SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome

A ubiquitous commentator on affairs both ancient and domestic in her native Great Britain, Mary Beard is something of an institution. Her latest written work, SPQR, is an interpretive history of ancient Rome aimed at a lay audience. Beard eschews a strictly chronological narrative in favor of a more thematic approach, peppering her history with insights and personal perspectives. It seems to me that any prospective reader should already have a firm grasp on the basics of Roman history, although the litany of awards SPQR has garnered, including New York Times Bestseller status, suggests that many disagree. Beard begins her history at the dawn of Roman civilization and ends with Emperor Caracalla’s grant of citizenship to everyone living in the empire in 212 AD. She starts by writing that Rome’s seven kings were likely more myth than reality. It is highly unlikely, she says, that just seven men served over the course of 250 years. It is noteworthy, she says, that many of the enduring features of Roman life were introduced by the kings. “Abominated as they were, kings were credited with creating Rome,” Beard writes. For instance, Numa created much of Rome’s religion and Servius Tullius developed the census and the associated centuriate assembly system that gave weight to the wealthier classes. Moreover, some of the kings were clearly Etruscan in background, which underscored from the earliest days that Roman leaders could come from outside of the city, a key theme of Roman self-identify. Much like the United States, Rome was a city of asylum where anyone could rise to the top. Next Beard turns to the Republic, which she is quick to note did not spring full grown in the wake of the rape of Lucretia in 509 BC. Rather, she argues, it took centuries for the Republic of Cicero’s day to develop. Major turning points occurred in the early fourth century BC. First came the Roman destruction of Veii, Rome’s Trojan War, in 396, and then the sack of Rome by the Gauls in 390 BC. The pattern of conquest and fear of conquest was thus established, she writes. “Roman military expansion drove Roman sophistication.” The sophistication in building the massive defensive walls around the city and the logistics of incorporating large contingents of allied forces required “infrastructure unthinkable in the fifth century.” Next, in 367 BC, the plebs were allowed to stand for the consulship. Henceforth, Beard writes, being a patrician “carried a whiff of snobbery attached to it and not much more.” Beard agrees with the historian Polybius who saw the Roman political system as responsible for the success of the city during the Republic. The mixed constitution provided the state with strength and stability. She writes that the tradition of ancestor worship and the competition for political office and military spoils is what drove the expansion of empire, not any formal plan of imperial conquest. It was a coercive empire, she says, not one of annexation. The Latin word imperium meant “the power to issue orders that are obeyed,” and that is what the Roman’s did. However, the influx of conquered people and wealth would challenge what it meant to be traditionally Roman. Next, she points to the year 146 BC as a turning point, the year both Carthage and Corinth were razed. Roman violence was suddenly turned inward, beginning with the controversial tribunates of the Gracchi brothers. The road to Augustus, she claims, runs directly from the brothers to Marius versus Sulla and then Pompey versus Caesar. Each did their part to undermine key elements of the Republican system that led inexorably to dictatorship. The feud of the Gracchi brothers introduced violence to the domestic political process. The reforms of Marius allowed men without property to serve, thus turning the army into “a new style of personal militia” directly controllable by only the commanding general. Sulla added the military march on Rome and Roman soldiers spilling Roman blood, not to mention proscriptions and reviving the dictatorship. Pompey, for his part, climbed to the top of the political system outside of the natural order of the Republic, gaining commands without officially holding office. Caesar was just a culmination of his predecessors’ careers. Beard affirms the remarkable legacy of Augustus in the transition from Republic to Empire, “a puzzling and contradictory revolutionary.” Perhaps his greatest reform – and certainly his most expensive – was the introduction of pensions for soldiers. No longer were the Roman legions dependent on their commander for taking care of them. Now after 20 years of service soldiers received 12 years salary or the equivalent in land. The reform cost an estimated 450 sesterces or half of the annual imperial income. But it effectively removed the army from politics, at least for the time being. Augustus also made the Senate hereditary for three generations and allowed the Senate’s bills to have the weight of law. Now that Augustus was solely responsible for receiving positions in the imperial infrastructure, elections slowly died off and the old patron/client system, once the bedrock of Roman society and politics, was rendered nugatory. Although Augustus held the consulship 13 times, the position had largely become symbolic. The Roman Republic was dead but kept alive as fiction by filling old positions and offices. Or as Beard explains it, “Augustus was cleverly adapting the traditional idioms to serve a new politics justifying and making comprehensible a new axis of power by systematically reconfiguring the old language.” Concerning the first two centuries of emperors, Beard writes that for all of their idiosyncrasies and outlandish behavior they were far more similar than they were different. “There is no sign at all,” she writes, “that the character of the ruler affected the basic template of government at home or abroad in any significant way.” Moreover, “there was hardly any such thing as a general policy for running the empire or an overarching strategy of military deployment.” The emperor did represent a new tier in the structure of command, but “his role was largely a reactive one; he was not a strategist or forward planner.” The truth was that the emperorship provided “a remarkably stable structure of rule,” at least for the first two centuries of the empire. Between ascension of Augustus in 31 BC and the assassination of Commodus in 192 AD there were just 14 emperors (not counting the three short-term emperors of 69 AD). In a period half as long, between 193 and 293, there were no fewer than 70. For all of its stability, however, succession was an enduring challenge, as naming a new emperor always came down to “some combination of luck, improvisation, plotting, violence and secret deals.” In closing, SPQR is a marvelous synthesis of one renowned scholar’s take on one thousand years of Roman history. I’ve read much Roman history, particularly the Republican period, but I learned a lot from SPQR. I suspect Beard has delivered something very few authors can, a learned piece of scholarship that advances our understanding of Roman times that is as much admired by her academic peers at is enjoyed by the general educated public.

Mary Beard is perhaps the best known and most popular historian of Ancient Rome. After reading SPQR, I can understand why. Although, not without flaws, SPQR presents a concise and very readable history of Ancient Rome from its beginnings (legendary and otherwise) to the year 212. SQPR advances more or less in historical order. For each broad period, it discusses culture, society, and history before it jumps to another period. While some have called the book “revisionist,” to my mind it does an excellent job of presenting different hypotheses—some traditional and some new. While this is not a page turner in the classic sense of the term, it is well-written and easy to read. Beard covers the major battles and political events, however much of the book focuses on what we know and do not know about Rome’s people, its subjects, its society, and its culture. She does an impressive job bringing together archeological evidence, documents, and common sense to reconstruct Ancient Rome. Her aim, as she explains, is to show a full portrait of ancient Rome, based on what we know and on our current thinking. In other words, the history of “the Senate and People of Rome” the English rendering of the SPQR. Before 390 BCE or so, we only have Rome’s founding myths and legends. Beard looks at these stories and at many different elements of archeological evidence. This allows her to put together a number of different possibly histories of the early history. Did Romulus found Rome after being raised by a she-wolf and killing his twin brother? No. But many of the origin stories and legends may have some basis in fact. As the book moves forward, it focuses more and more on what we know from the documentary evidence and tries to answer questions about the period. For example, how revolutionary or populist were Julius Caesar or rabble rousers like Clodius? How dedicated was Brutus and friends to the cause of liberty? How did Romans transfer large sums of money? Or how many people really knew how to read and write (20%?). Beard offers a great deal of insight about the Roman republic, both as it rises to power and is it falls into civil war and political chaos. I found her discussion of the rise of warlords (Sulla, Pompey, Caesar, etc.) quite engaging. As Rome became richer and more powerful, it was transformed from an oligarchic republic to a failed state. More money, greater inequality, and less stability. To my mind, the books starts to lose its steam after the reign of Augustus Caesar (31 BC to 14 AD). Augustus (who was still called Octavian), through cunning and military force, is able to stabilize the republic and create a monarchy that restores the peace. Beard explains in detail how Augustus sets up his republican monarchy, along with its compromises and accommodations. However Beard provides little discussion of what happens next. While she does outline the reigns of the twelve legitimate emperors from Tiberius to Caracalla (there were two short civil wars during this period), it is done in short form. Possibly Nero and Domitian were not as bloody as history tells us; perhaps Caligula was not as mad as much as maddening (to the Roman elite). There is a good discussion of the expansion of Christianity in its first two centuries. Beard also discusses the expansion of “Romanization” as the empire expands. The narrative ends in 212, the year that Caracalla grants citizenship to the entire free population. This was on the cusp of the so-called “Crisis of the Third Century.” As Beard herself points out, it is not clear why citizenship was extended or what this meant in practice. I think that this date was chosen because the empire that emerged after sixty years of revolts and civil wars was a very different sort of place with very different rules. It is not an entirely satisfactory answer but at some point the book does have to end. Looking back two thousand years, it is quite common to ask what we can learn from Rome or if we (our civilization) is falling like the Roman Empire fell. Mary Beard argues that there is little that we can directly learn from Rome. From this book, I learned that a lot of modern institutions that we take for granted—ranging from targeted social safety nets to a proto-nation state to the republican government that is really an authoritarian dictatorship—have their origins in Ancient Rome. Certainly, we are not destined to repeat anything but there is much that we can learn.

Mary Beard writes in a breezy, often anecdotal, style which makes her book both informative and entertaining. SPQR covers the history of ancient Rome from its founding by Romulus to the reign of Emperor Caracalla, who, in the year 202 A.D. granted Roman citizenship to the entire free male population of the empire. This is a very ambitious work and is well worth reading. Beard not only delves into the history of ancient Rome, but also has a lot to say about its sociology. She concerns herself not only with the famous personages but also with the lower classes and their lives, with long glimpses of what went on in the bars and eateries where the ordinary people hung out. In one such establishment in Pompeii, there was a frieze picturing seven notable Greek philosophers, but rather than discussing deep philosophical topics, they are depicted as giving scatological advice. She also writes extensively on the conditions of women, slaves and freed slaves. Beard at times seems to have a cynical attitude toward the Romans; at least, toward the movers and shakers. For example, she says about the civil war between Caesar and Pompey: “The irony was that Pompey, their figurehead, was no less an autocrat than Caesar. Whichever side won, as Cicero again observed, the result was to be much the same: slavery for Rome. What came to be seen as a war between liberty and one man rule was really a war to choose between rival emperors.” Personally, I have a bit of difficulty swallowing this, because Pompey, as egotistical as he was, had ample opportunities to march on Rome and take over as dictator in the manner of Sulla and Caesar, but he never did. And if Cato the Younger, arguably the most obstinately principled notable in history, believed that Pompey had the same ambitions as Caesar to become an autocrat, we would have declared “plague on both your houses” and stayed home rather than followed Pompey into exile. Beard relies on the writings of Cicero for much of her analysis, and she gives him extensive coverage in SPQR. This is understandable since more of Cicero’s writings have survived than any other writer of his time. Beard has no liking for Augustus, and at one point refers to him as a “reptile.” She does make it very clear that he was a man of remarkable gifts, able to walk that tightrope of Roman power and gaining support of the Roman elite where his Great Uncle Julius Caesar failed to do so. It probably helped that the proscriptions of the second triumvirate killed off most of the opposition. Under Augustus’ rule the Senate ceased to be a governing body and turned into a sort of civil service. Any opposition that wasn’t killed off was bought off. She describes Augustus as “a poacher turned game keeper.” Beard also makes the point that during the next two hundred years after the end of the Republic it didn’t really matter who the emperor was or whether he was “good” or “bad.” I need to take some issue with that notion as well. If an emperor was particularly rapacious, as in the case of Nero, it could cause considerable unrest in the provinces. It was Nero’s instructions to confiscate the lands and possessions of Prasutagus, the husband of Boudicca, upon his death, that led to Boudicca’s rebellion which destroyed three Roman cities and killed an estimated 70 to 80 thousand Romans and Britons. One wonders if the same thing would have happened under a less rapacious Emperor. One suspects that Nero’s rapaciousness was also one of the causes of the full scale revolt that took place in Judea toward the end of his reign. None of the 14 emperors during this period were really “good” by modern standards, but some were more rapacious than others, and the quality of the emperor did have an effect on the running of the empire. SPQR is a meaty work with a lot of events, analysis and ideas to digest. It gives the reader a vivid insight into the various lives of the Romans, from emperor to slave.

"SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome" by Mary Beard offers an expansive and nuanced exploration of one of history's most influential civilizations. As someone deeply interested in history, I approached this book with high expectations, intrigued by the promise of insights into the Roman Republic and Empire. While there were aspects of the book I appreciated, my overall experience was mixed. **Pros:** - **Comprehensive Coverage:** Beard does an exceptional job of covering a vast period, from the foundation of Rome in the 8th century BC to the fall of the Western Roman Empire in the 5th century AD. Her ability to distill complex historical events into engaging narratives is commendable. - **Engaging Writing Style:** Beard's writing is both scholarly and accessible. She has a knack for bringing historical figures and events to life, making the reader feel as though they're witnessing history unfold. - **Thought-Provoking Analysis:** The book shines in its analysis of Roman society, politics, and culture. Beard challenges traditional narratives and invites readers to reconsider established assumptions about Rome's history and its impact on the modern world. **Cons:** - **Overwhelming Detail:** At times, the sheer amount of information and the dense presentation can be overwhelming, particularly for readers new to Roman history. Those looking for a light introduction might find SPQR a challenging starting point. - **Lack of Chronological Flow:** The book's thematic approach, while offering deep dives into specific aspects of Roman life, sometimes disrupts the chronological flow of history. This can make it difficult to follow the overall progression of Roman history. - **Limited Focus on Certain Periods:** While SPQR covers a broad timeline, certain periods and events receive less attention than others. Readers interested in specific epochs might find the coverage uneven. In conclusion, "SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome" is a compelling and deeply researched work that offers valuable insights into the complexities of Roman history. Mary Beard's expertise and passion for the subject are evident throughout. However, the book's density and thematic structure may not cater to all tastes, particularly those seeking a more straightforward chronological history or a lighter read. For those willing to engage with its depth and complexity, SPQR provides a rewarding exploration of ancient Rome's legacy.

There is so much to like and recommend about this book that it is difficult to chose where to begin. In her opening chapter, Dr. Beard does a remarkable job of detailing the "historiography" of ancient Rome: the decisions historians make in writing history, and the challenges and obstacles they face in doing so. For example, the historical record itself is problematic, as the vast majority of written sources are either by or about the elites, slanting the narrative from the get-go (although, as Dr. Berad points out, there are historians and archaeologists who are working very hard to learn the stories of the plebes). Not to mention the millions of pages that have been written about the Romans over the last 2000 years (nor to mention how the Romans themselves viewed their history). This auspicious beginning set the stage for her own examination, and an explanation of why Beard chooses to end the book in the early 3rd century (which surprised me, but I was satisfied with her choice: after Commodus, the Emperors and the Senate became less "Roman" ... an irony addressed in more detail and with more clarity than would be fitting here.) The first few chapters on early Rome and the difficulties of separating myth from history was a bit distracting (I wanted to get to the "formal" early Republic) but there is wisdom in the way Beard has organized the book: the myths and tales the Romans told about themselves not only reflects their values and identity, but also created an image and narrative by which future Romans would compare themselves and and ideal to which they hoped to live up to. As the Republic gradually transformed itself into an Empire, this view of themselves and their past profoundly impacted their weltanschauung. While recognizing the difficulties in telling the stories of the "common" Roman, I thought Beard did a remarkable job of painting a picture of what it meant for the average citizen to be a Roman ("ecco Romanus sum") and how this definition of citizenship changed over time., The variety of historical evidence used - and they way in which it was used - to breathe life into these people is an example of a master historian at the peak of their abilities. In writing about the "beautiful people" - the Senators, Counsuls and Emperors, Beard also does a tremendous job of highlighting aspects of rule and relation (the "adoption" of someone into a family makes relations a very complicated matter) in order to show the Byzantine nature of power politics the later Republic and early Empire. For example, the "Five Good Emperors" (Nerva, Trajan, Hadrian, Antonius Pius and Marcus Aurelius) are often held up as models of Rome at its zenith, each Emperor selecting their successor and training them for rule. Beard shows how this narrative is not only shallow, but also in many respects inaccurate. _SPQR_ is not what I would refer to as "light reading" - but it is very well written and is accessible to the non-scholar. Considering the breadth of the topic and the volumes written by previous historians, Dr. Beard's contribution to the topic is worthy of attention. I enjoyed her writing tremendously, and was particularly impressed with the way in which she connected the Roman view of themselves with the historical record, and these with our own perceptions and understandings of these people. A recommended read.

This book is rather a puzzle to me insofar as I have set myself the task of evaluating it. It was the first comprehensive history of Rome that I have read: I having received Heather's and Holland's more topically constricted histories--the declining centuries of, or the last days of, the Roman Republic--as alluring Christmas scholar-presents in past years, and I having avidly studied them in respective Januarys; and, in recent months, having proposed Professor Kenneth Harl's Teaching Company courses, "Rome and the Barbarians" and "The Fall of Paganism and the Rise of Early Christianity," for myself and studied them accordingly. Before Professor Beard's book even arrived on my doorstep, from the very title that she chose, I thought I intuited the underlying unifying principle she had in mind for her comprehensive-yet-personal tome, that of Roman citizenship from its beginning to its dilution if not dissolution under Caracalla, and, in anticipation, I warmly approved of a unifying criterion that sounded to me at once serviceable, interesting, and original. Having completed SPQR--and in what I should mention was record time for me for a 560-pager, so congenially did she chatter me along--I am, however, not sure why Beard didn't follow through to full development what I took to be her own promising criterion of organization. SPQR's first chapter is entitled "Cicero's Finest Hour" while it's second is "In The Beginning," the second chapter moving back from Cicero's time, the first century B.C., to the Roman Regal period. I agree with another reviewer of SPQR here above that the Regal Period bits in SPQR, because it sheds so much light on Roman identity and that because Beard is so good at, and so balanced in, as she puts it, "reading between the lines" of Roman praise and blame, comprises the most novel and intriguing component of the book. There is, however, no beginning, as in Professor Harl's course, with an outline of contrasting ancient conceptions of citizenship and Rome's uniqueness in admitting foreigners to what, for the Greeks, was a blood- and cult-sacred institution. Nor does she keep progression (or decline) towards Caracalla's dilution of citizenship in view as we move through the book. She simply tells us, in the introduction, that, while other historians have done thus and so, her story begins with Cicero and ends with Caracalla's act; and, then, she drops the subject. I like the idea, if that's what it was, to start with the Roman's struggling with dictatorship in the last years of the Republic and looking back for guidance to their foundation, which we then turn to and look at through their eyes in the next chapter, but Beard, not only doesn't do enough, she does hardly anything to keep us "on track" by reminding us of the reasons behind her sequencing. As I said, we are chattered along congenially--and with erudition, for sure, and a talent for seeing all sides, even (but not obsessively) sides lost or overshadowed, of a Roman controversy, but I simply don't get the organizational principles that should have undergirded SPQR.

Professor Beard has written an interesting book that is a pleasure to read -- learned, witty, and no-nonsense. It is not, however for those new to the subject. She begins in medias res, as it were, by studying Cicero's reaction to the Catiline 'conspiracy' and uses it as a meditation on the idea of Rome. This is just as much philosophy as history. That accomplished, she then proceeds to give us the rudiments of the period from the beginning of the city to the reign of Caracalla. A lot of crucial episodes are given short shrift, however, and there is little narrative cohesion. A lot of time is spent examining the first 500 years of Rome and Beard leaves a lot of bodies in her wake as she demolishes the myths and the pretensions of those who 'know' the story. Having disposed of a large chunk of time, Beard seems to concentrate on what interests her about the Republic and the Empire, with many fascinating digressions on society, slavery, the place of women and other interesting topics. While she gives us one of the best accounts of the Gracchi I have ever read, the last hundred years of the Republic are a little muddled. Why Sulla before Marius? Where are Cinna and Carbo? As beard assumes the reader knows a lot about the period, the first and second triumvirates are barely mentioned. Frankly, I found this brevity to be unnecessary. The imperial period is not treated as a series of reigns as Beard brilliantly discusses the Augustan system as an inevitable result of empire. All those territories added in an ad hoc manner needed an executive to administer them, she avers, and while the system was not perfect, it was on many levels an improvement on the republican model, where many provincial governors saw their mandates as a license to steal. I wish Beard had made more of how efficient some of the emperors, even the most notorious, were as imperial administrators -- Tiberius, Claudius and Domitian being among the best. Beard uses the example of Pliny the Younger as governor of Bithynia to illustrate the conscientiousness of Trajan as administrator (using the letters of Pliny himself). One is led to wonder that if Trajan paid this much attention to Bithynia, how much more so would he have been in the administration of, say, Egypt? Beard does defer to Suetonius and Tacitus for juicy tidbits on the Julio-Claudian and Flavian emperors but makes little attempt at critiquing their stories (and omitting that Tacitus especially had an axe to grind concerning Domitian). As for the so-called 'good emperors', other than the aforementioned Trajan and a little on Hadrian, it's as if Antoninus Pius, Lucius Verus and Marcus Aurelius were ciphers. Beard's penultimate chapter delineates Caracalla's grant of citizenship to every free inhabitant of the empire. It is a very well-done and interesting discussion of what that meant -- and what it didn't, and the varied reactions of the newly enfranchised. Beard concludes with a brief look at what followed in the third century CE and the destruction of the Augustan system. Professor Beard's book was a joy to read, despite its deficiencies as an overall narrative. Those wishing for a background for this book should read Michael Grant's History of Rome (and anything else by him on the subject), Ronald Syme's The Roman Revolution (concerning the destruction of the Republic), and the magisterial History of Rome by Theodor Mommsen. Although written in the nineteenth century the latter is still excellent (aside from the moralizing). There are new books by Tom Holland, which I haven't read yet. Of course, for sheer pleasure, one can't go wrong with Tacitus, Suetonius and, perhaps, Dio Cassius. Juvenal and Martial, though not historians, are nevertheless essential to get the 'feel' of Rome. To conclude, this book is well worth the time to read it. Her writing rates five stars but it is important to remember that it is not a traditional narrative history.

Reading during COVID-19 has allowed me to catch up a bit (though certainly not all) on my backlist of books to read. I suppose I had deferred reading SPQR because despite positive reviews I thought the material might be a bit too dry. I was wrong (again). SPQR is for the most part a fascinating dive into Roman history from its earlier days until a few centuries after the birth of Christ. What makes the book so accessible is the conversational style of author Mary Beard, who not only knows the material cold but is very adept in explaining it in an engaging and non-condescending manner. I would enjoy having been a student in one of her university classes. The reader is treated to a truly remarkable cast of characters from Romulus & Remus (did they really exist?) to Julius Caesar to Marc Antony to Cicero to Augustus (I never knew my birth month was named after this first Roman emperor) to Nero and so many others. Beard readily admits many times during this book how little evidence exists to make definitive judgments about leading figures, events, and Roman life at various times. Still, it is remarkable how seemingly inconsequential archaeological findings can reveal so much. And these findings continued close to the publication of the book and presumably have continued to this day. Beard does much with what she has to work with to draw strong portraits of Roman leaders. The book allows you to look past the marble statues (a significant number of which apparently do not reflect the actual visage of the figures) to the weaknesses and frailties of leaders to remind us how human they were – flaws and all. Yes, at times, the reading does go a bit into the weeds, but author Beard then quickly pulls us out and places us on the road to find out. As a relative novice, I found this overview book to provide me a wonderful introduction into all things Roman. Thanks to her bibliographic sources at the end of the book and other sources, I will now focus on a few key events and figures to further my knowledge.

Not the story of Rome you want but story of Rome you need. An extremely insightful work by Mary Beard into the history of Ancient Rome, its emperors, citizens, slaves and whatnot. First chapters may scream challenging book, but as the book progresses, you’ll see why the Author provides such rich content and notice that you have actually learned something. Thank you MB

great

Arrived ripped

Affascinante storia dell'antica Roma. Ho acquistato anche altri due libri di questa autrice. Consigliato

Easily the most accessible and thorough book on Ancient Rome I have read. The writing is witty and the research is top notch. I highly recommend this edition for any history lover's shelf.