zoomar said:
Carlton,
I saw the dice also, dots and all. Regarding the Roman soldiers' uniforms you gotta remember that even with a movie as iconoclastic as "Passion" Mel had to make the images fit partially with what we would expect from something set in the Roman Empire. Roman soldiers without helmets or armor on? In a movie? Really!
Also, as is clear from the very deliberate lighting and posing of the characters, many of the movie's visuals were probably intended to be more evocative of religious art rather than "reality".
I'd like to know about the Temple police, though. Their costumes really did look like something out of a post-apocalypic Mad-Max movie. Does anyone even have the slightest ideal what the military and police of first century Judea looked like?
OK, I finally got around to actually watching the miovie (it premiered here on Thursday). Here's what I put together for a different mailing list. I'd say the verdict on accuracy is pretty damning. Maybe they really don't have good archeologists in Hollywood. Maybe I should go... looks like a job opportunity. But I suspect they really just don't care. (Just saw the trailer for 'Troy'. I almost cried.)
After seeing the still pictures, I expected an indifferent film. It's not. It is unequivocally bad. To begin with:
The Romans. Roman cavalry troopers are shown wearing infantry armor and legionary helmets. Aside from the question why they would be wearing full battle kit on police duty, I'd love to see how they're actually going to use their equipment from horseback.
Pilate's guards are wearing an eclectic mix of metal and leather armor, all segmented. Leaving aside the question of whether leather segmented armor ever existed (I believe not, but the debate is still on), both patterns are based on outdated reconstructions. The leather armors broadly folloow the Lindenschmidt reconstruction while the metal ones (complete with a square opening exposing the upper chest and neck) are based on that at the Museo della Civilta Romana. Neither is at all credible. Now, if there was any need to hunt down aged scholars in obscure libraries to find out, I would be more predisposed to forgive such lapses. However, ever since the findings in Newstead and Corbridge (which are well over 30 years old by now) segmented armor is something you can get by mail order. By the way, the leather armor is both too tight and too thin to be good for anything much other than S&M games. (of course you could argue that is what they were doing, but let's not go there)
Ditto the helmets - spangenmhelm constructions with what looks like leather insets (though they could be iron). Not at all credible - every single Roman helmet recovered is spun bronze, well into the third century. And let's not even talk about the abomination on the officer's head... Cancellaria relief, with a vengeance.
Pilate's armor is not bad, though he shouldn't be wearing one (neither would he be wearing a toga while quietly reading at home - those things are awkward, hot, and cumbersome).
The arms of the Roman troops are reasonably acceptable if you're not looking at the details. Mainz-type gladii and standard daggers (though the belt fastening is wrong) and an eclectic mix of lanceae and pila (in one picture, two patrolling soldiers carry pila - medium-range battlefield weapons designed for formation combat - through a city seething with rebellion, but left their shields at the depot. It is these touches that tell you they didn't care...) Needless to say the pila are all wrong in the details. As to the shields, the metal plating is far too thick and copious, the shields too small, and they are all legionary designs, an honor that is unusual for an equestrian governor.
The Roman soldiers all wear brownish narrow sleeved tunics - not found in the archeological record, but at least possible - and leather knee breeches - typical of the cavalry and possible, though at this date unlikely, in the infantry. While it is obvious that some of them outrank the others, no insignia of rank are visible at all. Most of the civilians have clothing designs that are broadly credible, but the coarseness of the weave and the prevailing muted, natural colours stretch our credulity in a setting and city where pageantry was the order of the day. Certainly the court of a Roman governor, however insignificant in the great scheme of things, would use color to set itself apart from the unwashed masses. This goes even more for Hellenistic ceremonial parade units like the temple guards or Herod's bodyguard. Jesus' 'seamless garment' is for once interpreted correctly as a tunic, though it obviously has visible seams in the film.
The temple guards are very broadly based on Hellenistic-Nabatean armor designs known from contemporary reliefs from Petra and Palmyra. The execution, however, is lamentable, with decorated Boeotian or Thracian helmets interpreted as leather caps (based most likely on a rather inexplicable crocodile skin headcovering in the British Museum sometimes interpreted as a helmet and variously attributed to Ptolemaic, Roman, Byzantine or Umayyad times). The armor in the oroginal was obviously intended to be scale or lamellar metal, but it is executed in leather, rendering it ineffective and causing a vaguely menacing, dishevelled look. The clothing is far too coarse and drab - certainly, colored tunics and contrasting sashes are in order. The sight, at the last, of a crudely hewn spearshaft snaps our already stretched credulity.
The court of Herod Antipater can at best be viewed as a caricature of all Near Eastern stereotypes. Geometric decorative patterns? Stars of David on the capitals? Please! The man is a king in the tradition of a Hellenistic dynasty!
Peter's blade is very credible, a short, Greek-designed stabbing sword for close combat.
I can not comment on the Aramic, but the Latin was spoken with a heavy Italian accent, but without the elided endings, abraded vowels and clipped forms we know to have been common at the time. They all speak Ciceronian style, which is about as credible as 16th-century Englishmen all speaking Shakespearean blank verse.
Now, on to architecture. The temple is shown as a crumbling, ancient structure ion tune with the decrepit gerontocracy that the Synedrion represents (you're half waiting for one of them to start drooling). Unfortunately, at the time the Herosdian temple was still practically new, a great Hellenistic structure thought (likely rightly) to be the greatest and richest temple in the world. It would have been a lot whiter, bigger, shinier, more colorful, and imposing. It also had solid monolithic columns (which we know because one was found) rather than the ageing masonry structures depicted (again, in spite of common movie cliches masonry columns were not commonly displayed. They were the cheap solution and frequently hidden, though of course widely used)
Much the same goes for the fortress Antonia, a structure here at best worthy of a second-century cohortal guardpost. The Antonia was one of the largest and most representative military buildings of its time, and it would certainly have had all the bells and whistles. It was also not much older than 50 years and kept in good condition by its users, not the crumbling structure we see in the film. Finally, the idea of indoor walls being plain open masonry is simply ridiculous. Nobody likes ashlar that much. Pilate and his wife drink from golden cups, surely they can afford plaster! BTW, everybody else drinks from very credible ceramic and eats very credible bread - that bit was done well.
I have to admit I didn't look whether the riders use stirrups, but given the overall quality of the movie I almost expect them to.