Jerry Toner refers in his book Sixty Millions of Romans:The Culture of the People in Ancient Rome (Crítica, 2012) that laughter was probably the trait that marked the spirit of leisure of the «non-elite»:it was the weapon at hand to mock the pretensions (and exclusions) of «official» culture. Caesar could not help but listen with disgust to the songs of his soldiers during his triumph in the summer of 46 BC. C., in which they "advised" the inhabitants of Rome to guard their women because "we bring you the bald adulterer; in Gaul you spent the gold you borrowed here on whores” (Suetonius, Life of the divine Julius Caesar , 51). In just a couple of sentences the soldiers, who had done so much for Caesar and to whom he had given so much, got involved with his propensity for skirts, his debts and his baldness; Probably the latter annoyed him more, and he was more grateful for few of the honors he received in his last year and a half of life than the laurel crown that he could wear permanently, as it could cover his more than prominent receding hairline.
Similarly, Manio Sempronio Galba (Julián López) can't help but wince when his cousin Silvio (Javier Botet) reveals his flaws to the soldiery who had hitherto had cheered towards the end of the second episode of Just Before Christ (Movistar +):"Well, he doesn't fuck and in the middle of the ceremony he removes his testicles and says:" look, Rómulo and Remo "", to the horror of those who listen to him. The Romans of the time of Plautus who had "seen" this comedy would have laughed for a good while, especially when they contemplated poor Silvio, mortally wounded, recounting for hours the vices of the "useless" Manius. "And another day that... maybe it's better not to say that, maybe it's too much," he says at the end, provoking the disgust of the "audience" of soldiers, tribunes and the general of the legion himself, who heard everything he said about someone who was now sinking in shame. Precisely that shame is what those Romans would have laughed the most.
Just before Christ , a very current Roman series
Just before Christ , a series created by Juan Maidagán and Pepón Montero – the same people who wrote the first season of the highly acclaimed sitcom Camera Café (Telecinco, 2005-2009), which already gives an idea of the tone of the series that we are commenting on here–, takes us to a comic universe that the Romans of the time of Plautus and Terence would have recognized quite easily, and that they would also have laughed. And it is that there are not a few elements of this series that drink from or seem to be inspired by the comedies of both authors:braggart soldiers like Gabinio (Manolo Solo), slaves smarter than their master like Agorastocles (Xosé Touriñán) –and their name evokes to that of Plautus' characters, on the path of "his" Pseudolus, Palestrión, Escéledro or Stróbilo–, eunuchs "echaos pa'alante" like Corbulón (Aníbal Gómez),[1] young people from good families without any talent or desire to do nothing like Manio himself (a real "nini" of the time), erotomaniac generals like Gnaeus Valerio Aquila (César Sarachu), who also does not know how many soldiers make up a cohort, or "independent" women like the general's daughter, Valeria (Cecilia Freire), who without thinking twice "charges" her daughter's fiancé and her father, would not have been out of tune in the Rome of that 31 B.C. in which the action takes place. Terence himself would have written a comedy with these characters.
Manius Sempronius Galba [2] he is sentenced to death for an act of high treason committed by the so-called "Group of Seven". Unlike his fellow criminals, Manio finds himself unable to commit suicide ("I can't, mother, it's just that when I wake up I have a cup of hemlock..."), he prefers to accept military service as a common legionnaire in Thrace (he won't realize until the 5th episode that he was sent to this region, the same one in which his father, nicknamed "The Magnificent" made a name for himself as a soldier). In the Roman camp to which he is sent, and where the soldiers have not "come out of maneuvers" for seven years, Manio will turn the tranquility of its residents upside down, causing a war with the "barbarians" shortly after arriving. Honor, a very "Roman" concept, is used by Manius in the first episode to inflame some bored troops and a "general staff" who are suspicious of the newcomer's adventures; an honor that he had not been able to defend by committing suicide at the beginning of the first chapter ("there are a thousand ways to regain honor, that is what my mother does not understand:that there are more things in life apart from committing suicide," he told him). tells Agorastocles), but when he finds himself in the position of being punished for "losing" the corpse of a barbarian, he does not hesitate to bring it to the fore with (a lot of) opportunism:
Your harangue will reach such a point that in the end only the soldiers shout "Rome! Rome! Rome!', but even General Gnaeus Valerius and his staff They end up yelling the same thing. Result:the barbarians declare war.
Classic and modern references
The series satirises, among other aspects, Roman military life, more in the style of Camera Café or even from La hora chanante than from the series M*A*S*H (CBS:1972-1983) in which the creators claim to have been inspired, starting with a general, Gnaeus Valerio, who hardly knows what it is to behave as such ("ah, hasn't he gotten up? But I shit on the wolf , if you declare a war you can't get up at twelve", protests the tribune Gabinius in the 2nd episode) and that he doesn't feel capable of doing his job ("I don't know where to start or what to say to the tribunes. it's scary that they realize I don't know what I'm doing"; 4th episode). That none of the officers is able to carry out negotiations with the Thracian "barbarians" in the 3rd episode, while, instead, at the end of the 5th it is the women who do things as Jupiter commands, it turns out very funny :
The contrast with the "lost patrol" in the 4th episode, after a debacle against the Thracians, and the panic caused by Manius among the soldiers (and officers) to the cry of «The barbarians are coming, the barbarians are coming!») is hilarious:all hidden inside a store and it turns out that the «barbarian» is a merchant who comes with his products, an idea that refers to the concept of « permeable border.”[3] Already at the beginning of the chapter the officers comment on the defeat, without Gnaeus Valerio knowing:
The patrol isn't doing very well either, being the slave Agorastocles who ends up leading them, which embarrasses Manio and provokes the anger of Bitinio (Arturo Valls), a freedman who has enlisted and who does not stop criticizing Spartacus:«Well, what I told you. I am a freedman, I have been a slave for twenty years. And to much honor, huh? (…) Have you heard of Spartacus? Look, I don't like to speak ill of the dead, but, Spartacus, often…». Later he goes on erre que erre:«And the moment you take up arms you already lose your mind. That's why I tell you that Spartacus... That we slaves have our complaints, like every son of a neighbor, but there are some channels». Not even the centurion Antoninus (Eduardo Antuña) is able to guide those lost soldiers or give him anything to eat:the only edible food is found by Agorastocles, except for a mushroom that Manius finds and Bithynium eats; As expected, the mushroom is poisonous and Bithynio dies during the night.
The reversal of roles and the use of the misunderstandings that this produces, very typical elements of the Plautian comedy, were aspects that the Romans of the "non-elite" celebrated and used to mock the ruling classes.[4] In Just before Christ the inversion is constant:the uselessness of Manius – who, in the 3rd episode and without knowing it, sinks the peace negotiations that take place in a Thracian rural house – in the face of the push (and common sense) of his slave Agorastocles; the inability of General Gnaeus Valerio, who does not know that a civil war is taking place (Octavio's against Marco Antonio), and his apathetic tribunes in the face of the decision of the women (considered "inferior"), who, with Valeria at the head , are in charge of preparing the order of battle at the beginning of the 6th episode after having drugged the general ("admirable, a concrete, simple and very detailed plan. You have even calculated the casualties", the tribune Atilio will tell him, without knowing that Gnaeus Valerius has done nothing).[5]
"Professional" soldiers do not know "where" they are or "what" they should do, which adds sauce to a series of constant misunderstandings (very Plautus, we said), which they end up infecting Octavian's legate, Marcus Cornelius Piso, "the nicest general in Rome," who goes to the camp in Thrace to meet Gnaeus Valerius; When Valeria tells her father that Cornelio Pisón has leprosy, in order to prevent the interview from taking place (and the whole cake is uncovered), he will receive his father's contempt when he finds him in the middle of the camp (“Fuck, what a disgust!"). All the security that Piso had when he arrived at the camp will go to waste, at the same time as his «comradeship» with the soldiery,[6] and he will not stop lamenting why Gnaeus Valerius despises him:«He told me that I give him disgust. But, what could he see in me if everyone likes me? From the initial surprise he will pass to self-pity:«The man I admire the most, the most upright in Rome, and he treats me like a dog. I don't know... it makes you think. But why would he have that opinion of me? I suck! Man, compared to him, I'm a vermin, I don't have his principles, I don't have his integrity." For the viewer of the series, who has seen a Gnaeus Valerio incapable of writing a harangue to his soldiers or of organizing a battle plan ("I have never been happy here. For me, the military life that people like so much, not me… I never wanted to be a soldier”, he told his granddaughter), the scene is very funny, especially with a character, Cornelio Pisón, who arrived at the camp with an aura of superiority.
The series, in its six episodes (there will be six more, already shot, in the coming months), plays with these misunderstandings and frankly funny dialogues, like when Manio joins the conspiracy that Valeria has prepared against Gabinio in the 5th episode and the centurion Antoninus insists on joining her:
Or when, in a flashback to his childhood, we see Manio call little Octavio "Caius Julius Caesar Octavio Augusto" and he replies:"They won't call me that for a few years" or, in that same episode (the 4th), Bitinio, referring to Agorastocles, he concludes:"It is what I call the evil of Spartacus:he does not know what his place is." An Agorastocles who in the 5th episode searches for his roots among the people where he was born (and from which he was separated by Manio's father), and finds that the Thracians are engaged in lifting rocks while walking on a bed of embers, to drink until they pass out while the others cheer him on, to eat rare animals or to walk around in a procession with an image of the local deity, to whom they shout; "Handsome, handsome!", while singing patriotic tunes that are ridiculous (even more so since the current satire).[7]
It is these kinds of dialogues and situations that Romans in Plautus's day (probably) would have laughed heartily at. It is not hard to imagine a joke that began by saying "you know I told you a Roman is going to Thrace..." or "at this time a Gaul, a Hispanic and a Roman enter a forum...". The series by Maidagán and Montero does not remain mere jokes and develops the plots a little more than the Plautian works –or «modern» versions such as Golfus de Roma (Richard Lester, 1966)–; but there is also the feeling that the series (consciously?) builds itself from the comic models that Roman playwrights wrote in the second century BC. Because, after all, the ordinary Roman – and also the upper class – adored the farce, in the same way that he enjoyed Saturnalia (the “Roman Carnivals”) or could not hide his laughter when hearing the “accent Punic” of a Septimius Severus born in Africa… in the same way that we are hilarious with the priceless way of speaking of Pijus Magnificus (“Biggus Dickus” in the original) in Life of Brian (Terry Gilliam, 1979).
In that, Just before Christ it reminds us that we are not very different from the Romans…
Just before Christ commented on YouTube from a historical point of view
Alberto Pérez, from Desperta Ferro and Matteo Bellardi from Pausanias Viajes comment on different aspects of the series on our YouTube channel.
Notes
[1] That a eunuch bears the name of a general as successful as Gnaeus Domitius Corbulo is still a reversal of roles that may have been excessive for the viewers of the works of Plautus –it is as if a eunuch in one of his works was called Scipio–, but that they would also have laughed heartily.
[2] It is very funny for the reader who knows a little about the operation of the tria nomina classics as played with some praenomina , some payroll and some cognomina who, according to tradition, are incompatible with each other, like Marco Cornelio Pisón played by Fernando Cayo in the 6th episode.
[3] A concept that Adrian Goldsworthy deals with in detail in his recent book Pax Romana:war, peace and conquest in the Roman world (The sphere of books, 2017), and that in the case of Hadrian's Wall also forms the backbone of a chapter in his Hadrian's Wall (Head of Zeus, 2018).
[4] We follow Jerry Toner in this argument, who comments that humor lies in ambiguity and the buffoon's taunt is effective if it attacks values shared by all; see Leisure and Ancient Rome (Polity Books, 1995), especially chapter 7, “Goodbye to Gravitas :Popular Culture and Leisure. We also derive Sixty million Romans and the "popular resistance" strategies that Toner discusses in Chapter 5.
[5] "Are we doing well, mother?" Attica will ask Valeria in the scene immediately after. "It's the best for everyone, Attica," she replies, while Aya Domicia comments:"Let's see if we finish this war once and for all, we're here isolated, we don't even know what's going on in the world."
[6] It is instructive to remember, in comparison, that Caesar «in the assembly did not call them “soldiers”, but “companions”, giving them a more affectionate appellation, and put in They were so careful that he equipped them with weapons trimmed in silver and gold, both for ostentation and to make their steadfastness in combat greater for fear of losing them. He also esteemed them to such a degree that, when he learned of Titurio's defeat, he grew his beard and hair long and did not cut it until he had avenged it. With this method, he made them very addicted to it and of extraordinary value »(Suetonius, Life of the divine Julius , 67-68; edition of Rosa Mª Agudo Cubas, Gredos, 1992, as the quote that is included at the beginning of this text).
[7] I can't resist transcribing the "hymn" of the Thracians:
For the umpteenth (we suppose) time that Agorastocles listens to the song, fed up, he decides to return to the Roman camp. The "homeland" did not turn out to be what he expected. Upon meeting Manius again, he will tell him:«I am not a Thracian, I have no roots, Manius. Your father did me a job kidnapping me…».