Blood, guts, gore and Anthony Hopkins … this swords-and-sandals extravaganza may only be historically accurate-ish, but it’s the best ancient Rome to ever grace our screens
When they do eventually invent time machines, it’s ancient Rome that’s going to be booked solid for months as a destination. Sure, a lot of the people who are “saving to go to Tokyo” at the moment will go to feudal Japan and bring back a load of hand-crafted armour, but they will be in the minority. Some people will simply use it to go back to London in the 90s and watch an episode of The Big Breakfast being filmed before having sex with Robbie Williams. I’ll drag my girlfriend to Victorian Whitechapel – “No, it’s good! They have trains, and smog! We can wear grey clothes and solve that murder!” – and the whole trip will be so underwhelming I’ll have to take us on a big expensive fortnight in 60s New York as penance.
But, fundamentally, when time travel is invented your WhatsApp is going to be pinging with newly formed groups called “Ancient Rome trip”. You’re going to have to free up thousands of pounds for travel and a few gold coins for accommodation and the wine kitty. Every stag do for the rest of time will be to see bloodsports at the Colosseum, before watching a sculptor make an emperor’s marble bust. You’ll be stood next to someone’s mostly-silent friend-from-uni for an entire long weekend before Christ was born, and the only thing he’ll say to you is, “Mad how they’ve got underfloor heating, isn’t it? We haven’t even got that in the flat.”
