I had not seen this series in many years and re-viewed it last week. One thing I had not noticed before was the pairing of older actresses with younger husbands. It wasn't intended to be literal, but the poor guys kept getting killed off and the women lived to play in later episodes, so I guess the casting people decided to go with making the older women look as young as possible rather than the other way around. That was a good choice. It still was jarring to see Germanicus' wife looking more like his mother...ditto Augustus and Livia.<br /><br />But this is a trivial. This excellent series inspired me to read book of Robert Graves' books (I Claudius and Claudius the God)and I am the richer for it. One can't help but wonder how on earth the males in the stories could possibly been as thick headed as they were about the arch villianess, Livia, and that surely wasn't actually the case. Watch out if she offered to nurse you to health! One thing for sure, those were tough times to live in and one wonders if the aristocracy of Rome was that dangerous, what were the "rabble" like? <br /><br />Great acting all the way around. A wonderful and brutal study of a wonderful and brutal time.