Broken Eagles: The Iron Age of Imperial Roman Warfare in Post-9/11 Film

In the second of three chapters that address Rome’s complicated legacy as an imperial state, McAuley contrasts the mid-twentieth century “golden old days” of ancient-world epics, which represented Roman soldiers as consummate professionals and warfare as neatly executed, with recent representations of the Roman army for post-9/11 audiences: a new “iron age” of betrayal, despair, and post-traumatic stress disorder. These films reflect a fundamental shift in the psychology of warfare and killing since Vietnam, which has created a vastly different and more ambiguous kind of conflict than the Cold-War binary of Spartacus (1960).McAuley examines the impact of this paradigm shift on contemporary depictions of the Roman army and its soldiers: first, by considering the “golden age” of Roman warfare in films from the 1950s and 1960s, in contrast with the dystopic view of Centurion(2010) and The Eagle (2011). He then traces the depiction of the individual Roman soldier in each era. Finally, he examines the broader contemporary context for post-9/11 depictions of antiquity: the growing body of films about the War on Terror, with which films like Centurion and The Eagle have far more in common than with their golden-age predecessors.

Confronting the Ancient Greek Golden Age in Jules Dassin’s Phaedra (1962)

In the second of three chapters examining Athens’ golden-age legacy, Scioli traces how Jules Dassin repeatedly draws attention to the origins of his 1962 melodrama Phaedra in Greek myth and tragedy through visual imagery, as a complement to his 1960 comedy Never on Sunday. Phaedra’s use of ancient Athenian art, and its suggestive modernization of elements from the ancient Athenian tragedyHippolytusand Racine’s 1677 adaptation Phèdre, force a confrontation with a particular modern formulation of the ancient Greek past. Dassin draws upon the golden age to characterize the world of ancient Greece that irrupts into the early 1960s setting of the film both visually and thematically. Rather than fostering nostalgia for a golden age that might prompt a desire for its return, Phaedra presents it as an intrusive presence from which its characters feel alienated, only to demonstrate that they are inextricably bound, in their modern dress, to repeat what the tragic past has prescribed for them. Such self-conscious appropriation of Athens’ literary-dramatic and artistic-material remains informs the tragic belatedness of Phaedra and reflects upon the American expatriate director’s sense of foreignness in the homeland of his lover and artistic muse, Greek actress and activist Melina Mercouri.

A Leonidas for the Golden Age of Superhero Films: The Thermopylae Tradition in 300 (2006)

In the second of two chapters investigating the role of Homeric epic in fabricating golden ages, Ross proposes the current golden age of superhero movies as an effective lens for viewing the modern idealization of the Spartan king Leonidas as portrayed in 300 (2006). He cites several criteria: the superhero’s origin story; the threats posed by a tyrannical enemy and by civic bureaucracy; and the superhero’s tragic alienation from loved ones and society he protects. Leonidas’ superhero status resonates with Herodotus’ fifth-century BCE account of the Battle of Thermopylae, a “golden” moment in Western historiography, when Leonidas led his 300 Spartan warriors into Homeric “doomed combat” by standing their ground against the massive invasion of the Greek mainland by the army of Xerxes, Great King of Persia. Herodotus’ account has long been recognized as assimilating the Spartan warriors, especially Leonidas, to Homer’s depiction of mythical heroes, who were themselves the bases for twentieth-century superheroes. Ross demonstrates the political ramifications of the film’s use of storytelling to mobilize nostalgia for this golden age into contemporary re-enactment – despite director Zack Snyder’s (in)famous denials of political engagement.

Gilding American History through Song Culture in O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000)

In the first of two chapters investigating the role of Homeric epic in fabricating golden ages, Platte reveals how Joel and Ethan Coen’s O Brother, Where Art Thou?, which proclaims its debt to Homer’s Odyssey in the opening credits, also re-enacts Homeric epic’s creation of a golden age. Platte focuses on the role of song in generating ancient and modern societies’ gilded memories of the past, including the nostalgia-laden misremembering of the Depression-era American South in which the film is set. Platte emphasizes how technological change affected the American folk-song tradition through recording – a phenomenon similar to that which changed Greek song culture into “Homeric” epic. By focusing on a moment of epochal change, the filmmakers undercut the notion that folk music is a simple and genuine artefact of the past. Instead, invoking nostalgia through song exposes the artificiality of the traffic in nostalgia, which has shaped attitudes toward the ancient Greek and modern American pasts. Through the protagonist’s encounter with two Homer avatars, the Coens dramatize both the process of nostalgia-creation for such a golden age and the rejection of attempts to politically weaponize it: in this case, by obscuring racism in romantic depictions of the “Old South.”

Introduction: Searching for Gold in an Age of Iron

This volume introduction analyzes a pervasive fantasy in American popular media: the desire to escape an “iron age” deemed materially and morally degraded in comparison with an idealized lost world that people hope somehow to recover. This idealized “golden age” is viewed with the painful longing of nostalgia and the sorrow of belatedness from the degraded “iron age” of the viewer’s present time, often accompanied by inquiry into how and why golden conditions no longer obtain. Self-proclaimed heirs to classical antiquity’s cultural patrimony adopted this myth with alacrity, and its deployment can be traced continuously throughout the classical tradition, including in popular media not conventionally associated with classicism. The introduction reviews key strands of golden-age discourse in ancient Greek and Roman texts, including views on human-divine relations, gender relations, and technological innovations; and modern receptions of historical societies as golden ages to be emulated, especially Periclean Athens, Thermopylae-era Sparta, and Augustan Rome. Case studies include the Vergilian concept of “Arcadia” as deployed in the sci-fi television series The 100 and “golden age thinking” as a psychological malady in Woody Allen’s Midnight in Paris.

The Golden Aspects of Roman Imperialism in Film, 1914–2015

The first of three chapters that address Rome’s complicated legacy as an imperial state is Strong’s survey of films that present imperialism as beneficial for Rome’s provincial subjects and other “barbarians,” spanning a century of filmmaking from 1914 to 2015. The films in question were produced by and for members of three imperial states during particular historical periods: Italy between World Wars I and II, the United Kingdom after World War II, and the United States after 9/11. Strong’s analysis treats three major arguments variously offered by these films to justify imperialism as producing golden-age conditions for subjects: the technology and order provided by “civilization,” the enlightened embrace of diverse peoples within one expansive community, and the masculine valor of its soldiers. These portrayals, as products of societies engaged in imperialistic behavior, tend to ignore the moral problems of slavery, repression of Christianity, and the status of women in Roman society. Films treated include Cabiria (1914), Scipio l’Africano (1937), The Fall of the Roman Empire (1964), Monty Python’s Life of Brian (1979), Centurion (2010), The Eagle (2011), and The Last Legion (2007).

Kissed by the Muse of Roller-Disco: Utopia versus the Golden Ages of America, Hollywood, and Classical Myth in Xanadu (1980)

The second chapter on refractions of the golden age of heroes examines the roller-disco cult classic Xanadu (1980), in which the kiss of a Muse inspires a frustrated commercial artist to save America from its late-1970s “iron age” by rejecting his corporate job and founding a socially inclusive nightclub. Safran explores how this project’s utopian potential becomes subsumed by contemporary nostalgia for America’s post-World War II prosperity and the “golden age” of the Hollywood studio system, signalled by quoting the filmography of Xanadu’s venerable co-star Gene Kelly. His particular brand of on-screen masculinity echoes ancient homosociality associated with the Hesiodic all-male golden age, the end of which is associated with the invention of women—much as Xanadu’s homosocial mentoring relationship is disrupted by the Muse. The young protagonist’s impossible romance with the goddess risks degrading his masculinity in light of her divinity, until the film refigures her as a prisoner of the divine realm and him as modern Orpheus who breaks into that realm to plead for his beloved’s return. His success not only bests his classical model but also recuperates him as a man, an artist, and a self-employed small business owner.

The Dux Femina Ends Westeros’ Golden Age: Cersei Lannister as Agrippina the Younger in HBO’s Game of Thrones (2011–)

In the second of two chapters connecting the management of sexuality to the fortunes of Augustus, his dynasty, and the empire it governs, Prince explores how the dynamics shaping Rome also inform the characterization and narrative arc of Cersei Lannister in HBO’s Game of Thrones (2011-), another prestige cable series produced during the current golden age of television. She compares Cersei Lannister to Roman historiography’s portrayal of Agrippina the Younger: granddaughter of Augustus, sister of Caligula, wife of Claudius, and mother of Nero, yet born into a patriarchal system in which she could only wield power by controlling men around her. In this strategy, both Agrippina and Cersei are challenged by another aspirant to power and competitor for influence, with deadly results. Such ambition led to Tacitus labeling Agrippina a dux femina (“woman commander”), among other imperial women whose “masculine” hunger for power was blamed for the catastrophic decline of their dynasty and of Rome itself – much as the coming of winter on Game of Thrones is correlated with the moral depravity, and dynastic collapse, in which Cersei is intimately implicated. These pessimistic narratives of decline invoke the myth of the iron age, the inverse of the golden age.

“All That Glitters …”: Problematizing Golden-Age Narratives in Vergil’s Aeneid and the Western Film Genre

In the first of two chapters that treat promises of an imperial golden age in Aeneid Book 6 in relation to American expansionism as portrayed in the Western film genre, Kirsten Day compares the production contexts of Vergil’s epic, during the “golden age of Latin literature” in the wake of epochal civil wars, to the Westerns produced after World War II during the “golden age” of Hollywood. So too the dramatic settings of the Aeneid, after the Trojan War, and of Westerns, after the American Civil War, enshrine these trailblazing pioneers in the pantheon of founding heroes whose struggles (re)built the nation of the narrative’s audience. Through a wide-ranging survey of many of the genre’s most famous films, such as Red River and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, Day examines several key themes, including nation-building as divinely driven labor; the laconic characterization of the Western male hero and his troubling resemblance to the villain; and the sacrificial role assigned to female characters. Day concludes that these ancient and modern texts also share an undercurrent of anxiety about the moral ambiguities of these projects, which belies their superficial optimism.

The Dueling Greek Golden Ages of 300: Rise of an Empire (2014)

The first of three chapters examining Athens’ golden-age legacy considers a problem in 300: Rise of an Empire (2014): given the franchise’s vehement Laconophilia (love of Sparta), this sequel to 300 struggles to acknowledge Athens’ indispensable contribution to theallied Greek victory against the invading Persian army. If the Athenians can claim credit for both Greek victory over Persia and the invention of social institutions and cultural production that flourished in the subsequent decades—the basis for the “golden age of Greece” at the root of “Western civilization”—what remains for the Spartans? As Easton elucidates, 300: Rise of an Empire invalidates Athens’ material grandeur by fetishizing the city’s historical destruction during the Persian Wars, including through the a historical fall of the “Athena the Defender” statue on the world-famous Acropolis. At the same time, the themes of the Parthenon’s famous sculptural program(the contest between Athena and Poseidon; heroes battling hybrid monsters, including centaurs and Amazons; and the birth of Athena) haunt the film’s presentation of conflicts between the Greeks, represented by the Athenian general Themistocles and Leonidas’ Spartan widow Queen Gorgo, and the Persians, represented by the Great King Xerxes and especially the adopted Greek-turned-Persian Artemisia.