SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome
Mary Beard, 2015
Liveright
608 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780871404237
Summary
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 fifty 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. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—January 1, 1955
• Where—Much Wenlock, Shopshire, England, U.K.
• Education—B.A., M.A., Ph.D., Cambridge University
• Awards—(See "Honors" below)
• Currently—lives in England
Winifred Mary Beard is an English Classical scholar. She is Professor of Classics at the University of Cambridge a fellow of Newnham College, and Royal Academy of Arts Professor of ancient literature. She is also the classics editor of The Times Literary Supplement, and author of the blog, "A Don's Life," which appears in The Times as a regular column. Her frequent media appearances and sometimes controversial public statements have led to her being described as "Britain's best-known classicist."
Youth and education
Beard, an only child, was born in Much Wenlock, Shropshire, England. Her mother, Joyce Emily Beard, was a headmistress and an enthusiastic reader. Her father, Roy Whitbread Beard worked as an architect in Shrewsbury. She recalled him as "a raffish public-schoolboy type and a complete wastrel, but very engaging."
Beard attended Shrewsbury High School, a private school for girls. During the summer she participated in archaeological excavations; this was to earn money for recreational spending.
At the age of eighteen she was interviewed for a place at Newnham College, Cambridge, and sat for the then-compulsory entrance exam. She had thought of going to King's, but rejected it when she discovered the college did not offer scholarships to women.
Beard received a BA (Honors) at Newnham, which in time was converted to an MA. She remained at Cambridge for her 1982 Ph.D. thesis entitled, The state religion in the late Roman Republic: a study based on the works of Cicero.
Feminism
Beard discovered during her first year at Newnham, an all woman's school, that some men in the university held dismissive attitudes toward the academic potential of women. It was an attitude that served to strengthen her determination to succeed. She also developed feminist views that have remained "hugely important" in her later life. Although she later described "modern orthodox feminism" as partly cant, she has also said that should could not "understand what it would be to be a woman without being a feminist."
Career
From 1979 to 1983 Beard lectured in Classics at King's College London. She returned to Cambridge in 1984 as a Fellow of Newnham College—the only woman lecturer in the Classics faculty. That same year she published, with Michael Crawford, Rome in the Late Republic.
In 1992 she became Classics editor of The Times Literary Supplement.
In 2004, Beard became Professor of Classics at Cambridge. She also was elected Visiting Sather Professor of Classical Literature for 2008–2009 at the University of California, Berkeley, where she delivered a series of lectures on "Roman Laughter."
In 2010, on BBC Two, Beard presented the graphic historical documentary, Pompeii: Life and Death in a Roman Town, submitting remains from the town to forensic tests, aiming to show a snapshot of the lives of the residents prior to the eruption of Vesuvius.
In 2011 she took part in a television series, Jamie's Dream School on Channel 4, and for BBC Two in 2012 she wrote and presented the three part television series, Meet the Romans with Mary Beard, a series which attempted to show how ordinary people lived in Rome, what she called "the world's first global metropolis."
In 2013, Beard became the pin-up girl for The Oldie, the UK's version of the US's AARP magazine.
In August 2014, Beard was one of 200 public figures who were signatories to a letter to The Guardian opposing Scottish independence in the run-up to the September referendum on that issue.
Controversy
Shortly after the 11 September 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center, Beard was one of several authors invited to contribute articles on the topic to the London Review of Books. She wrote that once "the shock had faded," many people thought "the United States had it coming," and that "[w]orld bullies, even if their heart is in the right place, will in the end pay the price" (the so-called "Roosting Chickens argument"). In a November 2007 interview, she stated that the hostility these comments provoked had still not subsided, although she believed it had become a standard viewpoint that terrorism was associated with American foreign policy.
Personal
In 1985 Beard married Robin Cormack. She had a daughter called Zoe in 1985 and a son called Raphael in 1987.
Honors
2014 - Royal Academy of Arts, Professor of Aancient Literture
2013 - Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE)
2013 - National Book Critics Circle Award (Criticism) shortlist for Confronting the Classics
2008 - Wolfson History Prize for Pompeii: Life of a Roman Town
2005 - Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries
Books
1985 - Rome in the Late Republic (with Michael Crawford)
1989 - The Good Working Mother's Guide
1990 - Pagan Priests: Religion and Power in the Ancient World (editor with John North)
1995 - Classics: A Very Short Introduction (with John Henderson)
1998 - Religions of Rome (with John North and Simon Price)
2000 - The Invention of Jane Harrison
2001 - Classical Art from Greece to Rome (with John Henderson)
2005 - The Colosseum (with Keith Hopkins)
2007 - The Roman Triumph
2008 - Pompeii: The Life of a Roman Town
2013 - Confronting the Classics: Traditions, Adventures and Innovations
2014 - Laughter in Ancient Rome: On Joking, Tickling, and Cracking Up
2015 - SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome
(Authior bio adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 1/3/2016.)
Book Reviews
[A] sprawling but humane volume that examines nearly 1,000 years in the early history of that teeming city and empire…[Beard] is a debunker and a complicatof...and charming company. In SPQR she pulls off the difficult feat of deliberating at length on the largest intellectual and moral issues her subject presents (liberty, beauty, citizenship, power) while maintaining an intimate tone.... Ms. Beard's prose is never mandarin, yet she treats her readers like peers. She pulls us into the faculty lounge and remarks about debates that can make or end academic careers.... You come to Ms. Beard's books to meet her as much as her subjects. They are idiosyncratic and offbeat, which is to say, pleasingly hers.
Dwight Garner - New York Times
In SPQR, her wonderful concise history, Mary Beard unpacks the secrets of the city’s success with a crisp and merciless clarity that I have not seen equaled anywhere else…. We tend to think of the Romans as coarser successors to the Greeks. Yet Beard, who doubles as a Cambridge professor and a television lecturer of irresistible salty charm, shows us how the Roman Republic got underway at almost the same time as the Athenian democracy. And it evolved into just the kind of mixed system that sophisticated commentators like Aristotle and Polybius approved of.
Ferdinand Mount - New York Times Book Review
Where SPQR differs most from the standard history is in its clear-sighted honesty…. Beard tells this story precisely and clearly, with passion and without technical jargon…. SPQR is a grim success story, but one told with wonderful flair.
Greg Woolf - Wall Street Journal
Beard does precisely what few popularizers dare to try and plenty of dons can’t pull off: She conveys the thrill of puzzling over texts and events that are bound to be ambiguous, and she complicates received wisdom in the process. Her magisterial new history of Rome, SPQR…is no exception…. The ancient Romans, Beard shows, are relevant to people many centuries later who struggle with questions of power, citizenship, empire, and identity.
Emily Wilson - Atlantic
[Fun] helps define what sets Beard apart as commentator and what sets SPQR apart from other histories of Rome. Though she here claims that 50 years of training and study have led up to SPQR, Beard wears her learning lightly. As she takes us through the brothels, bars, and back alleys where the populus Romanus left their imprint, one senses, above all, that she is having fun.
James Romm - New Republic
A masterful new chronicle…. Beard is a sure-footed guide through arcane material that, in other hands, would grow tedious. Sifting myth from fact in dealing with the early history of the city, she enlivens—and deepens—scholarly debates by demonstrating how the Romans themselves shaped their legendary beginnings to short-term political ends…. Exemplary popular history, engaging but never dumbed down, providing both the grand sweep and the intimate details that bring the distant past vividly to life.
Economist
(Starred review.) The first millennium of Rome is Beard's topic in this delightful and extensive examination of what made Rome, and why we should care. Since the author is a well-known popularizer of classical studies, it is no surprise that this is a humorous and accessible work, but it is also extremely rigorous. —Margaret Heller, Loyola Univ. Chicago Libs.
Library Journal
(Starred review.) The acclaimed classicist delivers a massive history of ancient Rome...[writing] fascinatingly about how Rome grew and sustained its position.... Beard's enthusiasm for her subject is infectious and is well-reflected in her clever, thoroughly enjoyable style of writing. Lovers of Roman history will revel in this work, and new students will quickly become devotees.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:
• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)
Also, consider these LitLovers talking points to start a discussion for SPQR:
1. What are some parallels you noticed between the culture and politics of ancient Rome and our own society?
2. Mary Beard refers to exploring ancient Rome as "walking a tight rope, a very careful balancing act." What does she mean?
3. Talk about the city's double nature: its impressive achievements (e.g, architecture, legal system) versus its squalid aspects (e.g., filth, slavery).
4. Beard, in writing about Edward Gibbon's 18th-century Decline and Fll of the Roman Empire, comments that Gibbons "lived in an age when historians made judgments." She assures us, however that she will not be making judgments. Does she adhere to this promise—is she judgment-free? Whatever your answer, is it a weakness or a strengtth of her writing?
5. Why does our understanding of Roman history matter?
6. Beard says that the rulers of Rome never planned to build an empire (they didn't even have maps). What, then, was the impetus to continue conquering more land and subjugating more people until it controlled what seemed to be the whole of the inhabited world? What was the secret of its success?
7. Follow-up to Question 6: Perhaps a better question than the above is what made Rome great?
8. What was Rome's stance on immigration? Did it's openness to foreign people weaken or strengthen the empire? Any parallels to today?
9. What happened to the Roman Republic? How did it fall and lead to the rise of autocracy, to Octavian and dynastic rule?
10. Talk about e a few of the longstanding myths that Beard debunks. What about Cleopatra's suicide, for instance?
11. How much did you know about Rome before reading SPQR? What have you learned that surprised you or, perhaps, supported what you already understood about the ancient world? What struck you most in reading Beard's history?
12. Much is made about Beard's humorous approach to the history of Rome. What did you find funny?
(We'll add specific questions if and when they're made available by the publisher.)