The Flatland Digital Artwork Clip Art Gallery

Marcus Tullius Cicero (Inspired by the HBO series "Rome.")

Finally---last one for tonight, anyway---an overdue tribute to the Cicero character, played by David Bamber.  We all knew how that was going to end, right down to the hands nailed to the Senate door, and the writers of the show weren't big fans of the great orator.  Hard to believe he was quite so weaselly as they'd have us believe, and I certainly always admired the man, so.   This site, from the University of Texas at Austin, has the real scoop, plus some of his speeches.  Otherwise, this site has translations.   

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Posca (Inspired by the HBO Series Rome).

Maybe he's just a freedman, but Posca's been the sidekick of both Julius Caesar and Mark Antony, and now he's got his freedom and a hot young bride.  When all the bodies are cleared away, I'm betting on Posca and the hapless Jocasta to still be standing. 

I made this image in his honor:  a design in midnight blue fabric embroidered with golden thread, with a design in copper in gold embroidered "butterflies" on a white background.  The image is set against "stone" in similar colors.  He deserves something a bit special. 

Cleopatra 2 (Inspired by the HBO series, Rome).

If she dissolved pearls in her wine as reputed, I imagine that the Rome version of Cleopatra would enjoy this peculiar blue green one, set in a star made from teal-tinted metal, set with aquamarines (or the nearest equivalent).  The color cyan would become her well.  I don't hate the character anymore, by which "any more than I hate all the ones who haven't died yet," except perhaps for Atia and Mark Antony and Macaenus, who are evil but funny, and Agrippa, who you have to love for once playing a hobbit, and poor Octavia.  Now that the Junii (I always pull for the underdogs) Servilia and Brutus are no more, and Cicero's hands are nailed to the Senate door, and  Octavian has grown up into a strange cold shell of himself, and Pullo killed my favorite villain, there's nothing much for me to do except cheer on the inevitable decline and fall except for everyone but Octavian/Augustus and the evil, evil Livia. 

I'm not sad anymore that the show has been cancelled because when it's over, nobody much is going to be left.  I'm guessing that Livia is going to find a quick and expedient solution to her mother-in-law problems.  But that's about it.   Well, Posca.  Yes, definitely Posca. 

 

Livia (Inspired by the HBO series, Rome).

   

Wow, she's just the daugher-in-law Servilia ("Atia of the Julii:  I call for justice!") would have picked for Atia.   And of course we know about her marriage to Octavian (v. 2).

In her honor:  a crimson jewel with mottling in darker shades of wine red and softer shades of cold, cold rose, surrounded by a circlet or coronet of gemlike jewels in dark red against a background in a certain silvery, decadent rose.  The whole is framed in pure, cold shades of teal. 

Memmio (Inspired by the HBO Series, Rome).

Even if you don't watch Rome, you might like this digital tile if you like macho effects:  bands in snakeskin in brown, bronze, and copper in a copper frame.  It makes a really good background.  Which is where Memmio (Daniel Cerqueira) ought to have remained, I guess. 

I knew Memmio's days were numbered when Pullo remarked to Vorenus that Memmio was "too smooth by half," but I'm sorry:  I just really, really liked listening to him talk.  The actor is pretty hot anyway, but best of all was that deep resonant yet nasal estuary sort of thing he had going on whenever he said things like, "Vorenus is right."

He was sort of a Costa Brava Bazza of the bronze age, a hard man who simply wasn't quite homicidal enough, and who underestimated severely just how homicidal Pullo can be.  So even though I felt sorry for Pullo, and knew that Memmio totally shouldn't have made off with that gold, I'm still pissed off at the way it ended.   That's one sexy accent we won't be hearing again.  Sigh.  And M. Giant's episode recap at Television without Pity indicates I'm not the only one who will miss hearing him talk.

I don't think I'll forgive Pullo for THAT one. 

Marcus Junius Brutus 2 (Requiem).

I liked the handling of the Brutus character in HBO's Rome a lot, particularly his evolution---which I'd have liked to see more of, frankly---from bratty English public school boy to....well, to Brutus.  After all, he was in the right, wasn't he?  Wasn't he?  After all, Augustus seems to have spawned some remarkably depraved rulers, starting with Tiberius.

I was surprised that the show let his suicide at Philippi be presented in the manner in which it was shown.  After telling his troops to save their skins, he marches in solitary determination to meet the troops of Octavian/Mark Antony (and Lepidus).  He commits the Roman equivalent of "suicide by cop"----slashing at the bemused soldiers with his sword till they have no choice but to stab him from all sides.  Thus he dies very much in the manner of Caesar.  Also nobly, since he first calmly thanks his men---it was an honor and a pleasure to have commanded them, says the former snob----and then calmly faces his death. 

Then Mark Antony has Brutus's head cut off to take home to Atia.  "People appreciate these little touches," he remarks in a business-like tone.   I count on Servilia to even up the score a bit.  Well, we know things don't end well for Antony. 

This is a somber piece, with a lot of black and some scattered images like fallen and broken shields.  The colors are black, charcoal, with touches of metallic brass in a particularly lusterless shade. 

The NEW Octavian ("Octavian V.2").

Re: HBO's Rome.  They evidently don't have the technology to artificially age Max Pirkis because now some other guy--Simon Woods--- is playing the part of Octavian.  The voice is right, but otherwise....not so much.  The LEAST they could have done was give him a perm.  That would have helped.   As it is, every time I see him, I think, "Who?" and then when he speaks, ".....oh."  I'm not complaining about "Mr. Bingley," who is very good; I just really, really liked Max Pirkis. 

From M. Giant's stellar recaps at Television without Pity (TWoP), this gem:

[quote begins[

Antony's troops stand assembled in his camp. The man himself comes out of his tent, draped in furs over his armor, to see Octavian on horseback. The younger man dismounts, and they stand there facing each other for a long moment, neither saying a word. We're supposed to think that they're about to throw down. Given Antony's new beard and Octavian's new portrayer, I wonder if they're both going to say "Who the fuck are you?"

Then, at the exact same time, each reaches for the other's hand and they embrace like brothers. Over one another's shoulders, Octavian swallows his bile, and Antony smirks the smirk of a man who just won an ally he plans to kill the second he no longer needs him.

[quote ends]

At any rate, the owlish little boy has evolved into something glossy and hard, who (and of course we knew this was coming) can order the murder---MURDER---of Brutus and poor  old Cicero, so I don't like him much anymore. I have really been pro-Junii all along, it turns out. 

Eirene.

As anyone who follows the HBO series Rome knows, Eirene is the slave girl rescued, then freed, then married, by dear old Titus Pullo. A freedwoman needs her baubles too.  This clay bead has an antique, rather crude appearance, that nevertheless looks as if it would well become the wife of Titus Pullo.  This one's for you, Eirene!

 

Julius Caesar 2.

Another addition to my Rome-inspired series of graphics; a second image for poor old JC.  The metallic aubergine/purple and coppery gold images in the design remind me of shields and helmets.

Octavian 2: Augustus.

   

Max Pirkis plays the young Octavian so perfectly in Rome:  soft-spoken, measured, as calculating as a little abacus, and yet (in a Roman way) kind-hearted, sort of.  Except when truly backed against the wall (e.g., by the Gauls who abduct him and later Mark Antony), he almost always remains in control of his temper, and you could tell he felt bad afterward about what he and Pullo did to Niobe's brother-in-law.

In real life, he grows up to be Rome's first and greatest emperor, Caesar Augustus.  One does question his parenting skills, considering the things his progeny got up to, but never mind:  by Roman standards, he was the best they had.   

This is the same image as before reconfigured as a shining globe.  The purple chains are meant to resemble the wreath of laurels and the tessellated design might now be seen as carved jade.  Did the Romans know about jade?  On the DVD for the first series of the show, someone---the director or the writer---mentions that Caesar wore silks from China. 

At any rate, these cyan-tinted stones with purple tones seemed right for young Octavian, bless him.