Talk:How Titus Pullo Brought Down the Republic

message: While this edit has a lot to recommend it - especially the info box, great addition! - it also causes a lot of problems.
You've gone and ripped out sections that weren't used in this write up (and said the reason is of course) yet, but are used in other episode write ups - so either you've gone and broken the consistent formatting from episode to episode to episode, or you plan on deleting information in those episodes.
Both approaches are a bad idea. I'd recommend putting those sections back in.
Beowulf314159 04:09, 24 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Great Ideas/Big Problems

message: Ok - rather than just complaining about the problems, I've tried to do something constructive to merge what I think are the good parts of both approaches. See The Stolen Eagle
It preserves the information, makes the section titles more relevant, cuts down on the wordiness, tries to put sections that are likely to have more general appeal nearer the top, and uses that excellent episode box.
I've also done a minor edit to the episode box - just aligned the titles in the left column with the top of their cells. I did this because when I added the episode box to The Stolen Eagle, the  setting information runs on for several lines and made the title look odd. It doesn't change anything in the look of How Titus Pullo Brought Down the Republic.
Beowulf314159 05:22, 24 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Compromise

message: I wonder if it might be better for these articles to not have it be a list of historical inaccuracies, but rather a discussion of the historical accuracy and inaccuracy.  We know a great deal about the actual circumstances of Caesar's being condemned as a traitor, and the negotiations, and all that.  The way it is described in this episode is partially accurate, and partially inaccurate.  Historical figures who were involved (Cassius and especially Curio) have been left out and all their role given to Antony.  Caesar's offer to disband his armies if Pompey would disband his is left out.  The whole complicated plot to pass a resolution condemning Caesar, but then have Antony veto it, is entirely made up by the writers, as far as I can tell, as is the way this supposedly fails.  The consuls of 49 BC are ignored, when it was they who actually rejected Caesar's deal, not Pompey.  Cicero is made the leader of a mostly mythical "moderate" faction.  In the first episode, similarly, there's a lot of conflation of time - Julia died in 54 BC, and that was the point when Caesar tried to marry Octavia to Pompey; Alesia fell in 52 BC, and the end of the episode seems to be in 50 BC, with Caesar wintering in Cisalpine Gaul.  Also, the name of Octavia's first husband is changed from Gaius Claudius Marcellus to "Glabius" It seems to me that the only way to justify having articles on individual episodes of this show is if we make an effort to really get into the nitty gritty of the details, to compare the narrative in the show to that given by Appian and other historians and to try to explain what is correct and what is not.  (I'm personally not particularly bothered by most of the departures from history - it's really no worse than most historical re-enactments, but if we're going to do this, it seems like we should do it right. john k 15:13, 26 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Historical Inaccuracy