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Rome: Difference between revisions
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{{quote| '''Antony''' You boys play too rough for me. Knives in the Senate House? I didn't know you had it in you.}}
* [[Book Ends]]: The series begins and ends with the newsreader announcing that there is a reward for a missing slave, "stolen or absconded." It is probably meant to imply that despite all the goings on in the show (several wars, much drama and the Republic being reorganized into [[The Empire]]), for the common people things have changed not at all.
* [[Bread and Circuses]]: Withholding shipments of grain is coldly used as a political leverage, because shortages of bread (generously provided by the state) would make the ruler of Rome tumble thanks to [[Zero
* [[Break the Cutie]]:
** Subverted with Lucius Vorenus. He is a dour straight man prone to flying off the handle at the slightest hint of dishonesty. He eventually [[Beware the Nice Ones|snaps]].
** Octavia breaks, but eventually [[Snap Back|snaps back]] into a less stressed version of herself.
** Jocasta is raped and [[Defiled Forever|"socially ruined"]] due to Atia's machinations because she is a bad low-birth influence to Octavia and his father is being purged for being very rich.
* [[British Accents]]: A large portion of the main cast is British or Irish, but the accents used to represent wealth and status are the same as [[The
* [[Broken Pedestal]]: Brutus regards Caesar as a [[Parental Substitute|father figure]] and starts with [["Well Done, Son" Guy]] traits. He is gradually manipulated by his mother Servilia and finally breaks with Caesar when Brutus is [[Reassigned to Antarctica|appointed governor of a far-away province]] by a wary Caesar. Mutual suspicions arise and as Brutus puts it "Only tyrants need fear tyrant killers"
* [[Brother-Sister Incest]]:
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** An example that also plays as in-universe [[Values Dissonance]] when a serious Cassius is brokering a political deal with a casual Asian ruler who is really interested in a form of bestiality that the Romans use as a punishment and not as an entertainment. Cassius complies without much objection anyway but he is subtly shocked.
* [[Democracy Is Bad]] :
** The [[Opening Narration]] states that Rome -- a Republic with many democratic traits -- cannot govern itself. Magistrates are elective but many of the characters work to avoid what they call ''rule of the mob'', consider elections as a formality, just a matter of bribes and demagoguery and some are deeply offended when the Senate becomes less restrictive and incorporates pleb citizens and non-roman ones. Nobody really believes in democracy anyway, everything is done behind the scenes by the oligarchy, although the caesarians are somehow [
** [[Naive Newcomer]] and staunch legalist Vorenus is disgusted when he discovers the fraud about Roman democracy but Posca convinces him it's for the best.
{{quote| '''Posca''' The people are not crying out for clean elections, they're crying out for stability and peace. They're crying out for jobs and food and clean water...You can do great things for your people}}
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* [[Mob War]]: A major subplot of the second season.
* [[Murder the Hypotenuse]]: Standard procedure for resolving romantic complications.
* [[My Master, Right or Wrong]]: Vorenus is the epitome of this trope.
* [[Mythology Gag]]: ("You too, Mother?") Another rimshot in the fact that {{spoiler|Brutus doesn't hear what Caesar was saying as he died.}}
* [[Names to Run Away From Really Fast]]: Memmio, Cilnius Maecenas, Hannibal Cotta, "TITUS FUCKING PULLO".
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* [[Nice Job Breaking It, Hero]] / [[Nice Job Fixing It, Villain]]: Several instances
** A condemnatory but symbolic senate motion against Caesar -only intended to show Caesar his relative isolation, making him less adventurous- becomes violent, is actually passed and after some twists Mark Antony --an inviolable tribune-- gets assaulted. That gives a now cornered Caesar a [[Pretext for War]] against them. Cue the [[Civil War]].
** Caesar harbors vague suspicion against Brutus and thus [[Reassigned to Antarctica|appoints him governor of a far-away province]], just in case. Brutus realizes he is practically being exiled, that gives him grounds for his own suspicion and makes him embrace the cause of the conspirators against Caesar: [[Wham! Line|"Only tyrants need fear tyrant killers"]]. The support of Brutus is they key-element to the plot, and until that moment Brutus was on-the fence at best
** After the demise of Caesar, Brutus stops further killings ("we are liberators not murderers") and spares the life of Antony (who already had escaped an attempt on his life). Days later Antony masterfully manipulates the masses during Caesar's funeral and forces the conspirators to leave the city, Antony becomes the successor of Caesar and sole ruler of Rome.
** Cicero plays and empowers Octavian against Antony, who is the continuator of Caesar. Octavian lets Cicero think he is just a docile pawn of the Senate but eventually [[Out
** Setting Pompey free leads Vorenus and Pullo to Egypt. The war is prolongued and Pompey is killed by the locals (Caesar often spares his Roman enemies). In Egypt Caesarion ensues. Years later, in the final episode {{spoiler|Vorenus is ''probably'' mortally wounded while defending Caesarion}}
* [[No Name Given]]: The newsreader.
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* [[Ooh, Me Accent's Slipping]]: Kevin McKidd as Lucius Vorenus affects a vaguely middle-class English accent, but you can hear his Scottish coming through a lot, especially when he's angry.
* [[The Other Darrin]]: A mix between types 2 and 3 for Octavian, as he is heard talking off-screen to a reaction shot of Pullo before being revealed. Pullo seems to take a minute to recognize him, and then they move on like nothing happened. [[Justified Trope|Justified]] as the series covers over 20 years of history, and the original Octavian looked too young to play himself as an adult.
* [[Out
{{quote| '''Cicero:''' I've been outmaneuvered by a child. To the country then."}}
* [[Papa Wolf]]: Vorenus
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* [[Product Placement]]: An in-universe example; the Forum newsreader often punctuates his news stories with commercials shouted at the top of his lungs.
{{quote| ''This month's public bread is provided by the'' '''Capitoline Brotherhood of Millers!''''' The Brotherhood uses only the finest flour! True Roman bread for true Romans.''}}
* [[Professional Killer]]: Vorenus and Pullo become thug enforcers after they are [[Fallen
* [[Protagonist Centred Morality]]: Titus Pullo is a rapist and multiple murderer but is presented as heroic because he is a loyal friend to Vorenus. This is entirely deliberate, since raping the enemy's women was completely normal behavior for Roman legionnaires.
* [[The Purge]]:
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** Gaulish leader Vercingetorix, who [[The Bus Came Back|later reappears]] to be displayed and publicly executed during Caesar's triumph.
** In Season 2: {{spoiler|Timon leaves to live in Jerusalem after he fails to assassinate King Herod}}.
* [[The
* [[Reality Is Unrealistic]]: Egypt was a Hellenistic country at that time, and at least the royalty and palaces would have looked more like Rome than old Egypt. But it's hard to tell how many viewers would have known that.
** However, by Cleopatra's time, the Ptolemies had really assimilated to Egyptian culture, and considered themselves Egyptians rather than Greeks. They were big on bringing back a lot of the trappings surrounding traditional Egyptian royalty, going so far as to name themselves Pharaohs and therefore gods.
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** Vorenus and Pullo most of the time.
** Octavian and Mark Antony fit this trope rather well in the second season.
* [[Refuge in Vulgarity]]: Although a lot of it is [[Truth in Television]]. Just read [
* [[Remember the Alamo!]]: "THIRTEENTH! THIRTEENTH!" Also a CMOA.
* [[Right Through His Pants]]: Averted. To say the ''least''. Brutus, Mark Antony and Pullo all have scenes involving full frontal nudity (and Brutus became a lot more popular because of it), while many others are shown naked but not full frontal.
* [[Right Through the Wall]]: In the second episode Octavia overhears her mother Atia having very loud sex with Mark Antony, which she mockingly imitates at a party later. Antony's comment: "She has you exactly."
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* [[Rule of Cool]]: The producers admitted that they ignored Atia's historical date of death because they wanted to keep the darkly awesome character around.
* [[Screw the Rules, I Have A Nuke|Screw the rules, I Have an Army]]: The characters aggresively use their personal armies to forcefully install themselves as rulers and subvert the constitutional order. Around the times of the series, using an army inside Italy for political purposes was a novelty (Sulla started the precedent only years before and the real life Pompey provides the page quote for the trope) and a great sacrilege, as mentioned by Vorenus and Antony. Enforced over Caesar, as his enemies would make him face jail if he returns to Rome as a normal citizen.
* [[Self -Harm]]: Octavia is seen cutting herself, and later her sleeves are pulled up to show the injuries.
* [[Seppuku]]: {{spoiler|Cato}}
* [[Servile Snarker]]: Posca to Caesar, Gaia to Pullo & Vorenus.
* [[Sex As Rite of Passage]]: Atia arranges for Octavian to lose his virginity, so that he can become [[A Man Is Not a Virgin|a man]].
* [[Sex Slave]]: In Season 2, {{spoiler|Vorenus' daugther}} among other nameless characters in a slave camp.
* [[Shout
* [[Shown Their Work]]
* [[Smug Snake]]: Atia.
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{{quote| '''Pullo:''' She still doesn't say much, but she can give such a look . . . }}
* [[Well-Intentioned Extremist]]: Brutus, his only goal is the preservation of a sacred Republic started by an ancient kin. He reluctantly joins politics and the plot to kill Caesar when he realizes that Caesar may be a threat to the constitutional order. Once Caesar is gone he stops further violence "we are tyrant killers, liberators, not murderers" and spares Antony, [[Nice Job Breaking It, Hero|an action that turns against him]] when Antony manages to continue the legacy of Caesar and in the end he has to exile with the rest of the conspirators and embark in another civil war.
* [[We Named the Monkey "Jack"]]: When Vorenus brings home the one little boy who survived the wasting disease that killed the rest of his slaves, the girls coo over him and one of them says, "We'll call him Rubio after my pigeon that died."
* [[We Used to Be Friends]]: Caesar and [[Pompey the Great]] were very close associates during the First Triumvirate, when the series start that falls appart as Pompey's wife, daughter of Caesar dies and the Senate seduces Pompey against Caesar. Slightly hinted during the show, they share a mutual respect at first and Caesar is deeply affected by Pompey's fate.
* [[What the Hell, Hero?]]:
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