Cicero (Big Finish Series)
Two audio series I recently listened to:
Cicero, season 1, produced by Big Finish, written by David Llewellyn. The first episode is directly based on the Sextus Roscius case that made young (27 years old) Cicero famous, and which also forms the basis for Steven Saylor's novel Roman Blood, the first of his Roma Sub Rosa series, which has a diametrically opposite characterisation of Marcus Tullius Cicero. The remaining five episodes of the Big Finish audio series also use some real elements from Cicero's early life but with far larger fictionality; also, it's not a case per episode, but some overreaching arcs, so to speak, and an increasing emphasis on character relations over law and politics. Llewellyn starts out with the Cicero brothers, Marcus and Quintus, as the leads and the key dynamic, but later branches out and widens the core ensemble to include Marcus' new wife Terentia, and in the last few episodes a character named Marcus Piso whom I couldn't immediately recall from history and therefore had to google, - can he be meant to be Marcus Pupius Piso? Since the series starts when Sulla is still Dictator, and continues when he has stepped back but is still very influential, you immediately have a dangerous environment and high stakes.
Llewellyn's Cicero is a righteous idealist, as opposed to Saylor's, but he's not written as in the right all the time, or brave all the time, and the fraternal dynamic with the more easy going and impulsive Quintus is very endearing, especially since Quintus is also written as smart - for example, he's shown to be a great beta-reader, err, sounding board and constructive critic - when Cicero is practicing his speeches for the court. And I'm very happy the series chose to make Terentia a sympathetic, clever character and go for a "arranged marriage between people who turn out to work well together" trope for hers and Cicero's early marriage. (The way it ended decades later is depressing, but Terentia being accused of bossiness and political interest isn't a downside for current day people the way it was for ancient chronists.) More observations are spoilery for this paritcular series, not history as such, and thus I'll hide them beneath a spoiler cut.
I think my favourite gog for history geeks is that when Marcus and Quintus talk about their mother Helvia, and Marcus complains nothing he does is ever good enough for her, and even when he wins a big case, she'd just say "yeas, but Pompejus Strabo's son leads an army!" (Pompejus Strabo's son = future Pompey. He and Cicero were both from Arpinum, not Rome. And he was indeed already making military splashes.) This isn't explained, if you don't know who Pompejus Strabo's son is, you still are amused by Marcus' tone and the familiarity of the mother/son dynamic. So Llewellyn did his research. But there are still some minor and some major glitches, by why I don't mean liberties fiction takes to make for better drama - those are there galore, too.
Stuff that made me go "but they'd never!", for example: in one episode, a key plot point hinges on a slave girl, Iris, testifying for Quintus. The problem is that the testimony of slaves wasn't valid unless they got tortured first, and presumably since it would make the brothers Cicero look like bastards to ask this of Iris, this isn't the case here. Also, the series invents a case which is noticable inspired by a famous 18th century event - the Zong massacre, where slaves were thrown overboard to collect the insurance because that was more money than would have been gained by the selling of the survivors after a brutal Atlantic crossing. The problem if you transport such a case to ancient Rome is that, for starters, the Romans of the late Republic didn't, as far as I know, insurances for their cargo (human or otherwise). I ssupect our series writer found himself in the situation where he writes a series set in a society where slavery is standard - and his sympathetic main characters are slave owners - but wanted to make clear that he's well aware that slavery = bad. Which, good for you, but then don't pick something that's very much the product of a later era. It's not like there's a shortage of historical points showing slavery was bad in ancient Rome. Like, for example, the fact that the testimony of a slave against a Roman citizen needed to be gained by torture. On a similar note, in the last episode, we finally meet Cicero's pen pal and life long bff Atticus. And Cicero is SHOCKED to discover that Atticus, who among other things is a money lender, has his people rough up someone who doesn't want to pay their debts. He's so shocked that he abandons the idea of doing what Atticus has done, move from Rome to Greece and live hte private life. My problem here is that the same episode earlier mentioned Atticus also owns a gladiator school. I mean, come on. We're clear on what gladiators do? How they are trained? How many of them volunteered for that fate? What will happen just a decade or so later in Capua? So don't give me a Cicero who is cool with Atticus owning a gladiator school but HORRIFIED at the debt collecting. Never mind veracity, this is just inconsistent in-series.
(Sidenote: for an example of a historical film which presents a sympathetic main character in ancient history who is a philosopher and fighter against injustice and yet a slaver owner, where the narrative makes it very clear that slavery is wrong and her blind ethical spot there is too and it comes to bite her, see Agora, about Hypatia. It can be done.)
Back to the good stuff. Like I said, Terentia is excellent, and by far not the only interesting character. And just to make Cicero's life more complicated, the series also gives him a friend of his youth (not Atticus) who is in love with him, Piso, and whom he at the very least still has very strong lingering feelings for. (If that's supposed to be the Piso he ends up being enemies with in rl, see link above, there's tragedy ahead, but within this season it's just that Cicero wants to keep things friendly because that's what adult Romans do.) Bisexual Cicero is an interpretation I haven't seen yet, but hey, why not? Sulla is an ominous shadow over the entire series, and when he and Cicero finally have their confrontation, it's a satisfying pay off to all the build up, since Sulla, as Cicero later tells Quintus, tries to seduce him - politically, not sexually - and Cicero isn't entirely immune. And did I mention there's a fraternal duo at the heart of it? So yes, by and large, I liked it a lot.
I can't make up my mind about: the switch of whom Terentia's sister and Cicero's sister-in-law, Fabia the Vestal, was accused to have had sexual relations with. In the series, it's Quintus. (Hence his urgent need of a witness testfiying he was elsewhere.) Which of course heightens the emotional states for the listening audience. (Especially if they don't know much, if anything, about Cicero's younger brother.) In real life, it was... drumroll... Luciius Sergiius Catilina. Yes, that one. He and Fabia were exonorated, but given later events, the fact that he and Cicero were on the same legal side on that occasion, so to speak, is irresistably ironic. Then again, presumably Llewellyn didn't want to cast Catilina yet for a cameo appearance.
Now, I hear Big Finish also did a Doctor Who crossover where this version of Cicero meets the (Fifth) Doctor. Has anyone listened to that yet?
Cicero, season 1, produced by Big Finish, written by David Llewellyn. The first episode is directly based on the Sextus Roscius case that made young (27 years old) Cicero famous, and which also forms the basis for Steven Saylor's novel Roman Blood, the first of his Roma Sub Rosa series, which has a diametrically opposite characterisation of Marcus Tullius Cicero. The remaining five episodes of the Big Finish audio series also use some real elements from Cicero's early life but with far larger fictionality; also, it's not a case per episode, but some overreaching arcs, so to speak, and an increasing emphasis on character relations over law and politics. Llewellyn starts out with the Cicero brothers, Marcus and Quintus, as the leads and the key dynamic, but later branches out and widens the core ensemble to include Marcus' new wife Terentia, and in the last few episodes a character named Marcus Piso whom I couldn't immediately recall from history and therefore had to google, - can he be meant to be Marcus Pupius Piso? Since the series starts when Sulla is still Dictator, and continues when he has stepped back but is still very influential, you immediately have a dangerous environment and high stakes.
Llewellyn's Cicero is a righteous idealist, as opposed to Saylor's, but he's not written as in the right all the time, or brave all the time, and the fraternal dynamic with the more easy going and impulsive Quintus is very endearing, especially since Quintus is also written as smart - for example, he's shown to be a great beta-reader, err, sounding board and constructive critic - when Cicero is practicing his speeches for the court. And I'm very happy the series chose to make Terentia a sympathetic, clever character and go for a "arranged marriage between people who turn out to work well together" trope for hers and Cicero's early marriage. (The way it ended decades later is depressing, but Terentia being accused of bossiness and political interest isn't a downside for current day people the way it was for ancient chronists.) More observations are spoilery for this paritcular series, not history as such, and thus I'll hide them beneath a spoiler cut.
I think my favourite gog for history geeks is that when Marcus and Quintus talk about their mother Helvia, and Marcus complains nothing he does is ever good enough for her, and even when he wins a big case, she'd just say "yeas, but Pompejus Strabo's son leads an army!" (Pompejus Strabo's son = future Pompey. He and Cicero were both from Arpinum, not Rome. And he was indeed already making military splashes.) This isn't explained, if you don't know who Pompejus Strabo's son is, you still are amused by Marcus' tone and the familiarity of the mother/son dynamic. So Llewellyn did his research. But there are still some minor and some major glitches, by why I don't mean liberties fiction takes to make for better drama - those are there galore, too.
Stuff that made me go "but they'd never!", for example: in one episode, a key plot point hinges on a slave girl, Iris, testifying for Quintus. The problem is that the testimony of slaves wasn't valid unless they got tortured first, and presumably since it would make the brothers Cicero look like bastards to ask this of Iris, this isn't the case here. Also, the series invents a case which is noticable inspired by a famous 18th century event - the Zong massacre, where slaves were thrown overboard to collect the insurance because that was more money than would have been gained by the selling of the survivors after a brutal Atlantic crossing. The problem if you transport such a case to ancient Rome is that, for starters, the Romans of the late Republic didn't, as far as I know, insurances for their cargo (human or otherwise). I ssupect our series writer found himself in the situation where he writes a series set in a society where slavery is standard - and his sympathetic main characters are slave owners - but wanted to make clear that he's well aware that slavery = bad. Which, good for you, but then don't pick something that's very much the product of a later era. It's not like there's a shortage of historical points showing slavery was bad in ancient Rome. Like, for example, the fact that the testimony of a slave against a Roman citizen needed to be gained by torture. On a similar note, in the last episode, we finally meet Cicero's pen pal and life long bff Atticus. And Cicero is SHOCKED to discover that Atticus, who among other things is a money lender, has his people rough up someone who doesn't want to pay their debts. He's so shocked that he abandons the idea of doing what Atticus has done, move from Rome to Greece and live hte private life. My problem here is that the same episode earlier mentioned Atticus also owns a gladiator school. I mean, come on. We're clear on what gladiators do? How they are trained? How many of them volunteered for that fate? What will happen just a decade or so later in Capua? So don't give me a Cicero who is cool with Atticus owning a gladiator school but HORRIFIED at the debt collecting. Never mind veracity, this is just inconsistent in-series.
(Sidenote: for an example of a historical film which presents a sympathetic main character in ancient history who is a philosopher and fighter against injustice and yet a slaver owner, where the narrative makes it very clear that slavery is wrong and her blind ethical spot there is too and it comes to bite her, see Agora, about Hypatia. It can be done.)
Back to the good stuff. Like I said, Terentia is excellent, and by far not the only interesting character. And just to make Cicero's life more complicated, the series also gives him a friend of his youth (not Atticus) who is in love with him, Piso, and whom he at the very least still has very strong lingering feelings for. (If that's supposed to be the Piso he ends up being enemies with in rl, see link above, there's tragedy ahead, but within this season it's just that Cicero wants to keep things friendly because that's what adult Romans do.) Bisexual Cicero is an interpretation I haven't seen yet, but hey, why not? Sulla is an ominous shadow over the entire series, and when he and Cicero finally have their confrontation, it's a satisfying pay off to all the build up, since Sulla, as Cicero later tells Quintus, tries to seduce him - politically, not sexually - and Cicero isn't entirely immune. And did I mention there's a fraternal duo at the heart of it? So yes, by and large, I liked it a lot.
I can't make up my mind about: the switch of whom Terentia's sister and Cicero's sister-in-law, Fabia the Vestal, was accused to have had sexual relations with. In the series, it's Quintus. (Hence his urgent need of a witness testfiying he was elsewhere.) Which of course heightens the emotional states for the listening audience. (Especially if they don't know much, if anything, about Cicero's younger brother.) In real life, it was... drumroll... Luciius Sergiius Catilina. Yes, that one. He and Fabia were exonorated, but given later events, the fact that he and Cicero were on the same legal side on that occasion, so to speak, is irresistably ironic. Then again, presumably Llewellyn didn't want to cast Catilina yet for a cameo appearance.
Now, I hear Big Finish also did a Doctor Who crossover where this version of Cicero meets the (Fifth) Doctor. Has anyone listened to that yet?