The early history of Rome is littered with myths, unfounded assumptions, misunderstood political institutions, unheralded heroes, glorified villains and black holes of ignorance. Who better to separate fact from fiction, the known from the unknowable, than British scholar Mary Beard?
A Cambridge-educated classicist, Beard has written or co-authored about 20 books, many of which deal with antiquity. These include 2015’s SPQR (a Latin-based acronym for “the senate and the people of Rome”).
Over the course of more than 530 pages, plus a list of reading recommendations, a valuable timeline and maps, Beard guides readers through the Roman world from 753 BCE, the supposed date of the city’s founding, to 212 CE, covering the reign of the city’s kings, the development and collapse of the Roman Republic and the first 200 years or so of the Roman Empire.
SPQR is exhaustive but never exhausting. This is no dry recitation of facts, because Beard has a strong analytical bent. Unfortunately, as she acknowledges, studying antiquity can be difficult at times, because many records are nonexistent, incomplete or unreliable, thanks to partisan biases. So some educated guesswork is inevitable.
Male and female, the mighty and the humble, the free and the enslaved, the city and the provinces -- they’re all here, much like us and yet radically different as well.
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