And so the brilliant HBO series Rome has come to a final conclusion with Octavian's triumph. (Season one is now available on DVD and should be on everyone's buy list.) I shall miss it. Television of this caliber is so very rare.
I don't buy the effort to turn Octavian into a villain. The Republican constitution had broken down, as almost a century of civil war proved. As Russell Kirk observed, "a just government maintains a healthy tension between the claims of authority and the claims of liberty." In the late Republic, the balance between order and liberty had failed. Rome required order if it were to survive, which the Augustan constitution provided for over 400 years.
I commend to you Werner Eck's outstanding The Age of Augustus.
In any case, Rome the series ended well. And now on to the final episodes of The Sopranos.
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