Parent and child reunions
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- March
- 26
Like all fine works of art or entertainment, “Rome”:http://hbo.com, which concluded its two-season run last night, proved to be both timely and timeless.
It was timely in its depiction of the East/West conflict that has resonated in the publishing world and in the movies (“Troy,” “Alexander,” “300”) since the start of the Iraq War. (More about East meets West in Wednesday’s special ”’Rome’ roundup” blog.)
In the end, “Rome” was also timeless in its portrayal of parents and children  a subject that, I daresay, fascinates our child-centric culture more than it did the Romans’. (Back then, children were the property of their fathers. Hence, Vorenus’ daughters were called Vorena the elder and Vorena the younger. They properly would’ve been known as Vorena major and Vorena minor.)
Were you as struck last night, as I was, by the notion of chance playing a significant role in a child’s upbringing? Atia (the great Polly Walker) even commented on it. Here was Octavia (the lovely Kerry Condon) at loggerheads with her mother throughout much of the series. And yet, she grew into a dutiful daughter who shared her mother’s life. (It was so poignant when Octavia said she didn’t know how she could go on without her.)
It was no surprise that Octavia’s daughter, Antonia, should be the little rebel  and the apple of grandma’s eye.
Then there was Octavian (the wonderfully cagey Max Pirkis and later, the chilling Simon Woods), the good boy who grew up to break his mother’s heart. (Talk about still waters running deep.) Atia even mused that she must’ve been a bad mother, and the witchy fictional Atia was certainly no picnic. But I doubt the real Atia would’ve given in to the kind of mommy guilt that’s a staple of the “Today” show. The Romans just didn’t think like that.
I’m glad that Vorena the elder finally reconciled with the father who loved her enough to protect her from the truth. Would that a soldier like Pullo could’ve saved the real Caesarion. It is one of the conceits of fiction  and of American culture in particular – that no one ever really dies. Marilyn didn’t commit suicide. James Dean still lives somewhere. The grassy knoll never happened, or if it did, it didn’t happen that way.
But the real Caesarion did die when he was a teenager, under orders of Octavian, who couldn’t afford to keep extra Caesars around. Poetry is not my strong suit, but I think the words of C.P. Cavafy seem particularly apt here. Cavafy (1863-1933) was a Greek poet who lived and died in Alexandria long after Antony and Cleopatra abandoned the city for their shared destiny. He wrote a lot about them and the ancient Romans. The last lines of his poem “Kaisarion,” in which the poet reinvents a little-known figure in history, crystallize not only the poor boy’s fate but the artistic temperament as well:
It seemed you stood there in front of me, looking just as you would have
in conquered Alexandria,
pale and weary, ideal in your grief,
still hoping they might take pity on you,
those scum who whispered: “Too many Caesars.”
Truth may not always be stranger than fiction. But it certainly is crueler.
This entry was posted
on Monday, March 26th, 2007 at 11:29 am by Georgette Gouveia.
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Brava, Georgette!