SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome

by Mary Beard

‘They create desolation and call it peace’ is a slogan that has often summed up the consequences of military conquest. It was written in the second century CE by the Roman historian Tacitus, referring to Roman power in Britain.

To be sure, in some respects Polybius tries to shoehorn the political life that he witnessed at Rome into a Greek analytical model that does not entirely fit. Saddling his discussion with terms like ‘democracy’ is, for example, deeply misleading. ‘Democracy’ (demokratia) was rooted politically and linguistically in the Greek world. It was never a rallying cry at Rome, even in its limited ancient sense or even for the most radical of Roman popular politicians. In most of the conservative writing that survives, the word means something close to ‘mob rule’. There is little point in asking how ‘democratic’ the politics of Republican Rome were: Romans fought for, and about, liberty, not democracy. Yet, in another way, by nudging his readers to keep sight of the people in their picture of Roman politics and to look beyond the power of the elected officials and the aristocratic senate, Polybius sparked an important debate that is still alive today. How influential was the popular voice in Roman Republican politics? Who controlled Rome? How should we characterise this Roman political system?

In the middle of the second century BCE another prominent figure successfully argued that a Greek-style theatre being built in Rome should be demolished, as it was better and more character forming for Romans to watch plays standing up, as they had traditionally done, rather than sitting down in decadent Eastern fashion. In short, so these arguments went, what passed for Greek ‘sophistication’ was no more than insidious ‘softness’ (or mollitia in Roman jargon), which was bound to sap the strength of the Roman character.

There was undoubtedly a lot of vociferous nostalgia in Rome for the tough old days, when wives were kept in their place. ‘Egnatius Metellus took a cudgel and beat his wife to death because she had drunk some wine,’ insisted one first-century CE writer, with apparent approval, referring to an entirely mythical incident in the reign of Romulus. Even the emperor Augustus took advantage of the traditional associations of wool working, in what was something like the ancient equivalent of a photo opportunity, by having his wife Livia pose at her loom in their front hall in full public view. But the chances are that those tough old days were in part the product of the imagination of later moralists, as well as a useful theme for later Romans to exploit in establishing their old-fashioned credentials.

Throughout history, some men have justified their domination of women by simultaneously relishing and deploring an image of the dangerous and transgressive female, whose largely imaginary crimes, sexual promiscuity (with the uncomfortable question marks this poses over any child’s paternity) and irresponsible drunkenness demonstrate the need for tight male control.

The 23rd of September, the governor urged (in words still preserved in an inscription), might ‘justly be considered equal to the beginning of all things … for [Augustus] has given a different appearance to the whole world, a world which would have met its ruin if … he had not been born’.

All over the empire the rich paraded their wealth in large and expensive accommodations for themselves, measured not by floor area but by the number of tiles on the roof (to qualify as a local councillor, one law states, you needed to have a house with 1,500 roof tiles).

No one has ever framed a better critique of Roman imperial power than the words put into the mouths of rebels against Rome by Roman writers themselves.