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Ancients behaving badly

• Message 1. 

  Posted by TonyG (U1830405) on Wednesday, 2nd February 2011

  I am sure most people who requent this board will share my scepticism about the value of some TV documentaries but I have to say that "Ancients Behaving Badly" is one of the poorest series I have ever seen. After watching the first three I have decided to give the rest a miss.
  
  Not only does the programme try to evaluate characters from two thousand years ago in modern terms but they do seem to treat our ancestors as if they were extremely stupid. Also, some of the anecdotes they present are related out of context.
  
  The programme on Hannibal particularly annoyed me becaus eof the following points:
  
  They wheeled out experts who gave the impression that tophets are clear evidence of child sacrifice in Carthage, therefore Hannibal must have been a murderous character.
  
  They recounted how he hurled pots filled with snakes at his enemies, giving the impression he did this against Rome, which was not the case.
  
  They then claimed that because his army was from Africa, they would have worn thin clothing when crossing the Alps. Perhaps they did but it struck me as a sweeping generalisation which assumed that the men were so stupid they did not know to wear extra clothing in cold weather.
  
  They cited his use of elephants at Zama as clear evidence of his stubborn refusal to abandon an outmoded form of warfare without mentioning that he only actually used elephants in battle once during his eighteen years in Italy and that, buy the time of Zama the Numidian cavalry had deserted to Rome, leaving him with no choice but to use elephants as he had few horses available.
  
  The Cleopatra programme recreated the episode of the queen hidng insode a rolel dcarpet to meet Caesar, The experiment concladed that she could not have done this because of the daytime temperature inside a rolled carpet. There was no suggestion that the Egyptians might have realised this and done the deed at night, when temperatures are much lower.
  
  Sorry for the rant but, for me, this series epitomises all that is bad in TV history documentaries. Am I being too harsh?
  
  Tony.

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• Message 2

  , in reply to message 1.

  Posted by an ex-nordmann - it has ceased to exist (U3472955) on Wednesday, 2nd February 2011

  Hi Tony
  
  The name of the series is rather silly, though it complements the equally silly "psychiatric evaluation" part of each programme.
  
  They fared better with Attila, I thought, though mainly because their over reliance on the factual data presented by contemporary sources, which in Attila's case are generally agreed to be dependable if biased, did not betray them when constructing a biographical narrative. They also acknowledged at the outset that these sources were biased from a Roman point of view, which was commendable, even if they then pursued their narrative without seriously questioning the sources or their bias further. Two notable exceptions were a refuting of the traditional account of his meeting the pope, which they presented accurately as propaganda, and also a stab at puncturing Roman claims regarding the size of Attila's forces which defeated their army outside Constantinople, even if the use of the "science of animal husbandry" wasn't exactly the sturdiest basis on which to build a refutation, I thought.
  
  However they then undid that good work by presenting Attila's defeat at Catalaunum as his first (he had experienced an even greater defeat by the Sassanids before he became a threat to Rome), and they completely avoided Attila's political role in the Frankish ascendancy issue which proved to be the catalyst for what ensued in the Western Empire. This allowed Aetius to be portrayed as simply the capable Roman general who defeated a "psychopathic" invader, and not as someone who already had a long-standing political and military relationship with Attila, sometimes even on the same side.
  
  The weakest part of the whole programme was the final evaluation of his psychological profile, a completely unnecessary exercise given that it was performed by a psychologist who appeared not to be au fait with the historical data as opposed to the propagandistic data concerning the character, or even all the data which the programme itself had presented.
  
  But if I had never heard of Attila, I thought it would have been as good an introduction to the character as one could expect from this type of programme, with enough hints that there was actually more to the person than they had covered in forty minutes or so. All in all a programme worth watching.
  
  The Caligula programme, on the other hand, had nothing to commend it. Their slavish belief in propagandistic detail let them down badly in his case and one was left with the notion that they had shied away from a properly researched and rounded portrayal of the man in order to sensationalise him. Totally pointless as an historical portrayal, in other words.

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