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dionusia May 27 2007, 17:16:43 UTC
Yeah, really. The stories we already have are juicy enough! Oh well.

I feel compelled to add, though, that classicists can be fangirls and fanboys over the show too. :D We get meta on classics in pop culture all the time. (It makes us feel Relevant, somehow. Ha!) At our Big Serious Annual Meeting there was a panel just on this show.

I thought you'd dig getting to see the description of the panel made by the professor in charge of organizing it:

Rome in Prime Time

"In fall 2005 the television cable network HBO broadcast a lavishly produced series called Rome. The twelve episodes, which focused on events from 52 to 44 BCE, featured both historical figures and invented characters. After Gladiator (2000) and Troy (2004), Rome is the latest in a surge of popular representations of the ancient Mediterranean world. This panel aims to help classicists familiarize ourselves with appropriations of 'our' field and the ideological purposes to which they are being put, as well as to think about how participation in our own culture affects our understanding of the ancient world."

Titles of some of the papers delivered:

*“Do You Have an Ubuan Dictionary?” or What I Learned as a Consultant for HBO’s Rome

*Rome’s Opening Titles and the Triumphal Tituli of the Late Republic

*Cast(igat)ing Cleopatra: HBO’s Rome and an Egyptian Queen for the 21st Century

I didn't actually attend this myself, but I could have. At the time, though, I hadn't watched the show. Hee, we classicists are such nerds.

Next year -- I kid you not -- there's going to be a panel on Xena, the Warrior Princess.

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bop_radar May 27 2007, 23:29:11 UTC
Heeee!! *loves* Yeah, the classicists I've known before now were Xena fans... ;-p And I totally 'get' the ability to be both a history nerd and a fanboy/fangirl of anachronistic period drama. I have HUGE LOVE for bad medieval period pieces, since that was what I did honours in (Edward the Confessor and Margaret of Scotland actually, but with a fair serve of Crusades-related research on the side).

I love this bit: 'aims to help classicists familiarize ourselves with appropriations of 'our' field and the ideological purposes to which they are being put'. How very generous of them!

I would totally go to that panel! :-D

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