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Pharsalus (Rome)

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Template:Rome episode "Pharsalus" is the seventh episode of the first season of the television series Rome.

Pharsalus (modern Farsala) is also a Greek city near where the Battle of Pharsalus took place.

Caesar is desperate for troops after the tragedy in the Adriatic. Pompey's supporters resist his more cautious plans, and press for glorious victory at Pharsulus. Niobe fears that Lucius is lost, and finds comfort in her estranged sister. Atia fears Caesar's war - and her influence - are lost and turns for help in an unlikely quarter. Octavia finds a hint of welcome, but unsettling, affection. Brutus and Cicero find hearty and unexpected forgiveness. Pullo and Vorenus find a grisly means of escape from their predicament, and are presented with an amazing opportunity - and a difficult choice. Pompey discovers that a man's fate can only be avoided for so long.

Plot

49 BC.After a warship of Caesar's reinforcement legions, becomes shipwrecked after a fatal storm in the Adriatic Sea, Vorenus and Pullo are marooned on a small cay. Vorenus and Pullo are accepting their possible deaths until Vorenus ties a raft out of corpses.They both swim out to sea.While, Pompey and Caesar's remaining armies battle each other in Pharsalus, Greece. After weeks of bloody war, Caesar emerges victorious. Pompey hitch hikes with his wife and children and are picked up by a Gallic tribe. While traveling, Pompey sees Vorenus and Pullo washed ashore. Pullo and Vorenus recognize Pompey as a Roman consul and threaten to turn him in to Caesar. Vorenus pities Pompey and despite Pullo's objections, leaves him alone. Later, Pullo and Vorenus are picked up by Caesar. Antony, a loyal soldier under Caesar believes Vorenus and Pullo should be crucified for not capturing Pompey, but he is overruled by his superior, Caesar. Antony asks Caesar why he is so forgiving, Caesar replies saying the gods favor Vorenus and Pullo somehow by stumbling into Pompey. The retreating Pompey, is abandoned, so Pompey and his family run off to Alexandria,Egypt where Pompey is greeted by a former Roman soldier, who served under him. Pompey is stabbed by this soldier and beheaded. The episode ends with Pompey's family looking on their murdered father.

Historical and cultural background

Inaccuracies and errors

  • Caesar makes the comment that Pullo, Vorenus, and only 12 other men, out of 5,000, survived the storm. If this were true, it would mean the storm killed the entire 13th legion. In reality, the 13th legion was with Caesar in Greece and had not stayed in Rome. It would later be with Caesar at the battle of Munda, and would be demobilized in 45 B.C. In addition it will reappear within the episode "Triumph".
  • Vorenus and Pullo could not have drifted to Amphipolis on their makeshift raft, as Amphipolis lay on the northern shores of the Aegean, near Chalkidiki, whereas the imaginary shipwreck of the 13th Legion must have occurred on the shores of the Ionian Sea, on the western side of the Greek peninsula.
  • As Vorenus and Pullo are discussing their potential deaths while stranded on the beach, Pullo talks about seeing his mother in the afterlife, but according to Roman belief, soldiers ("warriors" and "heroes") went to a different afterlife than other Roman citizens. So, assuming Roman belief to be correct, Pullo would never see his mother in the afterlife.
  • The name Octavian is incorrect, and should be Gaius Octavius Thurinus instead. In Latin the suffix '-ianus' indicates the original family name after an adoption, as a result of which the adoptive son received the full name of the adoptive father. Accordingly, G. Octavius Thurinus changed his name to C. Iulius Caesar Octavianus after being adopted and made sole heir in his grand uncle's will (44 BC). As a matter of fact, the future emperor did not like and never himself used the epithet Octavianus pointing at his not being born a patrician.
  • After being defeated at Pharsalus, Pompey did not immediately flee for Egypt; he went island hopping along Asia Minor with his wife Cornelia Metella, son Sextus Pompeius, and earlier on, by Lentulus Spinther and Lentulus Crus (neither of whom are present in the series).
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