'Avin' a time on the Aventine

I’m interested in how governments work. Have been for a long time. I still have copies of the US Constitution and the constitution of the Fifth Republic that I photocopied at school. I once wrote to Helmut Schmidt and got back a nice letter (in German) and a booklet (in English) all about the history and structure of the Bundesrepublik. I was fascinated by the different ways different systems distinguish (or don’t) between head of government and head of state. I spent far too much of my O-level revision – in between learning Cyrillic and other displacement activities – drafting a constitution for a world government. I did a (Philosophy &) Politics degree, though I could never understand all those people who said, “oh, are you going to be a politician?” Like, if I was a medical student studying venereal diseases, I’d want to catch one, right? I think not.

Which is probably why I enjoy The West Wing so much. I watched this when Channel 4 was showing it on terrestrial TV – and the fact that it was shelved after the fourth series, while Big Brother goes on, says everything you need to know about what was once the Great White Hope of British broadcasting. And now I’m rewatching it, on Sunday evenings, on More4. My weekly treat.

I like it because of the wish fulfilment – the Office of President of the United States should belong to someone like Bartlet. I also like it for its doses of realism. I like the fact that the characters are very often flawed, getting it wrong in their enthusiasm to get it right, needing to be reigned in. Hard choices have to be made for the best of reasons. And they can make high drama out of whether or not a particular individual gets appointed to a particular committee, or whether the President gets a three percent rise in a particular poll. And show me anyone who didn’t get misty eyed when (as last night) Bartlet realises he always used to have a decent pen to sign things with because the late Mrs Landingham slipped one into his pocket every morning.

But Sunday evenings now show an interesting reverse side to the government coin, and it conveniently starts just as The West Wing is ending. Yes, Rome is back! Maximus Bonkus resurrexit.

Not that there’s been much Bonkus yet; it seems to have been replaced as a ratings puller by a greater reliance on swearing (profanitus?), with Mark Antony in particular always reliably finding the mot juste. I miss Ciaran Hinds doing his imitation of Peter Cook doing Richard III doing Julius Caesar but it’s great fun watching Antony trying to step into the breach left by his former master, and failing. The Roman Republic lasted 400 years, which is pretty good by anyone's standards, with a system of official posts handed out for fixed terms around the aristocracy, who by and large took their jobs seriously. Here the system is on its last legs because too much power has become concentrated with people who don’t realise that even if a dictator thoroughly despises the people, he still has to keep them happy. Caesar knew that. Antony doesn’t really believe it. Young Octavian is in no doubt at all about it. Inherited aristocratic privilege only gets you a certain amount of credit. Ultimately, your right to lead must still be earned.

And accents are slipping; Pullo is more obviously Irish, Vorenus more obviously a Scot. But what the heck. The huge triumph of Rome – something every fantasy author should take note of – is depicting a society of people very like us yet entirely untouched by 2000 years of Judeo-Christianity. Even the most ardent atheist today has grown up in a world formed first by the social legacy of the Bible, then by the Renaissance and the Reformation and the Enlightenment. We all have a passing acquaintance with the morality of the Ten Commandments, and the Rights of Man, and universal suffrage. These people haven’t. Nothing that we consider ‘normal’ can be taken for granted, and it works. We really can believe a gang fight can be stopped by a bunch of effeminate priests and a wooden idol, and we can find it just as shocking as these hardened murderers when Vorenus announces his opinion of the idol in terms St Paul could only dream of. (For the faint of heart, it translates roughly as “I engage in sexual relations with Concordia via the orifice traditionally associated with defecation.”)

And then to top it all off we get a girly slapfight between Antony and Octavian. Bloody brilliant. Okay, so history has been torn up and thrown out of the window but I still want to know what happens next. I have a shrewd idea Antony and Cleopatra may overcome their dislike for each other. Octavian probably has great things ahead of him; in fact I can see him growing to resemble a younger Brian Blessed and one day having a stammering step-grandson with a strange resemblance to the last incarnation of the Master. Round about 3 or 4 BC he will have a clever idea for a tax throughout the Empire. But here I’m just guessing.