What a nice present from The History Channel -- a colorful, entertaining, and informative sketch of Roman history, from Julius Caesar to the fall of the empire, seen as a succession of engineering achievements.
The political story is sufficiently mixed up with the construction of urban facilities that the title, "Engineering an Empire," might have been intended as a pun. The half-dozen emperors through whose eyes we see the tale unfold seem to have been at least as interested in holding the diverse parts of the empire, and its ill-ordered subjects, together as they were in working for the public good. Oh, and self promotion too. It's "Hadrian's Wall", not "the Scottish Wall." There are a couple of monumental engineering feats covered in this feature-length documentary. Let me think. Caesar's bridge across the Rhine River. The Pantheon. The Coliseum gets a lot of screen time. The famous aqueducts. The Baths of Caracalla, are not simply ruins today but serve as a theater for the production of operas. I wandered around backstage one afternoon when they were preparing "Aida" for that evening and noticed the plywood throne. I happened to have a thumb tack in my pocket and set it upright on the seat. I doubt that it affected the performance but I still wonder if it had anything to do with that C above high C.
The monuments and sewers aside, we get to know a little about the emperors and their architects. Some of the dictators were real brutes. Americans of today shouldn't complain. And the stuff that went on at the Coliseum, which held as many spectators as Yankee Stadium -- Wow. The gladitorial duels to the death were the least of it. There were public executions of prisoners, burnings at the stakes, feedings to the tormented wild animals. If the Romans were the most "civilized" nation on earth, all of this paints a pretty dark picture of human nature. To be fair, there were many magnificent public baths around, so at least they were a clean people.
The video footage of the remains as they stand today are supplemented by a couple of talking heads, including actor Peter Weller, who takes his academic career seriously, by some marvelous CGI work, by some less useful and far-too-hasty blue schematic diagrams with animated arrows running every which way, and it's all interspersed with live actors who mostly walk around brooding but look remarkably like the busts of the historical figures they represent.
It must have been fun making this superior documentary. It's certainly fascinating to watch.
The political story is sufficiently mixed up with the construction of urban facilities that the title, "Engineering an Empire," might have been intended as a pun. The half-dozen emperors through whose eyes we see the tale unfold seem to have been at least as interested in holding the diverse parts of the empire, and its ill-ordered subjects, together as they were in working for the public good. Oh, and self promotion too. It's "Hadrian's Wall", not "the Scottish Wall." There are a couple of monumental engineering feats covered in this feature-length documentary. Let me think. Caesar's bridge across the Rhine River. The Pantheon. The Coliseum gets a lot of screen time. The famous aqueducts. The Baths of Caracalla, are not simply ruins today but serve as a theater for the production of operas. I wandered around backstage one afternoon when they were preparing "Aida" for that evening and noticed the plywood throne. I happened to have a thumb tack in my pocket and set it upright on the seat. I doubt that it affected the performance but I still wonder if it had anything to do with that C above high C.
The monuments and sewers aside, we get to know a little about the emperors and their architects. Some of the dictators were real brutes. Americans of today shouldn't complain. And the stuff that went on at the Coliseum, which held as many spectators as Yankee Stadium -- Wow. The gladitorial duels to the death were the least of it. There were public executions of prisoners, burnings at the stakes, feedings to the tormented wild animals. If the Romans were the most "civilized" nation on earth, all of this paints a pretty dark picture of human nature. To be fair, there were many magnificent public baths around, so at least they were a clean people.
The video footage of the remains as they stand today are supplemented by a couple of talking heads, including actor Peter Weller, who takes his academic career seriously, by some marvelous CGI work, by some less useful and far-too-hasty blue schematic diagrams with animated arrows running every which way, and it's all interspersed with live actors who mostly walk around brooding but look remarkably like the busts of the historical figures they represent.
It must have been fun making this superior documentary. It's certainly fascinating to watch.
