Before the opening credits on the Discovery Channel's* latest attempt at repackaging the hackneyed and the obvious as new and starting, "Who Killed Julius Caesar?" even started to roll, my father asked the best question of all:
Who the hell cares about a murder that happened 2000 years ago?
Well, unfortunately, I do. And so do lots of other people, apparently, or Discovery Networks and all of its ilk would not continue making this kind of dubious crap and calling it documentaries, nor would its tame stable of so-called critics keep praising it in tidy, blurb-ready sound bites.
As the tone of the above might indicate, I was not, perhaps, in the most receptive of moods to take in such fare late of a Sunday night, but I am a sucker for all things ancient, and hadn't the Discovery-owned History Channel done a pretty good two-parter on the Spartans a while back (superior to the PBS show on the Greeks several years ago that never even mentioned the battle of Thermopylae! To put this in perspective for non-classics nerds, this would be like doing an in-depth series on America during World War II without mentioning Pearl Harbor or the Battle of Midway, or one on the space program without discussing the Apollo 11 mission, a hilarious, glaring oversight upon which not enough derision could ever be heaped in 300 lifetimes – one for each of the Spartans who fell there)?
Plus, well, like pretty much everyone else in North America, I'm also a fan of CSI, and get off ever so slightly on watching high tech gadgets employed to tease out the tiniest clues.
Such was the promise of "Who Killed Julius Caesar?," the opening act of which strongly suggested that the version of this famous death we all cherished from paging through our Plutarch, leafing through our Livy, shuffling through our Shakespeare, was going to be proven wholly wrong, or at least inaccurate or incomplete, using modern methods and models unavailable to previous investigators.
Such was the promise, but the delivery, while entertaining, fell quite a bit short.
What unfolded before viewers through an otherwise perfectly good hour was an Italian law enforcement bureaucrat who figured he knew better than Suetonius, et all, and was damned well going to prove it, even though the scene of the crime had been obliterated, the body was 2000 years gone to dust and ashes, the culprits beyond the reach of the law, even the language of the drama largely dead. Said bureaucrat spends a lot of time riding around in the backseat of an official car (and we complain about our tax dollars at work! But then again, we've never knowingly had a porn star making policy either. Trade offs, trade offs...), shuttling around modern Rome, reenacting the murder to determine how many people could have actually accounted for the documented 23 stab wounds, and interviewing a neuroscientist with either a strange pan-European accent or a daunting, Sister Wendy-caliber speech impediment or both about exactly what kind of epilepsy poor old Julius actually did have.
Article comments
— go to most recent comments1 - Erin
i think it's intresting, hey i mean lots of people aren't even trying to figure out when- or who the first person killed in the bostn masscre was, wait- i'm wrong well bye!
2 - stepahnie
i love the way you put your words together you really make sense
3 - jaco
who was caesar
4 - Gregory
Who killed Caeser First?
5 - Victor Lana
Kate,
I've always blamed Calpurnia. She had her premonitions, and she knew what the Soothsayer said. She should have done something more to keep Julius home that day. Maybe breakfast in bed? A massage?
PS> Oh, and Mary Lincoln is as guilty as Booth in old Abe's death. She just had to go to the theatre all the time and Abe just wanted to sit home and watch CNN.
6 - retard
wat a load of rubbish im bored
7 - binlarden
kill tony blair
8 - Bryson
Whats up dudes!
9 - Interesting
I watched the "Who Killed Julius Caesar?" episode and was facinated. Sure it was slightly hokey, but facinating none the less.
My mom and I had an intense argument over whether Chaucer was middle English (says I), or whether it was old English (says she). I knew I was right and defended myself to the end. My dad came in and asked what we were arguing about and when we told him he replied, "Who gives a sh@!"
It is the same with this show. No one really knows for sure what motivated Caesar, but it definitely adds to the discussion. It certainly is plausible, given what we know about him. Remember, people haven't changed much over the course of time. Some people will do anything to become famous.
10 - Jacky
Who killed caesar!!!? MY project is due!!!
11 - Dake
I don't understand!?
12 - lucy
please just tell me who killed caesar i dont care to read about the book i need to know!i have home work you know and its a test!i need help and this is just wasting my time giving comments to evry one so good bye!
13 - gonzo marx
lucy....the butler did it
good luck on your test
heh
Excelsior?
14 - duane
I blame MTV. Yeah, for almost everything, including the death of Caesar.
15 - Daisy
This boring!!!!!!! it shound have more information because it does not tell u who killed him!!!!
16 - Georgia
Can somebody tell me who killed him!
17 - Gem
WHAT!I ONLY WANTED TO KNOW WHO KILLED HIM!AND WHAT THE CITIZENS THOUGHT!MY HOMEWORKS FOR TOMMOROW U KNOW!I DONT GET IT WHAT R U TRYING TO SAY?BECAUSE UV CONFUSED ME!
18 - Dean
That was brillent!You gave all the right information I needed and I think the words all fit perfect together.You are brillent!
I LOVE YOU!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
19 - Sweet Attack
You want to know who killed Julius Caesar? It was his friends, the Roman Senate, and his best friend, Brutus.
20 - lauren
you kneed to have this web site so that i can fid the info without putting much thought in ti it
21 - ashley
this web sit sycks
22 - El Bicho
"this web sit sycks"
so does your spelling.
23 - The village idiot
Mr Mustard killed Caesar in the parlor. Seeking revenge Jimmy Hoffa shot Mr Mustard as he sat on the toilet reading the New York Times. Hoffa is buried in my backyard. Feel free to dig him up.
24 - Cynthia
How killed him.This was a waste of time.
25 - Cynthia
Sorry who killed him. This was a waste of time