Having by now seen all six episodes of the series on DVD I have formed an idea of this series which I saw simultaneously with HBO's Rome. The other production was more lavish, richer, more violent and much more sexually explicit. It also followed the fortunes of totally fictitious yet plausible characters along a much more restricted time-span, that is from the battle of Alesia till the assassination of Caesar(season 1).Sexually voracious and incredibly scheming women were interwoven with battle scenes, senatorial machinations, low-life thugs, powerful patrons and loyal soldiers. Nothing of this sort in the present series-a narrator's voice existed and the focus was on certain historical heavy-weights whose acts were interpreted in the light of modern real-politic, and the main events of their lives rendered as received by established historical sources or at least by established historical myths.This series focused on the life-stories of few characters whose final fate and posthumous reputation the narrator described at the end of each episode.The focus was on political and military events and not on personal motivation, feuds and loves except on the case that they had a net historical result-example:the marriage of Licinius and Constantia, Constantine's sister.The series Rome is much more glamorous and sex and violence than history on the grand scale as the present series. I suspect that Romans in their everyday lives experienced history in the former manner than in the latter one.Both series were a joy.
