Caesarion (Rome)

Rome episode
title=Caesarion


caption= Lyndsey Marshal as Cleopatra VII Philopator, Queen of Egypt
season=1 (2005)
episode=8 (HBO; see BBC editing)
air_date=October 16, 2005 (HBO)
December 14, 2005 (BBC)
writer= William J. MacDonald
director=Steve Shill
setting=Ptolemaic Egypt and Rome
time_frame=Fall 48 BC through June 47 BC
link= [http://www.hbo.com/rome/episode/season1/episode08.html HBO episode summary]
prev=Pharsalus
next=Utica

"Caesarion" is the eighth episode of the first season of the television series "Rome".

"Having pursued Pompey into Egypt, Caesar arrives in Alexandria and meets the boy king Ptolemy XIII, who offers the general a surprise gift. Vorenus and Pullo play liberators again, freeing Ptolemy's incarcerated sister Cleopatra. Caesar seeks payment from Egypt for past debts, and ends up forging a strategic union to ensure his legacy."

Plot summary

Caesar and the legions arrive in Alexandria in pursuit of Pompey who sought refuge with his "friends" in Egypt. Caesar and Marc Antony enter the palace of the Ptolemaic kings to find them in the middle of a ceremony. As Caesar begins to make his salute to the court, the chanting grows louder in an attempt to drown out Caesar and let him know who is in power in the present political situation. We learn that young King Ptolemy's kingship is in question. In fact his sister (and wife), Cleopatra, has laid claim to the throne and is in rebellion. However, Ptolemy's adviser and chief eunuch Pothinus make light of the situation, claiming it has affected Egypt little.

At the urging of his tutor Theodotus, young Ptolemy presents Caesar with a large jar containing Pompey's head in an attempt to placate Caesar and bring him to their side in the conflict with Cleopatra. Ptolemy claims that the head will be used in an upcoming entertainment, "with wild animals and everything" but this only angers Caesar who then shames the house of Ptolemy, calling the Egyptians barbarians and reminds him that Pompey was "a consul of Rome". With this final insult to Caesar, he surmises to collect the entire outstanding debt the Egyptians have with the Romans in the amount of "seventeen thousand thousand drachma", an amount entirely impossible for the Egyptians to pay.

Since they are not able to pay, Caesar decides to try neutralizing the power struggle between Ptolemy and Cleopatra in order to maintain Egyptian grain exports to Rome. So he dispatches Vorenus and Pullo to find Cleopatra in order to resolve the family dispute. Meanwhile, Pothinus and Theodotus persuade Ptolemy to have his sister killed so that there is no threat of Caesar giving her the throne. Ptolemy and his officials actually know her location and dispatch a group of three assassins to take care of the job. Vorenus and Pullo have been waiting for the assassins at the middle of the desert on a road leading south in order to follow them to Cleopatra.

As the assassins reach Cleopatra's camp, they speak to the chief servant who then requests an audience with Cleopatra, still groggy after smoking opium. When she finally grants entry, he informs her that it is time for her to make herself ready for her journey to the afterlife. The three assassins enter and are about to kill Cleopatra when they hear a noise outside. Two assassins attend to the noise while the lead assassin moves toward Cleopatra. Suddenly, Pullo enters through the back of the tent and after a brief fight with the assassin, kills him with eighteen vicious stabs with his dagger.

On the trip back to Alexandria, Cleopatra's slave taunts her about her opium use. Cleopatra responds by having the slave throw away her opium pipe. Cleopatra then speaks of her need to seduce Caesar. "If I cannot, then I am dead." She notes that a sexual union between them would be helpful, but if she could bear him a son, something his three wives could not do, then she would have his allegiance. Noting that now would be the perfect time for her to become pregnant as she is "between the floods", she has her body slave Charmian invite Vorenus into her tent and orders him to enter her. Vorenus refuses and leaves to order Pullo to "Report immediately to princess Cleopatra and do as she says." Pullo is gleefully compliant.

Vorenus and Pullo smuggle Cleopatra into Alexandria concealed in a sack. The moment she reveals herself, Caesar is immediately attracted to her. The scenes of them making love are interspersed with scenes of Servilia and Octavia in bed (who don't otherwise appear in this episode). After a short family reunion, Ptolemy's adviser and eunuch are beheaded for "misleading" the King against his sister. Their heads are placed on stakes outside the palace next to the head of the Roman who killed Pompey. This addition to the heads begins to anger the citizenry and that evening, the siege begins with a single warrior stationing himself outside the palace gate, eventually to be joined by a throng of Egyptians.

In Rome, at the Senate House, while Cicero tries to convince Brutus to betray Marc Antony if Caesar cannot escape Alexandria, who has now been besieged there for almost a year, Marc Antony enters, announcing he has good news. He then reveals that he knows of Cicero's thoughts of betrayal and warns him that if he ever hears of it again, he will cut off Cicero's "pink hands and nail them to the Senate door." As he is leaving, Brutus reminds him of the good news he said he had before he got distracted with his deriding of Cicero, to which Antony tells them that Caesar has lifted the siege and is victorious in Alexandria.

In Alexandria, we see Ptolemy floating facedown in the river, dead. Caesar presents Cleopatra's infant son Caesarion to his soldiers. As the Legion cheers, Vorenus glares at Pullo, who pauses for a moment, knowing that there's a distinct possibility that the child is his, then goes on cheering proudly.

Historical and cultural background

At the time of Caesar's arrival in Egypt, it was undergoing a dynastic dispute among the various siblings of the Ptolemaic Dynasty. Ptolemy XIII (who was probably being manipulated by his regent Pothinus), Arsinoe IV and Cleopatra VII, were all contesting for rulership.

The god that Titus Pullo finds so unimpressive, the "bastard with a dog's head on him", is "possibly" the Egyptian god Anubis (since he is not the only god with a dog's head but the best known). The bit of statuary that Lucius Vorenus is sharpening his sword on while he and Pullo wait, wears the "Double Crown" of Upper and Lower Egypt. This means that it is a depiction of a Pharaoh — presumably a fragment of some long-lost royal monument.

Inaccuracies and errors

*Ptolemaic Egypt was a successor state to the empire of Alexander the Great, which spread Greek civilization throughout the Eastern Mediterranean. It was part of the Hellenistic world, ruled by the ethnically Greek Ptolemaic dynasty for over 250 years. While the rulers did portray themselves in local dress on public monuments and at times adopted Egyptian practices to avoid friction with their native Egyptian followers, no ruler before Cleopatra VII had even bothered to learn the Egyptian language. Most of Alexandria's citizens would also have been Greek, not Egyptian. Immigration from the rest of the Greek-speaking world was actively encouraged by the Ptolemaic Dynasty, and non-Greeks were discouraged from living in the central quarters of Alexandria known as Brucheum. The appearance of the Egyptians in the series is unrealistic, as the ancient Egyptians never wore heavy face paint, and the elaborate wigs were uncharacteristic of Egyptian wig styles. Moreover, the people of Egypt are heard talking in Arabic, while Arabic was not spoken in Egypt until the beginning of its Islamic era around the 7th century AD.

*The army of Ptolemaic Egypt followed the Greek model. It would have contained a number of local soldiers, but its elite would have been largely composed of Greeks, and most troops would have worn Greek-style uniforms and armor (see illustration), especially in Alexandria and around the royal palace. The series does not reflect this.

*Alexandria itself was a Greek city founded by Alexander the Great. The architecture of the royal palace and the harbor area would have been Greek, not Ancient Egyptian as portrayed in the series.

*The dynastic dispute in Egypt is simplified; Arsinoe IV (and her claims) are ignored in the series. While the episode depicts Pullo and Vorenus dumping Cleopatra, laced up in a bag, in front of Julius Caesar, Plutarch records that she had herself rolled up in a Persian carpet which was then presented to Caesar by her servant. Caesarion was the son of Cleopatra VII and Caesar; the events of the episode insinuate that he may actually have been fathered by Pullo. Though Caesar is shown presenting his newborn son to his army, historically Caesar was already back in Rome by the time Caesarion was born.

*In the episode, Cleopatra gazes at a coin with Caesar's likeness while plotting to seduce him. However, these coins were not minted until later in Caesar's life. Likewise, Cleopatra also smokes a substance that presumably represents opium. While opium seeds were chewed and sometimes "smoked" by burning them on metal plates in the Near East, smoking through pipes at all did not occur until after contact with the New World many centuries later.

*Finally, there is no historical evidence to suggest that there ever was a sexual relationship between Servilia Caepionis and Octavia Minor, as is depicted in this episode.

Character notes

"None yet"

Plot notes

"None yet"

Episode characters

"possibly incomplete"
See also: Character appearances in Rome

Main cast

Guest stars

External links

*imdb episode|episode=Caesarion|id=0688350
* [http://www.hbo.com/rome/episode/season1/episode08.html Plot Summary] at [http://www.hbo.com/ HBO]