This collection, a companion piece to the editor’s Rome, Season One: History Makes Television (Malden, 2008), belongs to the burgeoning sub-field of “reception studies,” which allows classical scholars to explore the ways in which Greco-Roman antiquity has shaped—and been shaped by—postclassical engagement with the ancients. The book presents reflections on the second season of the popular and lavishly produced hbo-bbc series Rome (2005–2007), a species of historical fiction focused on the demise of the Roman republic and the emergence of the empire. In its preface, Cyrino and Llewellyn-Jones boast that the collection is part of “the first academic series…to promote interdisciplinary research in the fields of Cinema Studies, Media Studies, Classics, and Ancient History” (viii). Despite this contention, only two of the book’s contributors are non-classicists, and only one has her primary training in film.
Clearly aimed, in part, at university courses that deal with Greece and...