Rome, Episode 1.04 "Stealing from Saturn" (Review)

← Ep. 1.03
Ep. 1.05 →

Rating: 8/10

While in Rome Atia hosts a banquet in honor of Caesar into her house, Pompey sends his son Quintus to recover the gold. Meanwhile, Lucius Vorenus tries to initiate a business.

I liked this episode much more than the last two, probably mainly because we focus more on Caesar than on Pullo and Vorenus. Once again we don't see Cicero too much but, as I said, it didn't matter too much because I enjoyed Caesar playing politics along with Anthony. In this episode we descover a very important secret about Caesar:

he has epilepsy! I did not know, but according to Wikipedia is something historically documented.

Atia, my heroine, was beautiful in the role of hostess! She remained, however, very shaken by noticing that Caesar seems to still have a soft spot for Servilia, and frankly I didn't understand why she fears that might damage her (especially considering that she sleeps with Anthony, the most trusted lieutenant of Caesar!). At the end of episode we see her in a scene that, knowing the characters, seemed really strange to me:

she's crying, alone and disconsolate, and she's comforted by her son Octavian.

In this episode I really appreciate Posca, Caesar's slave: he's really invaluable, and sometimes crucial for his master, with his efficiency and competence!

As I said, we see very few of Vorenus and Pullo in this episode, and perhaps for this reason I liked the scenes concerning the two of them more thanin the other episodes. Vorenus has really decided to no longer be a soldier and tries to take a job as a civilian, while about his wife Niobe

we discover that the father of the child is her sister's husband.

After more than half episode reappeared Pullo,

who spreds gold right, left and centre, saves Vorenus from Quintus Pompey and eventually obeys him going to deliver the gold to Caesar. And so Pullo saves the great leader that was beginning to have money problems, and at the end of the episode, after having bought the favors of the chief of the augurs, Caesar gets a good omen, and so the favor of the plebs.

The title of this episode refers, I imagine, to the stolen gold that belonged to the treasury, but I'm not sure what it has to do with Saturn!