Pharsalus (Rome)

Template:Rome episode "Pharsalus" is the seventh episode of the first season of the television series Rome.

Pharsalus (modern Farsala) is also a Greek city near where the Battle of Pharsalus took place.

Caesar is desperate for troops after the tragedy in the Adriatic. Pompey's supporters resist his more cautious plans, and press for glorious victory at Pharsulus. Niobe fears that Lucius is lost, and finds comfort in her estranged sister. Atia fears Caesar's war - and her influence - are lost and turns for help in an unlikely quarter. Octavia finds a hint of welcome, but unsettling, affection. Brutus and Cicero find hearty and unexpected forgiveness. Pullo and Vorenus find a grisly means of escape from their predicament, and are presented with an amazing opportunity - and a difficult choice. Pompey discovers that a man's fate can only be avoided for so long.

Plot summary

Vorenus and Pullo are marooned on some deserted beach, washed ashore with other dead legionaries. Caesar and the remaining forces engage in a final battle against Pompey and his allies. Caesar wins the battle against all odds, and Pompey and Cato the Younger flee. Brutus and Cicero surrender and Caesar pardons them and has them join his table. Pullo and Vorenus eventually assemble a raft out of corpses and manage to reach land. They are found half-dead by Pompey's family fleeing Caesar. That night Vorenus realizes who is with them. He and Pullo are offered a deal by Pompey's bodyguards to kill Pompey, but they subdue the bodyguards instead by killing their chief. Vorenus initially takes them all prisoner, but is undecided as to what to do next. Pompey begs for his family's freedom. He promises to never return to Rome and live in peace. Vorenus allows Pompey to leave for Egypt. Vorenus and Pullo return to Caesar's camp and report on finding Pompey. Mark Antony wants them both "scourged and crucified". Caesar is angry but decides to spare them both. Antony demands to know why and Caesar comments on the strange serendipity that follows Vorenus and Pullo, concluding that somehow the gods favor them inordinately. The final scene shows Pompey arriving on the beach of Egypt. He is welcomed by Egyptian guards but is quickly beheaded by a former Roman guard serving Ptolemy.

Historical and cultural background

• This episode features the Battle of Pharsalus

Inaccuracies and errors

• Caesar makes the comment that Pullo, Vorenus, and only 12 other men, out of 5,000, survived the storm. If this were true, it would mean the storm killed the entire 13th legion. In reality, the 13th legion was with Caesar in Greece and had not stayed in Rome. It would later be with Caesar at the battle of Munda, and would be demobilized in 45 BCE. In addition it will reappear within the episode "Triumph".
• Vorenus and Pullo could not have drifted to Amphipolis on their makeshift raft, as Amphipolis lay on the northern shores of the Aegean, near Chalkidiki, whereas the imaginary shipwreck of the 13th Legion must have occurred on the shores of the Ionian Sea, on the western side of the Greek peninsula.
• As Vorenus and Pullo are discussing their potential deaths while stranded on the beach, Pullo talks about seeing his mother in the afterlife, but according to Roman belief, soldiers ("warriors" and "heroes") went to a different afterlife than other Roman citizens. So, assuming Roman belief to be correct, Pullo would never see his mother in the afterlife.
• The name Octavian is incorrect, and should be Gaius Octavius Thurinus instead. In Latin the suffix '-ianus' indicates the original family name after an adoption, as a result of which the adoptive son received the full name of the adoptive father. Accordingly, C. Octavius Thurinus changed his name to C. Iulius Caesar Octavianus after being adopted and made sole heir in his grand uncle's will (44 BC). As a matter of fact, the future emperor did not like and never himself used the epithet Octavianus pointing at his not being born a patrician.
• After being defeated at Pharsalus, Pompey did not immediately flee for Egypt; he went island hopping along Asia Minor with his wife Cornelia Metella, son Sextus Pompeius, and earlier on, by Lentulus Spinther and Lentulus Crus (neither of which are present in the series).
• In the episode's final scene, as Pompey disembarks at a beach next to an Egyptian village, a minaret is visible among the village buildings in the background. [Iislam]] did not exist until about 700 years later.

Plot notes

• Whether writer David Frankel realized it or not, the means by which Lucius Vorenus and Titus Pullo rescue themselves from the barren atoll in the Adriatic will strike a chord with fans of the graphic novel Watchmen, where the hero of the pirate comic read by a young boy (a comic within the comic), also saves himself by making a raft of corpses.

External links

• "Pharsalus" at IMDb
• Plot Summary at HBO