Rome “Heroes Of The Republic”

In this episode of Rome, Agrippa finds Octavia high and at an orgy before the fun stuff really got started, so he scooped her up and carried her home.  Atia is a bit angry at both of them, mostly Octavia, but then she thinks Agrippa would tell his friend and Octavia’s brother Octavian about what was up, and Agrippa swears he won’t because he’s in love with Octavia.  That news silences Atia and has a somewhat touching effect on Octavia.

So much so that neither of them bother to ask why Agrippa was also at the orgy.

If there’s a theme to this episode, it may be that sometimes children don’t like their parents very much.  Octavia tries to get her brother and her mother to kiss and make up.  Considering the last time those two saw each other, a furious Marc Antony was beating a much smaller Octavian for mouthing off, Octavian blames Atia for, as he sees it, letting or having Antony smack him around.  And though Atia gives one of her patented insincere apologies, the person Octavian truly bothers is Cicero.  He gets Cicero to name him Consul, promising to make no moves without consulting Cicero first…then goes and does the opposite by making a motion to declare Brutus and Cassius murderers and traitors for the whole “killing Caesar” thing, and when the Senate seems hesitant, has a couple soldiers come in and draw swords to, you know, strongly encourage compliance.

That just encourages Cicero to send Brutus a letter on the sly encouraging him to come back to Rome.  Seeing as how Brutus may have as many as twenty Legions to Octavian’s four and Marc Antony’s seven, and Brutus figures those two hate each other more than anything else, sweeping in should be a piece of proverbial cake.

I mean, Antony is far from dead in the mountains, it turns out.  The Senate sent Lepidus out with a Legion or two of his own to bring in Antony, and every last one of Lepidus’ soldiers defected to Antony.  Lepidus did too, though he even knew it wasn’t like he had a choice by that point.

But, see, Octavian is something of a cold pragmatist, so seeing more Legions than he could hope to gather without resorting to inexperienced troops, he does the one thing Brutus and Cassius do not foresee, namely forge an alliance with Antony against a common foe.  Maybe there is someone out there that Octavian and Antony hate more than each other…

Meanwhile, Vorenus beings his children home and utterly fails to notice they hate his guts.  Why?  Could it be the way he cursed them during a fit of anger when they found Niobe’s corpse?  The fact they barely knew him as it is?  The way he announced who they were and what had happened to them to the assembled low lives when Vorenus goes to reclaim his, well, mob boss position?  No, wait, it’s because they think he killed Niobe.  His older daughter tells her Aunt Lyde, now some sort of Roman nun, that she thinks her father is an evil man.  Lyde may or may not like Vorenus, but she does recognize that the kids have nowhere to go and quite accurately points out that Vorenus just wants some love and forgiveness, so hiding their true feelings should be a piece of cake.

As for Pullo, he just has to reassure Eirene that he does love her more than his best friend.