Eight Days That Made Rome

It is - occasionally - a decent enough series, but Miss Hughes' constant moralizing is extremely tiresome. She makes the mistake way too many contemporary historians and commentators are prone to: applying rather decadent and degenerate "modern" Western standards to other societies, cultures, and time periods. At one point she even goes so far to say: "I know that we shouldn't judge ancient societies from a 21st century point of view." Apparently, she has little sense of irony or her own bigotry. Also, way too much time is spent with rather silly reenactments instead of actual scientific analysis and archeological evidence.

Firstly, there is some utterly disgusting comments here from other reviewers regarding the appearance of the presenter- not necessary, .

The series itself is obviously meant to be snapshots of the history around some important days, and these days just so happen to be centred around acts of war and the like, so that's important to keep in mind- very few of these events were without death and bloodshed. There are also lots of arguments that you shouldn't view these events through a modern moralistic lens- but why shouldn't we? Genocidal acts are horrible, no matter when they happened in our historical timeline, it's important to get both sides of this, especially when accounts at the time lament the death and destruction.

It's a nice change from the usual glorification of all things Rome, and I don't think it is biased as other people say, I think that it is balanced. Sure there are more details that could have been mentioned, but with the run time of each segment (~50min or so) there's only so much room there. Hopefully if anyone sees this and wants more info on any of the stories, they will seek it out.

Bettany Hughes is very engaging and she really nailed it unpacking the history of Rome and Roman society.

I loved the series and learnt a lot from it and thoroughly enjoyed the series. whilst its not perfect neither am i and i would like to see the previous reviewer do better.

I hope this series gets recognition for excellence that it deserves. This was a fascinating journey through time and history unlike any television experience that I can remember. I found myself eagerly awaiting the arrival of the dreaded Monday for the arrival of the next installment. The host was engaging I feel truly captured the essence of each tale. Also, the tales themselves were great, both riveting and interesting. I love how the actual locations and artifacts were incorporated into each episode to make immersion into to time and place complete. Bravo to Smithsonian channel and to all of those involved.