Word: romanizing
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...foreign. Pope Benedict XVI has shown himself sure-footed on the home front, with clear ideas for streamlining the Vatican hierarchy and affirming traditional doctrine among the faithful. The former German theology professor was on pretty familiar turf last week when preaching to hundreds of thousands of young Roman Catholics gathered for World Youth Day in Cologne. "Only from God does true revolution come," the Pope told a Saturday night prayer vigil. "It's not ideologies that save the world, but a return to the living God." But Benedict's first trip abroad was also a reminder that...
...Wojtyla was much more the Polish Pope than Ratzinger is a German Pope." John Paul was also of course a globetrotter. And perhaps after more than 20 years as a top Vatican official-and 24 hours of his first foreign trip-Benedict seems destined to be very much a Roman Pope...
...Kevin McKidd) and Titus Pullo (Ray Stevenson), two lower-class soldiers in Caesar's 13th Legion. This plebeian odd couple--Pullo's a rogue, Vorenus a by-the-book prig--offer grounding and some nicely turned comic relief, as when Pullo, jailed for disobeying an order, petitions Forculus, a Roman god of doors. "I will kill for you a fine white lamb," he promises. "Or failing that--if I couldn't get a good one at a decent price--then six pigeons." But the scripts resort to contrivance and coincidence to keep the pair at the center of events...
What we want most from Roman drama is good old pagan decadence, and Rome hears our prayers. There are bloody rituals, lewd pantomimes and a show-stealing turn by Polly Walker as Atia, Caesar's scheming niece; with her flaming red hair and willingness to trade sex for power, she's like a Latin version of The O.C.'s villain Julie Cooper. The series humanizes figures we know as marble busts: Caesar is a calculating pol, Mark Antony (James Purefoy) a narcissistic ass and Octavian (Max Pirkis)--Atia's son and the future Caesar Augustus--a precocious boy with...
...western. At heart, it is largely a history-book story with familiar themes, enacted by regal men with British accents. One has to wonder what HBO would have had if it had let Deadwood creator David Milch do the more unusual series he once proposed: a drama about ancient Roman city cops...