History Hit, five films
7 episodes indexed · 5 hours · HistoryHit
Periods · The late Republic, The Pax Romana, The fall of the west
Themes · Life on the frontier Government Battle
The same house that makes The Ancients, here in video and at the length of a lunch break. Five films indexed, and the useful ones are the arguments with the screen: what Gladiator gets right and wrong is the sort of question a documentary usually avoids.
Where to start. What Gladiator gets wrong and right.
I feel like…
Cogitare, how it was thought and ordered
Sentire, what was lived and endured
Facere, what hands made and did
when it happens
how much time you have
Julius Caesar 100 – 42 BC · 2
Seventy-five minutes running from Caesar's two landings in 55 and 54 BC to Agricola in the north, in one sitting. A single historian to camera, which suits a story usually told in fragments.
The two British expeditions that achieved almost nothing militarily and everything politically, which is why Caesar wrote them up at length.
Antony, Cleopatra and Augustus 44 BC – AD 14 · 2
Sixty-one minutes with Mary Beard on the daily business of being emperor: the petitions, the letters, the dinners, and how much of the job was answering post.
With Simon Elliott
Forty-one minutes taking the whole rise in one run, to camera, which makes it a frame to hang the detailed episodes on.
The Fall of the West AD 395 – 565 · 2
With Peter Heather
Fifty-eight minutes taking the whole collapse in one run, to camera. Useful as the frame to hang the detailed episodes on, because it moves fast enough to keep the fourth and fifth centuries as one story.
What happened in Britain once Rome left: rival kingdoms fighting over what remained. The episode gives the century after 410 its own hour.
Roman Life, Army and Culture across the centuries · 1
Thirty-seven minutes checking the film against the evidence: how often gladiators actually died, where they came from, and what the thumb meant.
