I was reading Safiria's comments - I must admit, as a Caesarophile, I'd have enjoyed a bit more hysteria about Caesar's death, but then the sources suggest - typical Roman mob! - that they were pretty quiet until Antony read 'em about the Will and the money and parks Caesar left 'em. So I'll realize that, when it comes to Caesar, I'm a bit unbalanced ;)

Also agree with Safiria about Purefoy's Antony - I've ALWAYS thought he hit it absolutely brilliantly, as good in his historical portrayal as Max has been as Octavian. I'm going to relish the duel between them.

Of course, historically, we're going to have some problems, because there was never a historical relationship between Octavian and Antony, other than knowing each other through Caesar, and dear, sweet, modest historical Atia, of course, never had an affair with Antony. Octavian, after all, wasn't even IN Rome when Caesar died, and didn't arrive there for about 3 weeks after the murder. And relations between him and Antony were hostile from the git-go (He showed up at Antony's asking for Caesar's funds to pay his legacies, and Antony told him they were all gone for state purposes. That must have gone over like a lead balloon).

But the overall concept that at times they were opposed, and at times had to work together politically, is spot on. I don't think we can underestimate how threatened the Caesarians were until after the funeral, when they realized that the people WERE with them. Then it was Brutus & Co.'s time to sweat.

A friend asked me if the portrayal of Cicero was right. It's quite true that he strutted around post-assassination doing everything but pretending he'd been part of it, and from the beginning insisted that Antony should have been (should be?) killed too. It's also quite true that, as a coup d'etat, it was one of the stupidest ever planned. Brutus & Co. apparently just thought that things would swing back to the old days without any effort on their part beyond murdering Caesar. It actually took about 3-4 months for them to abandon Rome and flee, but flee they did.