Highly entertaining + informative though lots of visual inaccuracies
Since I enjoy ancient Roman military history, I purchased this History Channel historical mini-series, ROME: RISE AND FALL OF AN EMPIRE. The History Channel puts out a lot of entertaining historical and prehistoric material that is usually available on dvd.
I can honestly admit that I was thoroughly entertained by this dvd series. Unfortunately, since I own a large number of ancient Roman military history books, I can detect obvious inaccuracies that really cause me distress.
The most obvious I will discuss here is the inaccuracy of the Roman legionary soldier uniform and armor depicted. I speculate that keeping production costs to a minimum might have been the major factor because whoever did the historical research for the mini-series would have immediately known better.
Throughout the entire 13-hour mini-series, the Roman legionaries are depicted in THE SAME UNIFORM AND ARMOUR that was standard at the time of emperors Vespasian to Trajan, circa, 69 AD to 100 AD. Even the first episode which is about the later Roman Republic period has the legionaries in this same outfit.
It's like watching the movie, "The Battle of the Bulge" where American M47 Patton tanks are used for German panther tanks. I just want to yell out loud...more, I want to contact the producers and scold them for treating the public viewers as idiots.
Just as the uniforms and weapons of the U.S. Army changed and evolved over the space of 200 years, the same was very true of the Roman army over the period of 500 years. The helmets, the armour, and the weapons, while remaining at the same technological sword and spear stage, did significantly change in design, materials, type, pattern, everything. The Roman legionary of 100 B.C. looked radically different that his 100 A.D. counterpart. And the Roman legionary of 350 A.D. looked nothing like his 100 A.D. predecessor.
Try to understand one thing. If you're the kind of person who's going to spend the money and time to watch this dvd series, then it can be presumed that you already know something about ancient history, especially Roman history. So you would immediately detect the discrepancies.
P.S., In the episode, 'Invasion of Britain', pretty, youthful Brigantes queen Cartamandua is married to what looks to be some white-haired, white-bearded 50-year old guy. Can that be true? Why would she do something like that?