A question in AH about Hannibal's race (people are still resisting the inevitable rise of Jewish Bolshevist cultural Marxism in 2016?) alerted me to the new History Channel series about the barbarians who fought Rome, and I was then repeatedly alerted to this very same series every time I went on AH because apparently Reddit has finally learned a little ad targeting goes a long way. Anyway, it has been a while since I have done one of these and this series seems to be getting some buzz, the offbeat interpretation should be fun, and after watching the intro it is pretty clear where all the money shirtless Ragnar brings in has been reinvested in, so I figure it needs to be done. The minute tagged blow by blows I did on previous ones seems a bit clumsy when I look back over them, so I will organize this commercial break segment by commercial break segment, only interjecting if something really wild happens. Without further adieu:

1-14: The way the show works is that the story is advanced by the tried and true “Narration plus talking heads” format that is the backbone of History Channel docs, with specific scripted scenes interspersed for particularly dramatic moments. And you know what? I like it. In a ideal world, of course, every documentary would be produced and narrated by Michael Wood, but barring that this combined approach works really well. So good on you, History Channel.

As for the history part, eh? The narrative they are pushing is “barbarians against Rome” and despite some lip service about how there is no single barbarian polity they seem to basically pushing this as a binary struggle. Hannibal, and let me be clear that I freaking love Hannibal, Hannibal is literally what got me in to Roman history, and yes, Hannibal is definitely the greatest general of the ancient world fight me irl Alexander fanboys, is being portrayed as a sort of barbarian uniter, and actually I am okay with it. It is being very clear that Hannibal is being two faced in his dealings with the other barbarians (quick note: in a Roman context it is absolutely acceptable to call Carthaginians “barbarians”) by claiming to be the great resister while actually pursuing Carthage's interests. He also gives a nice little quip (I have something Rome does not, his name is Comelios) is actually cribbed from a real Hannibal quip (The Roman army is vast, yet not a one among them is named Mago), so that's cool.

Quick note on black Hannibal: I don't give a shit. He probably looked more like a north African but he might have looked like a black man so I really don't care.

Anyway, I will rate the history so far as cheesy and a bit confused but acceptable and I like the format. Plenty of details are wrong (Scipio, for example, did not have the full backing of the Senate in fact he was often feuding with other members, for example, and they get Hannibal's oath to destroy Rome wrong) but that is to be expected. Onward.

14:30: Haha Tulsi Gabbard is one of the talking heads. Technically it is no more ridiculous than Wesley Clark but at least with him there is the excuse that he was a general.

17:40: And now there is a CEO talking about confidence, they clearly pulled out all stops on the talking heads.

22:00: JESSE JACKSON IS A TAKING HEAD this is awesome. Okay I'll stop mentioning these. That being said anther Civil Rights leader (Clarence Jones) is also on and I am wondering if I am missing a bit of meta history about the connection between “the barbarians” and their use by later actual struggles for freedom.

14-28: This is all about the road over the Alps, and unfortunately this is where we get the first serious distortion of history. During the crossing if the Alps, perhaps as destructive as the elements were the people who lived there, and Hannibal fought many battles against them, for example the Allobrages led a very destructive assault on his army during a difficult passage. But the narrative being pushed here is “Rome against the barbarians” and I suppose it would be too difficult to keep that narrative rolling if we admitted that Rome had as many allies as enemies in any given war. Also, I was going to note that none of the very complex internal politics of Rome were being portrayed, but I realized that is exactly how barbarians tend to be portrayed in these things so touche History Channel.

29:30: In the lead-up to the battle of Cannae it says something along the lines of Scipio being overconfident: Cornelius Scipio had nothing to do with Cannae. His son, Cornelius Scipio soon-to-be Africanus, was a junior officer who acquitted himself very well, but the leaders of the Roman army were Varro and Aemilius Paulus. I am worried about whether the show will even bother to distinguish father and son there.

28-41: And here it comes off the wheel real bad. Real bad. On a seemingly minor detail, it portrays Cornelius Scipio as stopping a peace delegation to Hannibal after Cannae: There was no delegation. There was absolutely no talk of peace within the Roman government, this is entirely made up. And yes, in my youthful naivety of ten minutes ago I thought the refusal to recognize the internal disputes within Rome as a cleverly subversive move, but given that “Scipio” continues to be the villain against Hannibal it seems to be more driven by laziness.

Also, the show claims that Zama was the first battle Hannibal lost, and this is incorrect. Hannibal may have been the greatest general of the ancient world, again fight me irl, but he did lose a few, most notably at Nola against Marcellus (who later died fighting Hannibal so whose laughing now). Then it goes on to portray the later Roman assaults on Hispania (specifically Lusitania) as being revenge for the Second Punic War, which is ridiculous. The history is getting pretty bad now. The whole “Rome is literally the empire from Star Wars” thing is pretty great though.

42-49: We now go to the rise of Viriatus, one of the most dangerous enemies Rome faced in the conquest of Spain, which was by far the longest and bloodiest conquest it made. The show portrays this conquest as genocidal, which is something of a stretch, there is no evidence that anyone in Rome intended the extermination of an ethnic group—a genocide is more than just a collection of massacres. It also portrays Viriatus as a humble shepherd type who is thrust into the war, which is ridiculous because he was certainly of the elite class by the time the war against Rome came. Honestly the whole thing is shaping up to be basically a fictional story.

49-end: As expected, the whole Viriatus thing is basically just made up. Viritaus is here portrayed as a sort of Robin Hood crossed with William Wallace, leading small groups of men who velociraptor Roman patrols. In reality, Viritaus was a clever leader who utilized ambush and chevauchee to devastating effect, but at no point was he the brave leader of a band of refugees—he had an army. And the worst of it, the evil Roman general has a beard, when everyone knows that the Romans were clean shaven.

So what to make of the whole thing? It is pretty entertaining, I never didn't enjoy it. History wise, it starts to really go off the rails at the end of the Hannibal segment and pretty much stays off the rails for the entirety of the Viriatus story. There is a pretty big difference between the two: we can make a whole movie, hell a whole miniseries, following the story of Hannibal without adding a single detail to our sources. This is not the case with Viriatus, the sources for which amount to a couple pages in Appian and a few paragraphs across other authors. It will need to wait for later episodes to see whether the fact that Hannibal's story hews closer to history was because it has a much richer source base, or just because it is a difficult story to improve.

In the introduction, as a side note, it hints at who the later episodes might revolve around. I am really quite curious whether it will show Boudicca crucifying all he shopkeepers in London, or Geiseric (fucking Geiseric is one of the heroes) raping a group of nuns.

Is its good history? God no, it didn't even fulfill the low expectations I placed on it. It is pretty entertaining though and the anti-Roman perspective is kind of funny.