Rome

Narrator: Four hundred years after the last king was driven from the city, the Republic of Rome rules many nations, but cannot rule itself. The city is constantly roiled by conflict between the common people and the nobility. Power is shared, and order maintained by two soldiers, old friends Gnaeus Pompey Magnus and Gaius Julius Caesar. Once, Pompey was acknowledged by all to be the greater man, but for the last eight years, while Pompey has kept the peace in Rome, Caesar has waged a war of conquest in Gaul, that has made him even more rich and popular. The balance of power is shifting, and the nobility have grown fearful - Though of noble blood himself, Caesar stands with the common people. A man like that, an aristocrat with soldiers, money and the love of the people... Might make himself king. Vorenus: Brawlers and drunkards will be flogged. Thieves will be strangled! Deserters will be crucified! Titus Pullo: [Being released, the flogging over] Is that it? I was just beginning to en

Rome (TV series), CC BY-SA 4.0

Titus Pullo: [on returning to Rome]] Here I come, girls! I'm gonna drink all the wine, smoke all the smoke, and fuck every whore in the city! Atia: By the Five Furies, if I were not a genteel woman, I'd have you flayed and hung from a bracket at the door! Castor! Castor: Yes, domina? Atia: Fetch the dogs! Pompey: He sits alone in Ravenna with one mutinous skeleton of a legion and he dares to dictate terms to me?! Mark Antony: Caesar has many more legions than the Thirteenth. Scipio: On the far side of the Alps. Mark Antony: Winter does not last forever. Spring comes. Snows melt. Scipio: That's a threat! Mark Antony: I assure you, it is no threat. Snows always melt. Pompey: Caesar is bluffing. He wishes to appear supremely confident. Evidently, he's desperately weak, weaker than we thought. This is a last-ditch attempt to frightening us into making concessions while he still has the semblance of an army. He's weak, Cicero, dying. Cicero: Is that not when all the proverbs tell us to be w

Rome (TV series), CC BY-SA 4.0

Brutus: Mother, you are blinded by untapped lust. I'll get you a good big Cyrenian at the market and have done with it! Lucius Vorenus: [aghast] This can only mean that the Republic has fallen. Titus Pullo: And yet, the sky is still above us and the earth still below. Strange. Vorenus: How could Mars allow such a thing to happen? Pullo: Maybe he was out having a crap and missed it!

Rome (TV series), CC BY-SA 4.0

Caesar: You are a thief. A foolish, incompetent thief. But we will treat your foolishness as some species of loyalty. Caesar: I do not like to quarrel with fortune, and clearly she's taken you for a pet. Caesar: [to Octavian after having an epileptic seizure] Vow to Orcus, never speak of this. Octavian: [nodding his head yes in agreement]

Rome (TV series), CC BY-SA 4.0

Caesar: They say a slave talks of bravery like a fish talks of flying. Posca: They say that, do they? How very witty of them. Octavian: Vorenus? Atia of the Julii: Is that it? Not the sullen Catonian one, I don't like him. The cheerful, brutish one. Octavian: [turning to go] Pullo. Atia: What extraordinary names these plebs have. Pullo.

Rome (TV series), CC BY-SA 4.0

Atia: Octavian, have you penetrated anyone yet? Titus Pullo, didn't I tell you to get that sorted? What else? Octavia: Perhaps you could arrange he kill someone. Atia: That will happen in due course. We Julii always have the needful enemies. Titus Pullo: What's your price, then? Madame: One thousand. Titus Pullo: Gerrhae! I could have half the whores in Narbo for that, and their mothers! Madame: We're not in Narbo, wherever that might be. Titus Pullo: All right, my dove, we'll pay, but the girl better fuck him like Helen of Troy with her arse on fire, or I'll know the reason why! Atia: Well this last news from Greece cannot have improved your appetite. Mark Antony: Hardly. Atia: And is it really so bad? Caesar always finds a way to win. Mark Antony: Pompey's gathered ten men for every one of Caesar's. Arithmetic has no mercy. Newsreader: This month's public bread is provided by the Capitoline Brotherhood of Millers. The Brotherhood uses only the finest flour: true Roman bread for true

Rome (TV series), CC BY-SA 4.0