Younger, where instead of becoming a God like other Roman emperors the pantheon decides that Claudius would make a better pumpkin. Apocolocyntosis by Seneca The last words he was heard to speak in this world were these. When he had made a great noise with that end of him which talked easiest, he cried out, "Oh dear, oh dear! I think I have made a mess of myself." Whether he did or no, I cannot say, but certain it is he always did make a mess of everything. - (I think it's E.F. Watling's translation but I can't be sure.) Then there's that victory chant by Caesar's soldiers during his Gallic triumph in Suetonius. Home we bring our bald whoremonger; Romans, lock your wives away! All the bags of gold you lent him Went his Gallic tarts to pay. -Suetonius, The Twelve Caesars, Robert Graves translation, p. 36. And Catullus' line Pedicabo ego vos et irrumabo always makes me chuckle. I didn't find Apuleius' The Golden Ass as funny as some, but the ribald parts tickled my fancy. Also, Ovid has his moments of cleverness, like when he wrote: We which were Ovids five books, now are three, For these before the rest preferreth he: If reading five thou plainst of tediousnesse, Two tane away, thy labor will be lesse: -Marlowe's translation I'm not really a fan of Juvenal or Martial though. I haven't read Horace's satires, so I can't comment on them but the Greek satyrist Lucian was active during the imperial period and his True Story is great. It's just a concotion of fabulous lies, full of fantastic imagery.

That point about Paris is good. You might say the same about Odysseus. But what about Philoctetes and Hercules who's bow Philoctetes inherited? Then there is also Teucer who is nothing but admired in the Iliad, and although archery comes almost last in Book XXIII, the funeral games, the javelin throw is the next and final competition and I wouldn't say that it is despised.

By "historical accuracy" do you mean the decapitating wall? Is it in your version? I have watched a couple of versions; as far as I can tell, the primary intention of any version of this movie is always sexual excitement. The Roman context, accurate or not, just gives the exotic atmosphere; for that, a spatial station or a submarine can equally (and have indeed) been used. Don't get me wrong; I have no problem with sexual gory scenes and I enjoy good *or* as much as the next guy. This movie has some merits, including of course the cast; I'm actually a big fan of the 4 stars you mentioned above; but a bad movie with excellent actors is still a bad movie. Rome and I, Claudius have their own share of 'scenes of an adult nature', but there's no way I can consider sexual excitement as the primary goal of any of them. My point is still that if some scenes (in fact, the most representative) seem, sound, smell and taste like sexual excitement, this movie can safely be called *or*; and not great *or*, for that matter. I would like to weigh in on this. I do not speak Latin or Greek. My degree is in English literature; so I cannot dispute the facts of Caligula's life with the other venerable posters here. But I do know movies. I watch hundreds of them every year, and I have to say that I think most of the posters so far are mistaken in their judgment of this film. I watched it almost a year ago and made the following note in my diary: I was rapt, shocked, frozen to my seat, enthralled for every minute of this two and a half hour movie. I haven't been this surprised since the first time I saw Fellini, or 2001 A Space Odyssey. There was something really original about this picture, and it wasn't that twenty or thirty minutes were sheer unsimulated hardcore pornography. This was a fascinating study of a story I've always loved. Caligula! It had all sorts of great scenes, some I hadn't even heard of before. Tiberius' pleasure house was remarkable, and only surpassed by Caligula's galley. Then there was that magnificent machine. The condemned criminals are buried up to their necks in the arena and then a giant lawnmower with slaves dancing and cavorting all over drives along and chops the mens' heads off. This film pushed the bounderies of what I thought moviemaking could be. You think you're edgy? You don't know where the edge is. As Thompson says,