Introduction: The Ancient Classical World from Film to Television

THE ANCIENT MEDITERRANEAN CULTURES OF GREECE AND ROME, often referred to as classical antiquity, together with other celebrated ancient civilizations such as those of Egypt, Babylon, and Persia, frequently play starring roles as ideal sites for movie and television screens to depict the iconic characters and plots that emerge from the ancient world. The viewing audience is invited to experience the spectacle of ancient classical worlds deployed to accomplish a number of different objectives: screen images of antiquity can be used to support contemporary political goals, to interrogate current social issues, or to engage in cultural debates about the modern world’s connection to the ancient classical past. Viewers of films and television series about the ancient world remain engaged in a long and sometimes complex relationship with the representation of antiquity on screen, an engagement that has been well analyzed in the last few years by scholars and critics. Today, the study of films and television series that portray, adapt, and reinvent ancient classical worlds is a significant and rewarding critical subfield within the study of classical reception that seeks to partner with film and television studies for productive results. This special theme issue, Antiquity Now: The Ancient Classical World on Television, is—like the AIMS–Antiquity in Media Studies network from which it emerged—committed to the practice of reception studies as an interdisciplinary endeavor involving classics, film and television studies, and other related disciplines that study ancient worlds.

Xena: Warrior Princess (TV syndicated series, 1995–2001]. Shown: Lucy Lawless (as Xena).

Photo courtesy of Universal TV/Photofest.

In his field-formative book The Ancient World in the Cinema (first published in 1978), Jon Solomon (1) argues that “ancient world” films are as old as the medium itself and potentially constitute a distinct screen genre of their own: “Classical Greece and Rome, in spite and because of their antiquity, create a popular and inimitable atmosphere on the screen, and biblical Palestine is as much a part of filmdom as it is of Western Civilization and its Judeo-Christian substructure.” The very first “sword and sandal” films made in cinema’s earliest years seeded both the great prestige epics of Hollywood’s midcentury golden age, such as Mervyn LeRoy’s Quo Vadis (1951) and William Wyler’s Ben Hur (1959), as well as numerous B-movie action-adventure peplum films turned out cheaply in Europe, such as Pietro Francisci’s Hercules (1958) and its inevitable sequel Hercules Unchained (1959). Whether these works are considered a separate cinematic genre or not, the ancient classical world has served as a privileged venue for a wide array of film productions as diverse as art cinema, such as Fellini Satyricon (1969) and Michael Cacoyannis’s Trojan Women (1971); comedies such as Richard Lester’s A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (1966) and the extended Roman Empire sequence of Mel Brooks’s History of the World, Part I (1981); and lavish epics ranging from the historical, such as Stanley Kubrick’s Spartacus (1960) to the mythological, such as Desmond Davis’s Clash of the Titans (1981).

After a more than two-decade hiatus from the big screen, the prestige and popularity of Ridley Scott’s Oscar-winning film Gladiator in the year 2000 spearheaded a resurgence of the historical and mythological ancient worlds in the epic cinematic mode: Gladiator was quickly followed, in true Hollywood copycat fashion, by Wolfgang Petersen’s Troy (2004), Oliver Stone’s Alexander (2004), Zack Snyder’s 300 (2006), and later by Tarsem Singh’s Immortals (2011) and Brett Ratner’s Hercules (2014), among several other costly studio productions. However, this focus on feature films tends to overlook the ongoing interest in ancient-world topics that continued on the small screen in the intervening years and, as has been argued elsewhere, a “more in-depth examination of the broadcasting market,” especially throughout the early periods of television, “reveals that the ancient world was more prominent on early television than we might have previously thought” (Magerstädt 21). International productions of the innovative new genre of television miniseries (or “limited series,” as they are now called), such as BBC’s I, Claudius (1976) and ABC’s The Last Days of Pompeii (1984), as well as continuing syndicated series like the popular fantasy show Hercules: The Legendary Journeys (1995–1999) and its more famous spin-off Xena: Warrior Princess (1995–2001), enjoyed both critical and commercial success while keeping the ancient world, or a version thereof, in the forefront of the audience’s mind.

I, Claudius (BBC) TV Miniseries 1977. Shown from left: Sian Phillips, Brian Blessed.

Photo courtesy of PBS/Photofest.

The contemporary rise of self-styled “quality” or “prestige” television brought the big-screen production values, budgets, and talents of the post-Gladiator era to ancient-world serial storytelling on smaller screens. On the heels of pioneering early-millennium series offerings like the multiple seasons of HBO-BBC Rome (2005–2008) and STARZ Spartacus (2010–2013), a new crop of ancient-world narratives has proliferated in recent years. Across Europe, television shows experimented with new approaches to representations of antiquity. In the UK, the comedy series Plebs (2013–), combines its ancient settings with anachronistically modern themes and language, while Britannia (2017–), a coproduction between Sky and Amazon Prime Video, infuses dark fantasy elements into its Roman-Celtic history. Like Britannia, Germany’s historical war drama Barbarians (2020–), with fulsome dialogue in both German and Latin, explores the violent clash between the nascent Roman Empire and local European tribes that fought to resist occupation, while the Italian series Romulus (2020–), shot entirely using archaic Latin dialogue, explores Rome’s foundational mythologies. In 2021, Sky Atlantic’s British-Italian coproduction Domina (2021–) charts new territory by investigating the early years of the woman who was to become Rome’s first empress, Livia Drusilla. Meanwhile, the heroic fantasy world also continues to appeal to creatives with the pro-duction of streaming series such as Atlantis (2013–2015) and Blood of Zeus (2020–), as well as forthcoming series like Dan Harmon’s animated sitcom Krapopolis (Fox), and Charlie Covell’s mythological dark-comedy Kaos (on Netflix).

The contemporary rise of self-styled “quality” or “prestige” television brought the big-screen production values, budgets, and talents of the post-Gladiator era to ancient-world serial storytelling on smaller screens.

As is evident from the range of titles and topics noted above, both feature films and television series recreate ancient classical worlds in a variety of different ways, and filmmakers and television showrunners are adept at using many different sources—historical, literary, archaeological, and mythological—to serve as artistic, visual, and narrative inspirations. Screen recreations of ancient classical worlds can take various forms, and essentially fall into two broad categories or modes. In the first mode, films and television series can be set in a more or less historically authentic ancient world: films such as Gladiator and Hercules, or television series like Xena and Rome, whether set in historical antiquity or in a generalized mythological past, transport viewers directly back into the ancient world, since many of them exhibit huge amounts of historical research and careful attention to visual detail. The best recreations not only offer modern viewers an impressive display of what is readily familiar and admired about ancient culture, but they also invite the audience to enjoy the glamour and excitement inherent in viewing the distant strangeness of a bygone time and place. In the second mode, films and television series utilize more evocative receptions, in that they deploy and adapt classical mythological and literary plots, themes, and archetypes into non-classical settings, genres, or time periods. Classical literary plots and ancient mythological archetypes have been deployed in many contemporary films such as Clint Eastwood’s epic meta-Western Unforgiven (1992) and Joel and Ethan Coen’s Odyssean romp, O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000); also, modern television has utilized the classical hero archetype in series such as Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1997–2003) and Heroes (2006–2010). In viewing these films and television series, the audience enjoys the essence of an ancient literary work or myth distilled to its most basic narrative and archetypal elements that resonate most powerfully with the modern world. At the same time, spectators can witness the core evidence of what keeps the ancient world alive: these films and television series ably demonstrate what makes a classical myth or literary work relevant to new generations of viewers. And because they are not bound by any obligation to recreate the actual ancient setting and precise historical context, the filmmaker or television showrunner can take a more modern, innovative approach to the timeless themes and characters.

In viewing these films and television series, the audience enjoys the essence of an ancient literary work or myth distilled to its most basic narrative and archetypal elements that resonate most powerfully with the modern world.

This special theme issue, Antiquity Now: The Ancient Classical World on Television, aims to explore further the traces of antiquity within contemporary television and to encourage productive scholarly synergies between media studies and classics, in particular the exciting subfield of onscreen classical reception studies. The special issue brings together original and interdisciplinary scholarship on the reception, history, and representation of the ancient world in contemporary television, and analyses the reasons behind the subject’s continuing fascination for diverse audiences. While the impact of the epic ancient world in cinema has not gone unnoticed by modern scholars of both media studies and classics, as in numerous recent works including Jeffrey Richards’s Hollywood’s Ancient Worlds (2008), Alastair J. L. Blanshard and Kim Shahabudin’s Classics on Screen (2011), Andrew B. R. Elliott’s The Return of the Epic Film (2014), and Antony Augoustakis and Stacie Raucci’s Epic Heroes on Screen (2018), television representations of the ancient world are also now shifting more decisively into scholarly focus. Several recent books have offered in-depth studies of specific television series with ancient world settings, such as Monica Cyrino’s volumes on each of the two seasons of HBO-BBC Rome (2008 and 2015), Augoustakis and Cyrino on STARZ Spartacus (2017), and Augoustakis and Cyrino on BBC-Netflix’s Troy: Fall of a City (2022); while Sylvie Magerstädt’s monograph TV Antiquity (2019) and Amanda Potter and Hunter Gardner’s Ancient Epic in Film and Television (2021) explore the representation of the ancient classical world in television in a broader context.

Yet the sheer variety and proliferation of recent and current televisual screen texts that draw on various sources and versions of the ancient classical world, and the often complex and sometimes even covert ways in which these screen receptions occur, still leave many gaps in scholarly analysis of this widespread cultural phenomenon: these are the lacunae that this special theme issue aims to address.

The four essays presented in this special theme issue expand the scope of existing research into critical investigations of previously un- (or under-) examined works of television; the relations of these works to contemporary social, political, and cultural contexts; and their appeals from industrial and cultural perspectives. Moreover, the four articles that follow explore various questions as to why and how such screen texts ought to be of interest to both scholars of classical reception as well as scholars of film and television. While all four of the essays focus their discussions on recent, impactful television series, the shows examined here all make the creative choice to recreate ancient mythological or classical themes and narratives in what has been described as the “subterranean” mode: “Mythic narratives are widely adapted and appropriated, both in projects that advertise their debt to classical antiquity … and those whose engagement is subterranean or selective, yet still potent” (Cyrino and Safran 5). This means that rather than being overtly set in the ancient world, as in the first screen mode listed above, the television series discussed in this special issue draw evocatively on mythological themes and tropes and use them in contemporary, fantastic, or even futuristic settings.

Hercules: The Legendary Journeys (Universal TV) 1995–1999. Shown from left: Kevin Sorbo, Sam Jenkins.

Photo courtesy of Universal TV/Photofest.

[R]ather than being overtly set in the ancient world … the television series discussed in this special issue draw evocatively on mythological themes and tropes and use them in contemporary, fantastic, or even futuristic settings.

In the opening article, “Time-Travel Tragedy: Netflix’s Dark and Athenian Drama,” Dan Curley offers a detailed analysis of a number of classical mythological and dramatic elements in the German science-fiction television series Dark (2017–2020). In particular, Curley argues that the time-travel series exhibits many motifs, from themes to modes of presentation, found in ancient Athenian tragedy, drawing comparisons between the serial structure of contemporary television drama and ancient tragic drama; the use of multigenerational dynasties or houses as a central narrative focus, with mirror scenes and other techniques for showing parallel events across generations; the presence of controversial (both then and now) elements, such as incest, family trauma, and murder; and the preoccupation with fate and divine intervention in the form of deus-ex-machina appearances. These comparisons, Curley maintains, successfully link key elements of ancient Athenian tragedy to contemporary serial television style and narration, and together these motifs encourage Dark to be viewed as a modern televisual tragic enterprise. As such, this article provides a valuable and useful entrance to scholars of film and television not previously engaged in classical reception and highlights how both areas can fruitfully intersect.

In the second essay, “Oedipal Anxieties in HBO’s Westworld,” Kirsten Day offers an insightful discussion of the pervasive use of mythological and tragic literary tropes in the influential television show Westworld (2016–2022). Noting that current scholars recognize close connections between cinematic Westerns and Greek and Roman antiquity, Day argues that Westworld brings this relationship into sharp relief through classical themes, characterizations, and allusions. Here, the allusions to ancient myth are more explicit than in the series Dark, as in the episode titled “Riddle of the Sphinx” (season 2, episode 4), one of two episodes that form the focus of this article. In her discussion, Day refers to the ancient Greek tragedy Sophocles’ Oedipus to draw out the themes inherent in the series, especially with regard to issues of identity, fate, and self-knowledge; as such, it picks up on some of the tragic dramatic themes that emerged in the opening article of this special issue and links these two distinct dystopian television narratives, despite their differences in style and content. Thus, while Westworld as a series is broadly concerned with patriarchal overreach and issues of free will and identity, Day examines specific episodes through a classical lens to demonstrate how, like its Sophoclean predecessor, Westworld works as an implicit criticism of unbridled ambition, patriarchal narcissism, and lack of self-awareness.

Dark (Netflix) Season 1, 2017. Shown: Louis Hofmann.

Photo courtesy of Netflix/Photofest.

In the third article, “Casting Black Athenas: Black Representation of Ancient Greek Goddesses in Modern Audiovisual Media and Beyond,” Aimee Hinds Scott and Maciej Paprocki take a broader approach by looking at the intersection between race and gender in representations of Greco-Roman divinities in contemporary film and television, especially in productions aimed at younger audiences. Hinds Scott and Paprocki adopt the transmedial perspective to consider the intersecting forces that have gradually disjointed conceptions of the gods and goddesses of Greek mythology in both popular culture and audience imagination. Examining the visual legacy of Disney’s 1997 animated film Hercules and the subsequent television series (1998–1999), the authors discuss how and why recent fairy-tale fantasy shows such as ABC’s Once Upon a Time (2011–2018) and Syfy’s The Magicians (2015–2020), along with the feature film Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief (2010), offer creative reinterpretations of classical myth and fairy-tale tropes by casting Black actresses as goddesses: as the conceptual entanglement between whiteness and the Greco-Roman divine is weakened, they argue, audiences are primed to accept alternative representations of deities through cultural accretion. The article thereby offers a timely and wide-ranging exploration of the differences in reception and intersectional issues relating to Black representations on screen.

In the final article of this special issue, “Heroes Never Sweat the Small Stuff: Fortuna’s Role in The CW’s Supernatural,” Jennifer Rea investigates the popular and influential series Supernatural (2005–2020) and highlights its intertextual debt to classical mythology by exploring the role of the Roman goddess, Fortuna, in the series narrative. As Rea demonstrates, ancient Roman mythology becomes deeply entwined with contemporary American ideals of heroism, the frontier myth, and the notion of American exceptionalism. While Supernatural features brothers Sam and Dean Winchester battling pagan gods from ancient Greco-Roman mythology who pose a threat to the present-day American way of life, Rea outlines how the heroes are forced to reevaluate their work after they encounter the Roman goddess, Fortuna, who reveals to them how they can protect America. With an incisive critical analysis of several key episodes, Rea suggests that as the series advances and Fortuna’s influence initiates a thematic shift, the focus on the brothers’ elimination of pagan threats to America is replaced by a critique of monotheistic religion, a reexamination of the myth of American exceptionalism, and social commentary on the problems inherent in a culture based on consumerism. Somewhat unexpectedly given the US context, it is ultimately the pagan goddess that aids the downfall of the (monotheistic) God in the series, thus simultaneously subverting a number of traditional American values.

Overall, the articles in the special theme issue, Antiquity Now: The Ancient Classical World on Television, highlight in various ways how deeply the themes and tropes of ancient mythology, literature, and culture are embedded in contemporary popular representations, while also clearly illustrating the ability of these elements to reemerge and be transformed into ever new shapes and forms on screen. Current television productions continue to use different modes of adaptation to project a connection between the ancient classical sources and modern screens, in order to elucidate some of the most powerful recent incursions of the ancient world into the popular consciousness. In the twenty-first century, television series represent some of the most visible, omnipresent, and compelling expressions of contemporary classical reception.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Sylvie Magerstädt

Sylvie Magerstädt is Senior Lecturer in Film and Media at the University of Notre Dame in Sydney, Australia. She is the author of TV Antiquity: Swords, Sandals, Blood and Sand (2019), Philosophy, Myth and Epic Cinema: Beyond Mere Illusions (2015), and Body, Soul and Cyberspace in Contemporary Science Fiction Cinema: Virtual Worlds and Ethical Problems (2014). Her monographs explore the revival of epic cinema at the turn of the millennium, the ethics of science fiction, and the history and aesthetics of televisual representations of the ancient world. Her work sits at the intersection of philosophy, religion, and film studies, with a special interest in mythology and onscreen classical reception.

Monica S. Cyrino

Monica S. Cyrino is Professor of Classics at the University of New Mexico, USA. She is the author of Big Screen Rome (2005); the editor of Rome, Season One: History Makes Television (2008), Screening Love and Sex in the Ancient World (2013), and Rome, Season Two: Trial and Triumph (2015); and co-editor of Classical Myth on Screen (2015), STARZ Spartacus: Reimagining an Icon on Screen (2017), and Screening Love and War in Troy: Fall of a City (2022). She has published numerous articles and book chapters and gives lectures around the world on the representation of classical antiquity on film and television. She has served as an academic consultant on several recent film and television productions.