The Ancient Historian goes to Cinecittà. Reflections on working as a historical adviser
In early December 2011, when I was lucky enough to be working at the British School at Rome, I went on a group excursion with other resident scholars and artists to Cinecittà. This hallowed studio on the eastern outskirts of the city has been the setting of numerous film masterpieces since its foundation in 1937. It has a special reputation for accommodating some of the biggest sword-and-sandal epics ever made, such as Quo Vadis (1951), Ben-Hur (1959, along with its less well-received 2016 remake), and Cleopatra (1963).
Personally, I was most excited about seeing the sets of the HBO series Rome. Set in the death throes of the Republic, this traces the story of well-known figures such as Julius Caesar, Brutus, and Octavian, along with some less well-known and completely fictional characters. I had watched the first season just before I went to university, and the second with my classmates in my second year. Ancient Rome had never really been on my radar before (I’d done Classical Civilisation for an A-Level in the UK, but we mostly covered Greek art and literature), but this sensationalist yet gritty portrayal won me over: I was hooked. Years later, as a new PhD student, I couldn’t contain my excitement as I walked around the incredible sets. It was like seeing the ancient world come alive before my eyes, and reminded me what had got me into the Romans in the first place.
An appropriately excited PhD student on the HBO Rome set in 2011
I’d never have dreamed that, almost exactly eight years later, I’d be back. This time I was walking around new sets, and meeting producers, directors, costume designers, and cast members for a series I had been the historical advisor for. It was completely surreal.
By the time I was back in Cinecittà in November 2019, I’d already been working on the project for over eighteen months. In March 2018 I received an email from a London production company asking if I’d be interested in helping a writer who was working on a couple of pilot scripts for a new drama series focusing on the lives of Roman empresses. Honestly, I was a little hesitant. It seemed like a lot of work and responsibility, and I was a relatively new lecturer – I wasn’t sure if this was how I should be spending my time. I eventually took the plunge and signed the contract for the first two episodes.
As it turned out it was a lot of work, but I loved it. It made me look at the ancient world in a completely new light, since I was asked about things I’d never thought about as a researcher or a lecturer (What did the Romans wear in bed? How would you go about staging a Roman wedding? How might you realistically fake-sacrifice a pig? What would Augustus’ sister and wife have called him?). Simon Burke, the writer and showrunner, had a clear vision of what he wanted to achieve with the story, and I enjoyed helping him create a historical setting that felt authentic.
As a historian working on ancient and often fragmentary material, when you hit uncharted territories you can say ‘we just don’t know’, or you can make some tentative suggestions for how we might deal with these gaps. However, creating a fictional yet realistic world which is concrete and inhabited with people demands a lot more imagination. As I discovered, as an expert advisor you end up doing a lot of creative problem-solving: taking the things we do know, then thinking hard about how you might translate them to a different context. This was especially the case for this project, since its primary focus was women, and even elite women – the mothers, wives, sisters, and daughters of emperors – are often shadowy, one-dimensional, or even demonised in surviving sources written by elite men who were threatened by the power they might wield through their male relatives. Fiction, set in a realistic ancient setting, offers the opportunity to put forward a new vision of the past where women and even enslaved individuals are given the agency to shape history.
Back in Cinecittà for the read-through in November 2019
Towards the end of summer 2018 I moved to Ireland to start a new job at Trinity. Around the same time, after the pilot screenplays had secured backing from Sky Italia, I was asked if I would advise on the rest of the first season. Everything ramped up. I was now dealing with producers and a whole script team. In the Spring of 2019 I was asked to come to London for a day to brainstorm stories. This was the first time I had met anyone from the project face-to-face, and their enthusiasm and curiosity about the ancient world was infectious. Finally, by the end of the year, I found myself being flown out to Rome to attend the read-through, where everyone involved in the production came together to watch the cast reading the scripts of the first few episodes. Sitting at the edge of this unfamiliar spectacle, I felt very out of place amongst the actors, producers, cinematographers, directors, and costume designers. But it was amazing to see so many people who had come together with the shared goal of creating something based in a world I had spent so much of my life thinking about.
The show was eventually given the name Domina, a reference to the primary character – Livia, wife of the emperor Augustus – as mistress of the first household of Rome. Beyond some questions about sets and CGI environments, I worked primarily on the screenplays. This meant that I felt peculiarly disconnected from the more glamourous parts of the production, such as the actual filming or publicity leading up to its release in May this year. Watching the final product was a bizarre experience, since the episodes seemed strangely familiar to the various versions I had read and helped shape, but also completely new after the designers, directors, and actors had done their part. Ultimately, this has been my favourite part of the whole experience. As an academic in the Humanities, you can spend a lot of time working alone, whether that’s writing books and articles, or designing courses on your specialism. With Domina I’ve had the satisfaction of being a tiny part of something so big, the product of years of work and the combined effort of hundreds of talented individuals.
You can find Domina on IMDB.
For another perspective on working as a consultant for a production-based in ancient Rome, see Kathy Coleman’s reflections on her work on the 2000 film Gladiator: Coleman, Kathleen M. “The Pedant Goes to Hollywood: The Role of the Academic Consultant.” Gladiator: Film and History, ed. Martin M. Winkler, Blackwell, 2004, pp. 43–52.
See also: https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2001/2/28/latin-professor-who-consulted-on-pwhen/
Daisy Dunn’s BBC article on Livia and Domina: https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20210506-the-truth-behind-ancient-romes-most-controversial-woman
Rebecca Usherwood (she/her)
Rebecca is Assistant Professor in Late Antique and Early Byzantine Studies in TCD Classics
