Series 3 — Episode 10
The Grandeur That Was Rome

Production Schedule

Episode 60
Production Number : 3607
VTR/ABC/2869
Teddington Studio 1

Thursday 18th July 1963

Friday 19th July 1963

Running time

Expected: 51′25″
Actual running time with bumpers: 51′46″

The bumpers between the acts are generally 10 seconds from fade in to the “End of Act” bumper to the end of audio before the commercial, a 10 second still without audio, then cut to the next act bumper. This would play with the theme for around 10 seconds. Accordingly, with the episodes being in 3 acts, the running time of the action is approximately a minute less than listed above, minus the opening credits (normally 0′16″ with a 2″ fade) and closing credits (anywhere from 0′41″ to 1′20″, hard cut or 1″ fade or mix).

Equipment

Transmission

TV Times listing

Murders

Click a name to see the face

Continuity and trivia

Time codes here include the Studio Canal logo from the remastered 2010 set, which runs for 18 seconds.

1. The episode takes its title from a quotation of Edgar Allan Poe’s poem, “To Helen” - “To the glory that was Greece, And the grandeur that was Rome”.
2. 2:15 — Bruno decides the new senator for Singapore, Sears, will be known as Spartacus, gladiator of Rome.
3. 2:30 — Bruno and Marcus toast each other with the words “Audentes fortuna juvat” (Fortune favours the bold - a quote from Vergil’s Aeneid, 10, 284. Bruno later repeats the toast with Steed, who looks blankly at him until Bruno provides the translation.
4. 2:40 — Marcus reports that the flies are warbling in the Caucasus, the peasants itch and go deaf in Provence and Madrid ("Some will die", comments Bruno), and the pigs are walking backwards.
5. 6:00–6:18 — long smear, maybe an out of focus hair at top of picture and a small spot at top left. They reappear at 8:45–9:10 (Bruno CU) and 13:20 (Eastow CU)
6. 9:11 — A first? Steed pours Cathy and himself a glass of Veuve Cliquot.
7. 9:27 — Cathy’s view through the microscope is clearly not slides at all, but vignetted pictures of cell structures from a science book.
8. 11:13 — the “infected grain” is clearly the same picture as pointed to by Cathy in the book moments earlier.
9. 12:39 — the vision is out of focus on the change of shot.
10. 13:07- Appleton struggles with the word “necessity”
11. 18:45 — Eastow refers to “Mrs. Dale” then corrects himself
12. 27:30 and 48:30 — Sir Bruno pronounces “grandeur” as “grander”
13. 30:30 — there’s a small spot at the top right of the screen.
14. 31:39 — the cameraman fluffs the CU of Cathy, first she’s out of focus and he pans sharply to the right, then the camera collides with something (with a dull thud) and the vision leaps as the camera shakes
15. 41:44 — Just before Steed’s capture at the bacchanal, Sir Bruno, leaving Octavia back stage goes to stage right, pats a girl, then proceed to stage centre, the camera drawing out before him. As the camera pulls back, it promptly crashes into the couch upon which Lucius, Marcus and Rosemary Chalmers are locked in a carnal embrace, making the picture shake - the extras in the background look perturbed, but Hugh Burden carries on without more than raising an eyebrow.
16. 45:12 — Lucius raps his sword on the tomb as a threat to the hidden Steed, but it sounds like a bit of wood...
17. 47:29 — Steed’s umbrella has a sword inside it, perhaps the first bit of umbrella gadgetry for the series.
18. 49:42 — Bruno leads a cheer : “Pax, Imperium et Res Secundae.” - “Peace, the Empire and prosperity!”
19. 50:57 — Public school humour in the closing scene -
    Cathy, musing over Bruno’s death, says, “Ambition’s debt is paid” (quoting Shakespeare’s Juluis Caesar Act 3, Scene 1, line 84.
    Steed makes up some pseudo-Latin “Alius romedea segovia sunt aliis” (because Macnee got it wrong, the script correctly reads: “Alia remedia graviora sunt aliis” - “Some solutions are more serious than others”). When Cathy replies “Faber est quisque fortunae suae” (a Latin proverb, quoted by both Sallust and Appius Claudius Caecus, which means “Everyone is the architect of their own fortune.” or in a more modern parlance “You dig your own hole.”), Macnee squints at her in disbelief then laughs out loud and says, “You must be mad!”
20. This episode has a similar, if more outré, plot to the Emma Peel episode Silent Dust.