Scipio

Scipio is a senior Roman senator of the old aristocracy, proud, patrician, and immovably hostile to Caesar's ambitions. Allied with Cato and the Republican old guard, he trades in influence and marriage alliances, using his daughter's position at Pompey's side to keep the levers of power in his own family's hands.

Paul Jesson plays him with the dry, entitled certainty of a man who believes Rome's traditions exist to serve him personally. The writing never softens his snobbery into charm; instead it lets his cold political calculation feel entirely of a piece with the Republic's genuine, crumbling grandeur.