Mistakes In Hbo's Rome

[This isn't really related to any of the mentioned questions..but I have a question of my own:

WHEN IS THERE GOING TO BE A MOVIE?!??!?!?

Have a look at this IMDB link . . . http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0057918/

For the most part, HBO

For the most part, HBO

HBO is showing the first season again and and it's hard to resist nit-picking.

Aside from calling Servilia a Iunius (her father was a patrician Servilius Caepio - much more important than her husband - a plebian Iunius Brutus) and Atia a Julia (although her mother was Caesar's sister, her father Atius wasn't even a senator. And she married an Octavius who was at least a senator but no big whig, and later a Marcius Phillipus who was at least a consular.) They treated the Augers oddly. These priests were not a separate sect outside the mainstream that had to be influenced by secret negotiations, but were elected from the main players in the state. In fact Antonius and Pompey were Augers, and Caesar, as Pontifex Maximus, was responsible for their supervision.

Oh well, there is bound to be inaccuracies in historical series or dramas. I just sit back and enjoy it for what it is - entertainment with a historical flavour. 

You're right, of course. And I was wrong...Atius WAS a senator, as he was praetor in 62 BC.

On 8/12/2014 at 5:34 PM, Pompieus said:

They treated the Augers oddly. These priests were not a separate sect outside the mainstream that had to be influenced by secret negotiations, but were elected from the main players in the state. In fact Antonius and Pompey were Augers, and Caesar, as Pontifex Maximus, was responsible for their supervision.

Yes and no; I think they (correctly) showed Cicero lurking among the augurs, but the whole business of auspication was a travesty. The question of whether the PM supervised augurs is rather thorny; Mommsen thought so, but Jerzy Linderski states in the beginning of his article on the augural law in ANRW that pontifices took care of sacra and augurs of auspicia, and that was that. Further, R. E. A. Palmer argues in "The Deconstruction of Mommsen on Festus 462/464, or the Hazards of Interpretation," in Imperium sine fine: T. Robert S. Broughton and the Roman Republic (F. Steiner, 1996), pp. 75-101, that Mommsen's reconstruction of the source was wrong: it was not an augur but a reluctant choice for flamen Dialis whom the PM tried to discipline.