Fact or Fiction II
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Synopsis
Tony Robinson sifts the facts from the fiction in the first of a four-part series that chronicles the lives of three legendary Roman Emperors; Julius Caesar, Caligula and Nero.

Episode 1 - Julius Caeser (1): On 15th March 44BC a murder took place that changed the face of western civilisation. The victim was Julius Caesar, betrayed by his friends and stabbed to death by 23 assassins. Caesar is one of the monumental figures of history: a man who forged the role of Emperor. He was enormously popular in Rome, worshipped as a brilliant general and reformer, and yet he was also hated enough to be killed by the people who knew him best. Why? To answer the riddle, Tony Robinson travels to Rome, Egypt, Greece, France and beyond to investigate the epic life and death of the man he calls "one of the most complex, driven people in the whole of human history". Episode 2 - Julius Caesar (2): Tony concludes his 2,000-mile quest to chronicle the definitive history of Caesar, exploring how he became so powerful that he was responsible for the demise of Rome's centuries-old system of democracy, becoming the first in a long line of Emperors, as well as forcing sweeping changes through the Senate, everything from reducing unemployment to inventing July. The programme chronicles Caesar's great military victories, in particular his five-year-long civil war with his great rival Pompey, who he hounded mercilessly to his eventual death in Alexandria, where Caesar met the charming Cleopatra… Tony examines Caesar's famous relationship with the Egyptian Queen and follows in the Emperor's footsteps on the Ides of March, 44BC, finding out whether William Shakespeare's assertion that he died on the steps of the Senate uttering the legendary words "Et tu Brute?" is fact or fiction. Episode 3 - Caligula: In the third of this four-part series, presenter Tony Robinson paints a more complex picture of emperor Caligula than the popular image of an increasingly outrageous, power-mad tyrant. Sadistic, vain, brutal, yes - but was Caligula truly mad? Overseeing an imperial court awash with paranoia, violence and betrayal, Caligula commanded respect, but never loyalty. It took a series of campaigns against the Barbarians north of the Rhine to get the army on his side and, having won their hearts and minds, he quickly made plans for an invasion of Britain. It's with this aborted campaign that one of the great Caligula legends was born: on the beach of Boulogne he ordered his troops to collect as many sea shells as they could carry back to Rome, before turning around and heading back for home. Rather than an act of bizarre eccentricity, Robinson sees Caligula's actions as a way of humiliating a legion of men too nervous to cross the Channel (then seen as the edge of the world); perhaps even his way of facing down a potential mutiny. Claiming to be a god however, was a different matter and, when he began to poke fun at the head of the Praetorian Guard's effeminate voice, the emperor's days were numbered. Episode 4 - Nero: In the final part of his series, Tony Robinson looks at the most infamous of all the emperors: Nero. A well-connected childhood (Caligula was his uncle), Nero came to power at just 16 years old, and the new emperor was treated like a rock star; a glamorous, young figure cutting a dash through his court. But away from the adulation, his life had taken on all the elements of an OTT soap opera. His mother was found murdered after a rift over a mistress - power was steadily starting to corrupt him, absolutely. As Robinson explains, the great image of Nero, fiddling while Rome burns, was set in motion by resentment following the emperor's decision to impose a fire tax, part of his rebuilding programme after the great fire that destroyed the city. As unrest grew, he looked for a scapegoat, settling on the burgeoning Christian sect. Things came to a head when he set off on an artistic tour of Greece, a folly which appall

Duration
5 x 50'
Definition
SD
Genre
History
Subgenre
Factual
Producer
SPIRE FILMS