![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
selenakAs cahn, who asked me this, guessed, said show would definitely be inspired/partially based on Lion Feuchtwanger's trilogy of novels about the Jewish historian Flavius Josephus/Joseph ben Matthias. But not exclusively, not least because there are aspects of the Flavian era which don't show up (Pompeii, for starters), got downplayed (Vespasian's life partner, the freedwoman Caenis, who used to be the slave of Antonia, the daughter of Mark Antony and mother of (I ,) Claudius, does show up in the first novel, but you could do far more with her than Feuchtwanger does), or are hardly mentioned (for example, an adolescent trauma each for Titus and Domitian respectively; Titus was childhood or teenage friends with Claudius' son Britannicus and was in fact present and supposedly co-poisoned at the dinner where Nero poisoned Britannicus and made everyone continue eating, and Domitian was present and in Rome in the year of the four Emperors, as opposed to his father and brother who were in Judaea and Egypt, and barely escaped with his life when Vitellius was Emperor, as opposed to his uncle, Vespasian's brother Titus Sabienus, who led the "Vespasian for Emperor" campaign in Rome).
Still, Joseph(us) is an ideal main character for a show covering the time between the last Nero years, when the Julio-Claudian dynasty ends and after that violent interludium of year the Flavian one starts, and the death of Domitian. He's an interesting person in his own right, he's a historian and thus with a good excuse to either be present or research about most of the key events in these years, though the opposite of an easy hero (extremely simplified, because of the "from resistance fighter to collaborator" development), and because his pov is that of basically three different worlds - the Jewish one, the Hellenistic one and the Roman one - often in great opposition to each other which he tries to bridge and yet is also at odds with - , you get a very different kind of story as if you either just go for the ruling family soap opera, or do what Lindsey Davies did with her highly entertaining Falco series, i.e. fictional mysteries set during Vespasian's reign with a deliberate parody of the noir template, in which our detective hero and his beloved are on the trail of villainy first in Rome and Britain and then all over the Roman Empire. (While fictional Falco hails from a plebeian family, he's still a Roman from Rome - just at a time where "born in Rome" slowly but surely stops being a criteria for "being a Roman", no less.) (BTW: I would love a film series based on the Falco novels as well, of course.) Joseph is both an outsider who experiences the human cost of Empire first hand, and an insider has a close up and personal view on the Flavians, and through him, you can connect storylines of a great variety of people who otherwise are hardly going to encounter each other.
Other tv series friendly elements offered by the Flavians:
- Game of Thrones happens literally in the first seaon as the Flavians come to power in the year of the Four Emperors, and since Vespasian was the Dark Horse candidate (Joseph(us) made a gamble there when declaring himther Messiah the next Emperor after being captured), you can milk a lot of suspense out of that (especially if teen Domitian in Rome gets his own subplot)
- These are the guys who build the Colloseum (i.e the "Flavian Theatre"), to give it its official name) and inaugurate it in a 200 something days of games marathon, so Gladiator obsessives will get their part of choreographed violence
- Vespasian dies a natural death in old age, Titus dies of a sickness, but not least due to a lot of ancient writers hating his little brother's guts, you have enough of them side-eying Domitian to justify a murder mystery plot if you want to do one; Domitian definitely was assassinated, so you can go all Ides of March and do a tense conspiracy story there
- interesting women! Caenis I already mentioned, Berenice the Jewish princess whose affair with Titus is so open to a gazillion interpretations (politics? actual love? mutual benefits? all of the above?) and who is someone I've yet to encounter a fictional counterpart off that really satisfies me (the first of Feuchtwanger's Josephus novels comes closest, but then alas there's the second one where he doesn't handle her as well), Domitia Longina (who in Feuchtwanger's novels is called Lucia), the wife of Domitian and supposedly the only person never afraid of him, despite a temporary exile after an affair she had with an actor (Domtiian couldn't live without her and called her back)
- incest! Domitian supposedly had an affair with Titus' daughter Julia after refusing to marry her while Titus according to master of sensationalistic gossip Suetonius could have had a fling with Domitian's wife near the end of his (i.e. Titus') life
- competence! Here you have that oddity, a whole dynasty (since Domitian was the last Flavian on the throne) where not a single member was actually born into the purple amd were actually working Emperors; Vespasian had to clean up the whole mess left behind by Nero and the three short lived Emperors in between and stablize the Roman Empire again, Titus was essentially co-Emperor already during Vespasian's time and in his own short rule had to cope with three natural disasters in a row, including Pompeii, and Domitian may have been a creepy tyrant, but he was a competent creepy tyrant who pushed through the biggest building programm since decades (not just in Rome itself, either) and managed a balanced economy for most of his reign
- doomed rebellions and heartbreaking sieges (in Judea, of course) (I mean, Masada got its own extra tv series already) (with a final successful conspiracy when Domitian gets killed)
- some of the best known ancient writers in addition to Josephus are around (Suetoniius, Martial, Tacitus, Pliny the older and Pliny the younger), and "how to be a writer in a dictatorship" is an eternally challenging question
All of which offers enough material for five seasons at least, especially in this day and age when seasons are no longer 22 episodes long but only eight or six per season. I think old age make up should be up to aging everyone through the years (especially Josephus, who will be around the entire time), though if we do flashbacks to teenage Titus during the murder of equally teenage Britannicus, there needs to be an actual young actor, and Domitian in s1 should look young enough that it's clear he is still in his teens then, so possibly also another young actor than main Domitian who needs to be around till the end as well. Caenis can be a great role for a middle-aged or older actress, and very refreshingly, Berenice is canonically older than Titus when they meet, so no actress in her early 20s/ actor in his 40s or older pairing here. Depending on how much the series draws on Feuchtwanger, controvery is guaranteed, because a great deal of the Josephus trilogy ponders what it means to be Jewish and whether that meaning can change (or not) in the diaspora, and whether or not revolting against a greater military power whom you know will respond with devastating force can be justified. But that's what makes the books so captivating and if the writing of the show is up for it, it might be the same.
Expensive: very, given that not only do you need to show ancient Rome but also ancient Judea and ancient Alexandria in Egypt, and depending on how much you want to include events there, ancient Britain and ancient Germania. Otoh, I, Claudius solved the problem of a small budget by having everyone in costume but no sweeping landscape shots whatsoever (or battles, or gladiator fight scenes - we see what's going on from the reactions of the main characters who are among the audience whenever something takes place during the games), and GCI can do so much these days; it should be workeable.
Fan favourites: party, this depends on the actors. You need a really good one for Joseph(us), and if he's also handsome, I think early fandom will pair him with Titus (and again, depending on how much Feuchtwanger the show includes, definitely with his frenemy and rival Justus of Tiberia), but I'm pretty sure he'll never be the favourite, and will frequently be the cause of long rants early on, though later will secure a kind of "no one's first but many people's second or third favourite" fondness. Teen and young Domitian might get a lot of woobie sympathy if people consider him ill done by because Dad and Big Bro don't take him that seriously and are such a working team that they exclude him, but I don't think that will survive once he actually gets into power, because even if the show goes all revisionist on Domitian he's still going to do a lot of less than palpable things in a slow, methodical way instead of flamboyant craziness. At the latest when he's ordering the first Vestal in over a century to be killed for having had sex in the traditional gruesome way, he'll be out of favour. I'm betting on his wife as an overall favourite, because fearless ladies who have a sex life they themselves choose and don't end up dead or (permanently) exiled, have the All Powerful guy of the show be often putty in their hands and who are alive and well at the end of the story deserve to be.
The other days
cahn, who asked me this, guessed, said show would definitely be inspired/partially based on Lion Feuchtwanger's trilogy of novels about the Jewish historian Flavius Josephus/Joseph ben Matthias. But not exclusively, not least because there are aspects of the Flavian era which don't show up (Pompeii, for starters), got downplayed (Vespasian's life partner, the freedwoman Caenis, who used to be the slave of Antonia, the daughter of Mark Antony and mother of (I ,) Claudius, does show up in the first novel, but you could do far more with her than Feuchtwanger does), or are hardly mentioned (for example, an adolescent trauma each for Titus and Domitian respectively; Titus was childhood or teenage friends with Claudius' son Britannicus and was in fact present and supposedly co-poisoned at the dinner where Nero poisoned Britannicus and made everyone continue eating, and Domitian was present and in Rome in the year of the four Emperors, as opposed to his father and brother who were in Judaea and Egypt, and barely escaped with his life when Vitellius was Emperor, as opposed to his uncle, Vespasian's brother Titus Sabienus, who led the "Vespasian for Emperor" campaign in Rome). Still, Joseph(us) is an ideal main character for a show covering the time between the last Nero years, when the Julio-Claudian dynasty ends and after that violent interludium of year the Flavian one starts, and the death of Domitian. He's an interesting person in his own right, he's a historian and thus with a good excuse to either be present or research about most of the key events in these years, though the opposite of an easy hero (extremely simplified, because of the "from resistance fighter to collaborator" development), and because his pov is that of basically three different worlds - the Jewish one, the Hellenistic one and the Roman one - often in great opposition to each other which he tries to bridge and yet is also at odds with - , you get a very different kind of story as if you either just go for the ruling family soap opera, or do what Lindsey Davies did with her highly entertaining Falco series, i.e. fictional mysteries set during Vespasian's reign with a deliberate parody of the noir template, in which our detective hero and his beloved are on the trail of villainy first in Rome and Britain and then all over the Roman Empire. (While fictional Falco hails from a plebeian family, he's still a Roman from Rome - just at a time where "born in Rome" slowly but surely stops being a criteria for "being a Roman", no less.) (BTW: I would love a film series based on the Falco novels as well, of course.) Joseph is both an outsider who experiences the human cost of Empire first hand, and an insider has a close up and personal view on the Flavians, and through him, you can connect storylines of a great variety of people who otherwise are hardly going to encounter each other.
Other tv series friendly elements offered by the Flavians:
- Game of Thrones happens literally in the first seaon as the Flavians come to power in the year of the Four Emperors, and since Vespasian was the Dark Horse candidate (Joseph(us) made a gamble there when declaring him
- These are the guys who build the Colloseum (i.e the "Flavian Theatre"), to give it its official name) and inaugurate it in a 200 something days of games marathon, so Gladiator obsessives will get their part of choreographed violence
- Vespasian dies a natural death in old age, Titus dies of a sickness, but not least due to a lot of ancient writers hating his little brother's guts, you have enough of them side-eying Domitian to justify a murder mystery plot if you want to do one; Domitian definitely was assassinated, so you can go all Ides of March and do a tense conspiracy story there
- interesting women! Caenis I already mentioned, Berenice the Jewish princess whose affair with Titus is so open to a gazillion interpretations (politics? actual love? mutual benefits? all of the above?) and who is someone I've yet to encounter a fictional counterpart off that really satisfies me (the first of Feuchtwanger's Josephus novels comes closest, but then alas there's the second one where he doesn't handle her as well), Domitia Longina (who in Feuchtwanger's novels is called Lucia), the wife of Domitian and supposedly the only person never afraid of him, despite a temporary exile after an affair she had with an actor (Domtiian couldn't live without her and called her back)
- incest! Domitian supposedly had an affair with Titus' daughter Julia after refusing to marry her while Titus according to master of sensationalistic gossip Suetonius could have had a fling with Domitian's wife near the end of his (i.e. Titus') life
- competence! Here you have that oddity, a whole dynasty (since Domitian was the last Flavian on the throne) where not a single member was actually born into the purple amd were actually working Emperors; Vespasian had to clean up the whole mess left behind by Nero and the three short lived Emperors in between and stablize the Roman Empire again, Titus was essentially co-Emperor already during Vespasian's time and in his own short rule had to cope with three natural disasters in a row, including Pompeii, and Domitian may have been a creepy tyrant, but he was a competent creepy tyrant who pushed through the biggest building programm since decades (not just in Rome itself, either) and managed a balanced economy for most of his reign
- doomed rebellions and heartbreaking sieges (in Judea, of course) (I mean, Masada got its own extra tv series already) (with a final successful conspiracy when Domitian gets killed)
- some of the best known ancient writers in addition to Josephus are around (Suetoniius, Martial, Tacitus, Pliny the older and Pliny the younger), and "how to be a writer in a dictatorship" is an eternally challenging question
All of which offers enough material for five seasons at least, especially in this day and age when seasons are no longer 22 episodes long but only eight or six per season. I think old age make up should be up to aging everyone through the years (especially Josephus, who will be around the entire time), though if we do flashbacks to teenage Titus during the murder of equally teenage Britannicus, there needs to be an actual young actor, and Domitian in s1 should look young enough that it's clear he is still in his teens then, so possibly also another young actor than main Domitian who needs to be around till the end as well. Caenis can be a great role for a middle-aged or older actress, and very refreshingly, Berenice is canonically older than Titus when they meet, so no actress in her early 20s/ actor in his 40s or older pairing here. Depending on how much the series draws on Feuchtwanger, controvery is guaranteed, because a great deal of the Josephus trilogy ponders what it means to be Jewish and whether that meaning can change (or not) in the diaspora, and whether or not revolting against a greater military power whom you know will respond with devastating force can be justified. But that's what makes the books so captivating and if the writing of the show is up for it, it might be the same.
Expensive: very, given that not only do you need to show ancient Rome but also ancient Judea and ancient Alexandria in Egypt, and depending on how much you want to include events there, ancient Britain and ancient Germania. Otoh, I, Claudius solved the problem of a small budget by having everyone in costume but no sweeping landscape shots whatsoever (or battles, or gladiator fight scenes - we see what's going on from the reactions of the main characters who are among the audience whenever something takes place during the games), and GCI can do so much these days; it should be workeable.
Fan favourites: party, this depends on the actors. You need a really good one for Joseph(us), and if he's also handsome, I think early fandom will pair him with Titus (and again, depending on how much Feuchtwanger the show includes, definitely with his frenemy and rival Justus of Tiberia), but I'm pretty sure he'll never be the favourite, and will frequently be the cause of long rants early on, though later will secure a kind of "no one's first but many people's second or third favourite" fondness. Teen and young Domitian might get a lot of woobie sympathy if people consider him ill done by because Dad and Big Bro don't take him that seriously and are such a working team that they exclude him, but I don't think that will survive once he actually gets into power, because even if the show goes all revisionist on Domitian he's still going to do a lot of less than palpable things in a slow, methodical way instead of flamboyant craziness. At the latest when he's ordering the first Vestal in over a century to be killed for having had sex in the traditional gruesome way, he'll be out of favour. I'm betting on his wife as an overall favourite, because fearless ladies who have a sex life they themselves choose and don't end up dead or (permanently) exiled, have the All Powerful guy of the show be often putty in their hands and who are alive and well at the end of the story deserve to be.
The other days
no subject
Date: 2025-01-22 03:47 pm (UTC)