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Quo Vadis, Mervyn LeRoy (1951) USA: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer

In the first of two chapters connecting the management of sexuality to the fortunes of Augustus, his dynasty, and the empire it governs, West focuses on HBO’s Rome (2005-7), a prestige cable series produced during the current golden age of television. He considers how Rome’s portrayal of Octavian’s psychosexual development, as he matures into Augustus, de-mythologizes the moral linchpin of Rome’s post-war “restoration” and thus interrogates this dominant icon of the “golden age of Rome.” The series juxtaposes Octavian to his viciously sexual mother Atia and his variably timid and rebellious sister Octavia, and also regards him as the protégé of two of the Republic’s leading men, Julius Caesar and Marc Antony. Yet even while establishing Augustus as the figure credited with containing the destructive, disruptive sexuality of his family and founding Rome’s new golden age, the series goes to great pains to look beneath the Augustan mask of male control and reveal a darker strain of barely tamed sexual desires, symbolized by his privately sadomasochistic relationship with his wife Livia. Beyond feeding viewers’ prurient appetites, the series acknowledges sexuality as a historical force in tandem with “civilizing” rationality; it can be repressed, but never eliminated.

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