Fulvia Leads An Impromptu Funeral and the Senate Burns
Clip: Episode 2 | 2m 8sVideo has Closed Captions
The impromptu funeral of murdered Senator Clodius sets the Senate house on fire.
Rome is in crisis – violent gangs rule the streets, and a senator called Clodius appears to be running the show. When his body is discovered, his wife Fulvia carries it to the Forum for an impromptu funeral. As the pyre burns, it sets the Senate house on fire – the most potent symbol of the Roman Republic is left in smouldering ruins.
Fulvia Leads An Impromptu Funeral and the Senate Burns
Clip: Episode 2 | 2m 8sVideo has Closed Captions
Rome is in crisis – violent gangs rule the streets, and a senator called Clodius appears to be running the show. When his body is discovered, his wife Fulvia carries it to the Forum for an impromptu funeral. As the pyre burns, it sets the Senate house on fire – the most potent symbol of the Roman Republic is left in smouldering ruins.
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Learn Moreabout PBS online sponsorship♪ Fulvia leads an angry mob into the heart of Rome, where they stage an impromptu funeral right outside the senate house.
[People shouting] Schultz, voice-over: The unruly, angry mob break into the senate house, and in a rampage, they heap up benches and anything else they could get their hands on that would burn, and they heap it all up, and they put Clodius on the top of the heap.
♪ The choice to build Clodius' pyre out of items from the senate house is an indication of anger directed at the senate.
♪ Clodius' murderer is sort of the front man for the conservative faction within the senate, and so populist anger will have been directed at the elite.
♪ The pyre burns, and it burns so well that it also burns down the senate house, which is truly symbolic of the state of the republic in that moment.
The city is ungovernable.
It is uncontrollable.
♪ Hadrill, voice-over: The spectacle of the senate house burning, it's absolutely horrifying.
It's as terrifying as the spectacle of the Capitol being invaded by an angry mob under Trump.
It marks the system, the republic, not in any sense working any longer.
Stewart; voice-over: For Cato, this is a moment of mounting horror, a sense of all the standards collapsing, and now we have the senate house literally burnt to the ground, mobs rampaging through the streets.
I mean, everything that he treasures about Rome and the republic is now in ruins or in flames.
♪
Video has Closed Captions
As the Triumvirate’s grip on Rome falters, Caesar calls Pompey and Crassus to a meeting. (2m 13s)
The Debate Over Caesar’s Governorship
Video has Closed Captions
The Senate debates whether to recall Caesar from Gaul – and risks a dangerous escalation. (2m 53s)
Video has Closed Captions
Events beyond Caesar’s control threaten to unravel his plans, and leave him isolated. (30s)
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