"Decline and fall of the Roman myth"

[Nathan Ross]

Hmmm, seems everyone's judging the show before it's even been aired.

That's true - but at the moment all we have to go on is the Times article at the top of the page. It could be that the program itself is more considered and less 'outrageous' in its claims - but the idea of turning history upside down (etc) always has a good novelty value, and is more likely to attract viewers to televised history.

There have been quite a few of these sort of programs in the UK recently - the 'Britain AD' series, for instance, which demonstrated that post-Roman Britain was not a muddy swamp populated by illiterates in fur whacking each other with sticks, but instead had well developed trading links with Europe and a thriving intellectual and literary culture, or the program that set out to 'prove' that the Roman invasions of 43AD were more of a police action intended to shore up the regimes of certain client kings. These sort of ideas might seem like 'political correctness' (that infamous contemporary bugbear), and are a long way from the blood and thunder of melodramatic Victorian history, but they do at least dismantle a little of the scaffolding of popular preconceptions about History, and present it as less a monolithic assembly of 'facts' and more a matter of interpretation and argument. Surely that isn't such a bad thing? If popular myths remain unchallenged, after all, we'd still think of Roman soldiers riding around in chariots wearing shiny leather jerkins... (then again, I dare say most people still do :roll: )

Those chariots, though, are the silliest part of the article above - the idea that the British war chariot was 'technologically advanced' is just laughable. Even the continental celts had given them up long ago, which indicates that pre-Roman Britain was a bit behind the times even by 'celtic' standards! And the Romans did have chariots - they used them for racing in the Circus. I wonder how a British war chariot would have compared, in terms of speed and agility, with a Roman racing chariot? Interesting reconstruction exercise for somebody?

Travis wrote:

Of course one could argue that England isn't civilized today. No ice in drinks? C'mon!

It's a well known fact that Ancient Britons put ice in all their drinks. Especially woad.

- Nathan