Orange Julius Caesar

Battles B.C., Season 1, Episode 4
Caesar: Super Siege (2009)
Directed by David Padrusch
Written by David Padrusch

This one came so close to being a reasonably good account of Caesar’s siege of Alesia in the Gallic campaign that I was almost willing to overlook the other crap and the overwrought sword-swinging havoc. Almost. This episode has some of the best thought out animations and a pretty good analysis of the siege. In fact, on the tactical level it’s a pretty good episode. But that isn’t good enough for the creators of this monstrosity. They have to come up with something for the chinless morons they keep in a dungeon as their “test audience” so they come up with some of the most asinine things to describe the bigger picture of Roman politics in the Republic.

Caesar...Jeffery Odachowski (The Hugh Jackman of silent action films.)
Vercengetorix [sic]...Brian Danner
Comminus [sic]...Emmanuel Delcour
Head Roman Guy...Steven Perry (Isn’t the Head Roman Guy actually Caesar? That would make you Caesar’s #2.)
Female Villager...Kevin Moran (Those Gauls had some mannish women)

Richard A. Gabriel (Distinguished Professor, Royal Military College of Canada)
Mark Schwartz (Dept. of Anthropology, Grand Valley St. U.)
Matthew Gonzales (Assistant Professor of Classics, Saint Anselm College)
David George (Institute of Mediterranean Archaeology)

Maybe I was just itching for a fight by the time I got to Caesar, but I was just looking for places to get angry during this episode. Sure enough, it came early when Richard Gabriel spouted the idiotic statement that Caesar had no military experience.

Richard Gabriel: The interesting thing about this great general is that he had never been in the military and had absolutely no experience in combat or command at all. So why then do we regard him as a great general is a fair question to ask.

There is no amount of editing that can fix a dumb statement like that. It's just plain wrong.
Richard Gabriel should have to do an hour long show where he apologizes for making a mistake like this and where people can pelt him with banana peels and peanut shells.

The appeal of portraying Caesar as someone with no military experience is to on the one hand denigrate him as a mere politican and on the other hand to ramp up the dramatic tension for the audience because we would presume that a lack of military experience would mean trouble.
But, Gaius Julius Caesar had extensive military experience before the Gallic war. Leaving aside his legendary private war against the Cilician pirates who kidnapped him, he also led forces in a campaign in the Greek isles where he earned the Civic Crown, a rarely granted battlefield honor. Later he campaigned in Spain and in fact had earned a triumph which he decided to forego in order to stand for office as consul. So, even before he achieved his first consulship he was a successful general. Now, with the hindsight of history you’d think we’d see Caesar as the genius he was, but instead we get people who seem to retain the kind of Pompeian history that belittles Caesar’s service prior to Gaul because it seemed small by comparison to Pompey’s overrated and perhaps overblown victories.
The writers and scholars here seem bent on perpetuating the notion that Caesar was a venal grasping politician bent on dictatorship. They fail to show any nuanced understanding of the conflicts at the heart of the late Republic. It would be one thing if they just ignored all of that altogether and skipped to Gaul and gave us a tactical rendition of the battle of Alesia, but instead the little they do decide to tell is so horribly off the mark as to leave a bitter taste in my mouth as I watch the rest of this episode.

Then of course there are the backstabbing Iraqis...er, I mean the backstabbing Afghans....okay, I mean the treacherous Gauls Vercingetorix and Commius (who is called Comminus in this show for some reason) , both of whom are said here to have most likely served as Roman allied auxiliaries before they turned against the Romans. It’s hard not to see the modern lights flashing in everyone’s heads as the narrator talks about the Gauls taking the training, discipline and organization they learned by watching the Romans and then using that knowledge against them. The identification of the U.S. with Rome has been a long project in this country and when it runs up against historical moments like this the parallels become both too obvious to ignore and too obvious to completely buy. If you ever wonder why our allies never seem to do so well on their own, you have to understand the internalization of the object lessons drawn from examples like that of Vercingetorix. There’s always something that we’re holding back from them when we’re teaching them because we can never be sure when one of them will catch the Vercingetorix disease.

Then there’s the question of human rights and treatment of civilians. There is a long bit here about the women and children in Alesia and how as things took a turn they became pawns in the struggle. At first, the Gauls are quite barbarous when some of them suggest to Vercingetorix that they should eat the women and children. (And just what is the source for this story?) Vercingetorix refuses, but decides to send the women and children into no-man’s land in the hope that they will become Rome’s problem (or, maybe even be allowed to leave?). But Caesar decides that it would be better to leave them out there where their cries for help will kill morale for the defenders. Smart move. Evil move. But smart. Vercingetorix takes them back in. Now he’s truly screwed.

One last relief attempt and when that fails the siege is over. Cue the inevitable scene with Caesar in front of a green screen twirling his sword in ridiculously dramatic fashion. Seriously, do the writers even pay attention to what they’re saying. They talk about how the Roman sword wasn’t a slashing tool, but then what do they show? A bunch of slash and parry movies that fly in the face of everything they’re talking about. It’s like talking about how rifles are good for shooting people from a distance and then showing someone use it as a club to beat someone to death. And the constant shots of guys swinging two swords and whirling like dervishes? Lame.

So, all in all, a decent account of the siege of Alesia, but ignore everything said about Rome and Caesar. And David George makes a nice comparison at the end between Caesar in Gaul and Sherman's plan against Native American tribes after the Civil War. Nice graphics of the siege works and tactical moves, but once again, you just have to laugh at the swordfighting and the cartoon blood spurts as being dramatic, but in no way historical.