In the summer of 1976 (I think it was), I was commissioned to write a biographical essay on Cato the Younger, also known as Cato the Utican (the adjectives are to distinguish him from Cato the Elder, aka Cato the Censor), as a backgrounder for his then-fledging namesake the Cato Institute. I’m not entirely sure how I got the job; probably via someone who’d heard that I’d had four years of high school Latin.

With that personal history, forgive me for registering the following complaint about HBO’s new series Rome: the actor who plays Cato is too old. Marcus Porcius Cato was born 95 BC. Gaius Julius Caesar was born 102 or 100 BC; so in real life Cato was 5 or 7 years younger than Caesar. Cato was 46 when Caesar crossed the Rubicon in 49 BC. In the HBO series, the actor playing Cato (Karl Johnson) looks about 60-65 years old, about 10-15 years older than the actor playing Caesar. (I haven’t been able to find out Karl Johnson’s actual age.)

Otherwise, I like the series so far. The writers have done their historical homework. (E.g., Cato was in fact known for oddly wearing a toga without a tunic underneath.) I especially like Indira Varma (from Mira Nair’s Kama Sutra) as Niobe.

HBO’s Rome is like HBO’s Deadwood in its multiple interweaving plot lines and generous helpings of violence and nudity (though without as much cursing), but it places them in exactly the opposite political setting. Deadwood is a cynical take on a stateless society. Rome is a cynical take on a state-dominated society.