Veni, Vidi, Voice

I had never watched it before, but the other day I stumbled onto about 10 minutes of the HBO show Rome. Some dude's yapping with his girl, and all of a sudden I'm like... is that a pseudo British accent? Hmm, I think, is that how Romans spoke? Lilting British accents? Then it occurs to me...how would we possibly have any idea how the acient Romans spoke? Are there tapes laying around; did we find an old version of YovTvbe? I mean, for all we know the Romans shouted at each other at the top of their lungs "HI REMUS HOW ARE YOU!!!" "JULIUS I AM FINE!!!! YOU ARE LOOKING GOOD!!" Or maybe like Buford Pusser. "Et tu, Brutus? Aw heck, giton outta heya now boy, I'm fixin' a die!!"

So then who's the wizard deciding "you know, I bet they spoke THIS way..."? It's not okay for us just to say "you know what, we have no idea how ancient Romans spoke, so everybody's just keeping their normal fucking voices"? Or hell, if it's a bunch of Italians, wouldn't the default accent be like this guy's:







"oh eh, oh yeah, manus manum friggin lavat, yo!"