David Meadows points to a very interesting article by Mary Beard in The Guardian: “Apart from vomitoriums and orgies, what did the Romans do for us?” She considers the modern cultural functions of the Romans in films and television series (including the recent series Rome, the HBO-BBC production). Here’s an excerpt that touches on religion and discourses of the “other” (the cultural outsider):

‘This game of defining ourselves against the habits of the “Other” is a very old one indeed. The Romans did it against the Greeks (a load of over-perfumed intellectuals), the Greeks against the Persians (effeminate despots). We are now finding it much safer to look to the remote past – the recent past is, of course, another matter – for our anti-types. For that past cannot answer back, has no government machinery on its side (or not usually), and you can do what you like with it. If they were portraying a modern religion, the lurid, blood-soaked representations of Roman paganism in the new Rome would probably end with the director up before the beak on a charge of “incitement to religious hatred”. As it is, it’s only Rome, so it doesn’t count.’

Mary Beard (professor of Classics at Cambridge University) is perhaps best known for her recent work with Simon Price and John North: Religions of Rome.