The lumpy mirrors of Ancient Rome, circa 50 BC, from the nicely written, finely-detailed HBO series Rome. The mirror on the left displays the distorted image of Servilia of the Junii, played by the ravishing Lindsay Duncan; the mirror to the right, the cameraperson?
I purchased the first season of Rome at the SPCA Thrift Store on Victoria Drive. A few days later, at AA Furniture & Appliance, Anthony Birley's Life in Roman Britain (1964), which begins with Caesar's invasion of England in 55 BC, two years before his legions crushed Gaul, when Rome in fact begins.
There is a great quote from Tacitus (b. 56 AD) in Birley's book, one reminiscent of the method successful colonizers use when taming those they've invaded:
"In his second winter [Gnaeus Julius] Agricola made a particular point of encouraging the erection of public buildings and the education in the liberal arts of the sons of leading Britons. 'The result,' Tacitus sardonically comments, 'was to create a fashion for porticoes, baths and elegant banquets, which the ignorant provincials called civilization, when it was in fact part of their servitude.'"
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