This decent Cubby Bear cartoon plays with some common tropes of Roman-era films: the fiddling, laurel-crowned pig playing a violin, to suggest Nero; a chariot race with lots of gags to recall BEN-HUR; and lots of gags that suggest a modern stadium audience with butchers hawking anachronistic peanuts and hot dogs.
It's not a great cartoon by any means. It lacks the sheer, anarchic rat-a-tat gag construction of the pre-Code Fleischers or the character-based gags of Looney Tunes, but this was a relatively weak period in cartoons. The Production Code was being enforced and the van Beuren studio was more interested in maintaining its schedules and budgets. Still, there are a few nice gags in it.
It's not a great cartoon by any means. It lacks the sheer, anarchic rat-a-tat gag construction of the pre-Code Fleischers or the character-based gags of Looney Tunes, but this was a relatively weak period in cartoons. The Production Code was being enforced and the van Beuren studio was more interested in maintaining its schedules and budgets. Still, there are a few nice gags in it.