Editorial Content for SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome
Contributors
Reviewer (text)
For any casual fan of Roman history, classicist Mary Beard, well known for her books on antiquity and BBC documentaries, is a familiar face. For diehard ancient history lovers, Beard is a veritable Olympian. Her sage insights into Rome, advocacy against Twitter and ageist trolls, promotion of feminism, and ability to make the ancient world relatable and comprehensible are second to none. And in her latest book, a monumental history of Rome called SPQR, Beard dons a laurel wreath and delivers an academic triumph.
Reexamining Roman history is a monumental labor. The scope of the task, covering centuries of antiquity and secondary and tertiary sources, is gargantuan. So where Beard kicks off SPQR is intriguing: not with the chronological beginning, but with one of the most infamous events in Roman history --- Cicero’s foiling of the aristocrat Catiline’s plot against the state in 63 B.C. The event is ingrained in the minds of generations of Latin students, thanks to the presence of Cicero’s speeches against Catiline in school curricula.
"Beard rallies her momentum each time to deliver a triumphant Roman read that is sure to appear on school curricula and holiday wishlists alike."
But Beard doesn’t rehash what many of her readers already know, instead crafting a story that sounds all-too-familiar to a modern audience in its historical implications. Her version of the Catalinarian conspiracies hints at issues we still face today, like questions over homeland security versus individuals’ rights. In short, Cicero and the Romans dealt with issues that every country still deals with; the problems of ancient Rome are just as relevant to the ordinary citizenry now as they were more than two millennia ago. This analogy is the perfect way to kick off an epic history of Rome.
Over the next 500 pages, Beard reconsiders traditional notions of Rome, all while attempting to construct a new historical narrative. This one is focused on the people, the individuals of all classes, as hinted in the title (SPQR = Senatus Populusque Romanus, the Senate and the People of Rome). She balances important chronological events with smaller details, like tombstone epitaphs, that illuminate fascinating points in ancient lives. And her intriguing insights and contemplations of Roman ideology never fail to enthrall.
The sheer immensity of SPQR can sometimes bog down the narrative, whether the reader is an avid or a casual history fan. But Beard rallies her momentum each time to deliver a triumphant Roman read that is sure to appear on school curricula and holiday wishlists alike.
Teaser
Ancient Rome was an imposing city even by modern standards, a sprawling imperial metropolis of more than a million inhabitants that served as the seat of power for an empire that spanned from Spain to Syria. Yet how did all this emerge from what was once an insignificant village in central Italy? In SPQR, world-renowned classicist Mary Beard narrates the unprecedented rise of a civilization that even 2,000 years later still shapes many of our most fundamental assumptions about power, citizenship, responsibility, political violence, empire, luxury and beauty.
Promo
Ancient Rome was an imposing city even by modern standards, a sprawling imperial metropolis of more than a million inhabitants that served as the seat of power for an empire that spanned from Spain to Syria. Yet how did all this emerge from what was once an insignificant village in central Italy? In SPQR, world-renowned classicist Mary Beard narrates the unprecedented rise of a civilization that even 2,000 years later still shapes many of our most fundamental assumptions about power, citizenship, responsibility, political violence, empire, luxury and beauty.
About the Book
A sweeping, revisionist history of the Roman Empire from one of our foremost classicists.
Ancient Rome was an imposing city even by modern standards, a sprawling imperial metropolis of more than a million inhabitants, a "mixture of luxury and filth, liberty and exploitation, civic pride and murderous civil war" that served as the seat of power for an empire that spanned from Spain to Syria. Yet how did all this emerge from what was once an insignificant village in central Italy? In S.P.Q.R., world-renowned classicist Mary Beard narrates the unprecedented rise of a civilization that even two thousand years later still shapes many of our most fundamental assumptions about power, citizenship, responsibility, political violence, empire, luxury and beauty.
From the foundational myth of Romulus and Remus to 212 ce --- nearly a thousand years later --- when the emperor Caracalla gave Roman citizenship to every free inhabitant of the empire, S.P.Q.R. (the abbreviation of "The Senate and People of Rome") examines not just how we think of ancient Rome but challenges the comfortable historical perspectives that have existed for centuries by exploring how the Romans thought of themselves: how they challenged the idea of imperial rule, how they responded to terrorism and revolution, and how they invented a new idea of citizenship and nation.
Opening the book in 63 bce with the famous clash between the populist aristocrat Catiline and Cicero, the renowned politician and orator, Beard animates this “terrorist conspiracy,” which was aimed at the very heart of the Republic, demonstrating how this singular event would presage the struggle between democracy and autocracy that would come to define much of Rome’s subsequent history. Illustrating how a classical democracy yielded to a self-confident and self-critical empire, S.P.Q.R. reintroduces us, though in a wholly different way, to famous and familiar characters --- Hannibal, Julius Caesar, Cleopatra, Augustus and Nero, among others --- while expanding the historical aperture to include those overlooked in traditional histories: the women, the slaves and ex-slaves, conspirators, and those on the losing side of Rome’s glorious conquests.
Like the best detectives, Beard sifts fact from fiction, myth and propaganda from historical record, refusing either simple admiration or blanket condemnation. Far from being frozen in marble, Roman history, she shows, is constantly being revised and rewritten as our knowledge expands. Indeed, our perceptions of ancient Rome have changed dramatically over the last 50 years, and S.P.Q.R., with its nuanced attention to class inequality, democratic struggles, and the lives of entire groups of people omitted from the historical narrative for centuries, promises to shape our view of Roman history for decades to come.
