S.P.Q.R: A History of Ancient Rome — A work that awakens one’s inner Roman
Rome was not built in a day.
“You too Brutus, then fall Caesar!”
“Carpe Diem” [Seize the day — a popular Latin motivational catchphrase that’s now typical fare on graffiti, tattoos and t-shirts]
Divide et impera (Divide and Rule)
All roads lead to Rome, and that is where all roads end
“Caesar’s wife must be above suspicion”
Urbs primus in indis (First city in India, as the British imagined Bombay)
Boudicca-on-the-chariot-statue in London [shown as she burns Roman Londonium ]
The Asterix and Obelix comics
Primus Inter Pares
Pontifex - a priestly, though elected religo-political position in ancient Rome, once held by Julius Caesar, and later reserved for the Emperor in the days of the Empire - later to be monopolized by the Popes as a tradition which persists today
Even for someone living in a culture and nation not rooted in the Western World, the legacy and heritage of Rome, its institutions, its language, its cultural concepts and its innumerable stories kept popping up in my life almost every other day, even when I was not really thinking or reading about them.
Though a history enthusiast since childhood, I did not have a particular urge to read in depth about the rise, decline and fall of the Roman world, beyond what one would end up encountering in the course of a normal sweep through history. Rome seemed like the long surviving, less cooler successor of Greece, Egypt and other worlds of antiquity, that simply spread around the Mediterranean and just implemented their ideas a bit – bridges, aqueducts, temples, amphitheaters and all that — with a mix of terrible ‘reverses’ such as failure of democracy, assassinations, crazy and whimsical emperors (Caligula and Nero), and finally, abandoning their own Gods for the new faith of Christ from the Levant and falling to Attila and then the barbarians. Besides these historical facts and events, I had chanced upon Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, first as an abridged version which I read as a kid, and then, in its full vividity [and monstrosity] — as half of my 10th grade English syllabus. Though the world of Shakespeare’s play was indeed exciting and fun to explore, I quite [wrongly] associated it more with the author’s creative prowess and flair at bringing forth subtle aspects of human behaviour and relations in spaces and times removed from his as well as ours, as he had also done in his other works I had read, such as The Tempest, Othello and Macbeth.
After these brief encounters and experiences, I had largely relegated away Rome into the rarely-opened vaults of memory. Though the concepts and stories I mentioned kept making me go back and not letting this vault buried under cobwebs, it was still not a matter of great interest.
However, it is this book which I credit with offering a lot of fresh perspectives and motivations, got me restarted on an undergoing, hopefully lifelong quest of understanding the Roman Empire and its multifarious structures and legacies which still drive our world.
One aspect of Beard’s work which makes it successful is her decision to focus exclusively on an important and specific sub-period of Rome’s history - its first millennium from its mythical founding by Romulus and Remus in 700BC to the universal grant of citizenship to all free born Roman subjects by Emperor Caracalla in 212 A.D . This helps avoid the book from being too long and amorphous, for Rome’s history can otherwise be justly stretched all the way till the fall of Constantinople [now Istanbul] 1453 A.D. Furthermore, it dodges later event cycles such as The Crisis of the Third Century; the slow but steady rise of Christianity and the increasing role of “barbarian” tribes; and finally the rise of East Roman/Byzantine Empire as a successor state; which are both controversial and vast enough on their own to merit separate treatment. Much ink [and film] has already been spilled on issues and concerns from these periods, such as: Why did Rome decline? Was Christianity helpful in prolonging or complicit in weakening it? etc etc. Thus, interested readers can always turn to this content and find excellent references to grasp these latter events.
A second endearing point of the book is the sheer range of characters Mary Beard manages to flesh out, starting right from the first chapter where the upstart orator-lawyer-politician of provincial origin Cicero makes a rhetorical speech full of both facts and assumptions against his rival Catiline, a elite heir of Rome’s founding families. Engineering a vast and complex buffet, Beard with great skill plucks out key characters and families whose distinct actions, choices and motivations define Roman history and its evolution and make them truly memorable for any reader. Examples include Lucretia whose dishonour at the hands of the king Tarquin sparked the revolt ending Roman monarchy, the Lucius Brutus who lead this revolt, Cincinnatus the farmer who came out of retirement to became the dictator for a few years of trouble and then went back as he had come to his plough and life of retirement, the Barbatus and Scipio families , the Gracchus brothers who brought food subsidies, land grants and populism to Roman politics, and the two triumvirates of Pompey-Caesar-Crassus and Antony-Octavius-Lepidus. Since reading this work, whenever I, on occasion, bump into an event from Roman times, it is these character sketches that I run though in a flash to create a suitable background for understanding it.
Cincinnatus with his plough – Public statue from Cincinnati, U.S.A
Cato the Elder – famous for his pitch for conservative Romanness and weariness of both Greece and Carthage, the utterer of “Carthago delenda est”
Beard often explains and understands how a section of society behaved based on concepts like class struggle, the universal equality of man grounded in post-Enlightenment thought . For instance, she imagines Roman provincial subjects such as the Celtic British (Britons) wanting to defy the Roman administration by putting on a merely outward display of Romanness in presence of Roman officials, hence re-asserting their equality. However, this overlooks possible motivations which would now seem weak for a modern human mind – such as the Celts indeed believing that it was the Roman conduct and way of living that had given them the favor of the gods and was hence worthy of emulation — and that they were simply lacking the resources and understanding to emulate them correctly in some situations.
In summary, this book is sure to kindle [or re-kindle, as in my case] in any reader the urge to understand and explore the Roman world ever more. Rome has been an enduring object of study for historians, archaeologists, lawyers and many others, right from Machiavelli and Gibbon to Jared Diamond, Samuel Huntington and Ed Luttwak in our present times – and there is hence no dearth of content to satiate this urge once it has been created — and to that end Mary Beard’s work plays the able catalyst.
Should someone ought to read this book tabula rasa, without any prior impression or exposure to Roman history? Perhaps, if you’re the kind of adventurous reader [or a MMORPG buff] that loves being suddenly thrown into a new world and having to explore it from the word go. However, if you’re the kind that prefers a less rockier start, I would recommend reading first either of the following:
abridged versions of Shakespeare’s Roman plays [Julius Caesar, Antony and Cleopatra]
other popular content featuring Rome such as the Asterix comics
simply browsing some of the Youtube channels I list below
Just reading few basic pages either from Wikipedia or their other favourite online/offline encyclopedia on titles such as “Roman Empire”, “Julius Caesar”, “Pax Romana”, “Punic Wars”, “Sulla”, “Crassus”, “Augustus”, “Nero”, “Trajan”, “Cicero” etc
Youtube Channels for further exploring Roman History: Invicta, Historia Civilis, Thersites the Historian, Roomaboo Ramblings, Filaxim Historia, toldinstone
*SPOILER ALERT* and a Note: Read the below only if you want a trailer of the book contents before actually diving into it, some of this may sound incomplete or hard to comprehend
A sneak-peek runthrough of some of the aspects covered:
Chapter I: Cicero’s Finest Hour
Cicero’s first term as consul. [other offices: aedile, praetors,tribunes]
Cicero was a famous lawyer of rural Italian ancestry, highly educated, Grecophile and had been instructed in rhetoric and speech from the Greek world gurus.
One of his most famous speeches – against a purported conspiracy by a disgruntled person of patrician origins opposed to current dispensation - Catiline
Excerpt from his Speech: Quo usque tandem abutere, Catalina, patientia nostra
Cornered and executed ; Cicero used executive powers
8th November, 63BC
Later, Cicero exiled and house demolished - made a comeback
SPQR = Senate and People of Rome
Still used after the Senate became bureaucratic and procedural under Augustus, and was to become even more defunct under Diocletian onwards [not covered in the book]. Nonetheless,on the back of coins, a representation of Roman rule and imperium
Two origin stories and their symbolism ingrained in the city and public
Story I - The wolf-reared twins, fratricide, abduction and rape
Remus Romulus reared by wolfess; born to virgin priestess
Romulus killed Remus over problems
Rape of the Sabine women, later reconciliation
Hut of Romulus preserved for many centuries
A definite “founding day” which used to be celebrated
Centrality of the seven hills around which Rome was founded
Capitoline Hill → “Capitol Hill” of US inspiration
Story II - Troy, Sparta, Carthage etc
Trojan Greek prince Aeneas goes to Carthage and marries Punic princess Dido
Later deserts her and somehow founds Rome
Propagated by Virgil’s Aeneid
These stories were reinforced through literature, coins, graffiti, politics etc
Other key legends establishing the “Roman ideal”, virtue etc:
Horatii twins, Brutus, Cincinattus, First Punic war hero
Cato the Elder, Carthago Delenda Est
Taboo and bad experience with kings; Etruscan overlordship connection
7 initial kings
1st king Romulus; initial kings relatively popular
Later kings were either Etruscan clients or vassals or Etruscans themselves, increasingly unpopular
Rape of Lucretia, revolt of Brutus
Roman Religion:
Vestal Virgins → “Big” predictions
College of pontiffs —> Pontifus Maximus [Caesar]
Roman Gods: Jupiter, Castor and Pollux etc → Later mapped onto the Greek gods
Later additions: Serapius, Anatolian Mother Goddess
Augurs → Small realtime predictions
Aediles, Tribunes, Consuls
Roman architecture, demographics,
How Romans used to live:
Very influenced by the findings at Pompeii and Herculaneum destroyed by Vesuvius eruption
Apartments known as insulae - lower floors were considered more elite and better!
Fire a major problem → Firemen and fire brigade[s] were hence important voting blocs
Festivals and associated games → Important political activities → tribunes and consuls flaunt grandness of organization as well as their money
Large amounts of slums , poor public hygiene, absence of cooking facilities
Social evolution; both class and ethnic/territorial democratization through the ages:
- Initially a oligarchy with patricians dominating a single assembly
- Patricians vs plebeians
- Latium, Etruscum/ Etruria, Sabium → Initially Latins regarded as separate, later entire region became Rome
- After Sabian War, better integration with neighboring cities
- After Social War; better rights and near equality across Italy → whole of Italy sort of a unified city → Addition of “tribes” from outside Rome to the democracy [In the Roman republic, tribes functioned as sort of constituencies/electorates]
- After slave revolts, better and more humane long term rules and pathway to citizenship, harsher law and order punishments
- Cicero and Pompeii both were from Italian small town ancestry.
Legions, land, welfarism
Evolution of actual political dynamics:
Political class obsessed with military expansion, creating and governing provinces, military and service-time prestige
Triumphs → Large procession, parading of spoils,
Age of the families : Scipios, Barbatus etc
Legions → Citizenship and land on retirement, became centrally paid only later , retired veterans used for demographic engineering and political wrangling
Roman economy, commerce and culture:
Egypt and Africa [Tunisia] → Breadbasket, Papyrus, Red Sea and Down the Nile and East African trade
France → Wine, olives, cheese
Britain → Tin
Thrace and later Dacia → Horses
Macedonia → Gold
Bithynia, Cilicia, and various other Asia Minor regions → Minerals
Roman wine culture vs Celtic Beer Culture → Decline of “biergartens” after Roman conquest of Gaul
Territorial Expansion and Foreign Policy:
Gaul, Carthage and Greece → Much later, Persia
Gauls sacked Rome in 360 BC → Major psychological event and benchmark
Often, Roman allied or protected minor Greek polis would drag or invite them into conflicts, or atleast these were the casus bellum prominently portrayed
About Varun:
Varun is currently a PhD candidate researching Artificial Intelligence, specifically, Natural Language Processing, at Carnegie Mellon University’s Language Technologies Institute, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Specifically, his research interests lie in natural language generation and data augmentation.
Beyond this, he’s an enthusiast and dabbler in history, geopolitics and palaeontology, with a particular interest in late medieval and post-Renaissance European History, the history of Christianity and Islam, as well as the evolutionary history of dinosaurs, marsupials and hominids.