Revealing mistake: Kevin McKidd's Scottish accent appears every now and then. For example in this episode, when he says that Marc Antony "negotiates with a whore and a dwarf at his side".
Factual error: The verse Octavia recites is from Virgilius' poem "the Aeneid". That poem was written at least a quarter of a decade after the death of Caesar.
Cleopatra: A man without sons is a man without a future.
Death Mask - S2-E7
Trivia: Herod's "gift" of 20,000 pounds of gold would be work about $290 million in today's money (20 thousand pounds = 320 million ounces x $905.00 = $290 million). However this amount of gold would have had much more purchasing power in the 1st Century BC than today as inflation was virtually unknown in Rome at that time. This is further demonstrated in that it was sufficient to purchase a whole country, Judea. As Marc Antony said "a good morning's work".
Question: Was Series 2 shortened? Series 1 had 12 episodes vs 10 for Series 2. Also some of the subplots in Series 2 didn't really go anywhere and were tied up abruptly, e.g. Tyman killing his brother.
Answer: The show became too costly to produce so they ended the season early to save money.
Shannon Jackson