promise to be oneof the last of these kind of posts-rome hbo

[Lepidina]

Some of the textiles are really bad. The Roman Senators and Equestrians didn't have to wear coarse materials, they had spinners and weavers who could make really fine wool cloth.

Grrr...that bugged me too. No one seems to understand that pre-industrial textiles were for the most part, far better than anything we have today.

None of the women main characters had outfits that were anywhere near correct. They went to great lengths to do decent hairstyles and then put them in crap dresses. The slaves in the background had decent outfits tho'.

The other thing to remember is that COSTUME designers are not costume HISTORIANs and if they do try to do things historically accurate, they usually get trumped by the production designer who wants things to be more "fantastical" as in bigger and bolder not more fantasy-like. They did do some nice touches like the red boots for the senators and putting Cato in a black toga without a tunica. I would have liked to have seen the off-duty soldier wear their belts with their dangliums.

And enough with the antiquing!! Please people, it was NEW back then thus their gear would have been shiny and in good condition.

At least no one was in birkenstocks or teevas. That really cheeses me off.

But overall, I think the series did a nice job of recreating Rome. Sure it wasn't 100% historically accurate but it did give you the flavor of how things were. The curses, the plays, the graffiti, eatting door mice and goat's testicles, nice touches. The episodes wove together well and the acting was superb. I wasn't expecting a historical documentary but as a historical drama, it's one of the best ones out there.