SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome

by Mary Beard

cast of characters in

SpQR parody

The Romans had not, as they assumed, simply inherited the priorities and concerns of their founder. Quite the reverse: over centuries of retelling and then rewriting the story, they themselves had constructed and reconstructed the founding figure of Romulus as a powerful symbol of their preferences, debates, ideologies and anxieties. It was not, in other words, to go back to Horace, that civil war was the curse and destiny of Rome from its birth; Rome had projected its obsessions with the apparently unending cycle of civil conflict back onto its founder.

Romulous was Rome's character, perhaps First Century BC, Projected back on founding story

However hard we try, it is impossible to construct a coherent narrative that could replace the legends of Romulus or Aeneas.

However hard one tries, it is impossible to find an allternative narrative to replace Romulus or Aenaes

fact that there are eight names suggests that something has got confused

The seven hills.festival has eight hills

There was one obligation that the Romans imposed on all those who came under their control: namely, to provide troops for the Roman armies.

ThoSe WHo Rome defeated had to provide soldiers for Rome' Armies

For the single most significant factor behind victory at this period was not tactics, equipment, skill or motivation. It was how many men you could deploy.

Rome successful because its system allowed deploying more soldiers than others

effectively replaced a governing class defined by birth with one defined by wealth and achievement.

New rights to plebes replaced.birth with achievement

The king was invading Egypt for the second time, and the Egyptians had asked the Romans for help. A Roman envoy, Gaius Popilius Laenas, was dispatched and met Antiochus outside Alexandria. After his long familiarity with the Romans, the king no doubt expected a rather civil meeting. Instead, Laenas handed him a decree of the senate instructing him to withdraw from Egypt immediately. When Antiochus asked for time to consult his advisors, Laenas picked up a stick and drew a circle in the dust around him. There was to be no stepping out of that circle before he had given his answer. Stunned, Antiochus meekly agreed to the senate’s demands. This was an empire of obedience.

After invading Egypt, AntiochIus Epiphanies asked For help. ROman negotiator dispatched drew circle in dirt around him. Said couLld not step out of circle until he'd agreed. Swiftly agreeded.

the idea that it was the norm, as the Romans insisted, to be a citizen of two places – to count two places as home – was fundamental to Roman success on the battlefield and elsewhere,

Rome invented idea that iT was the norM To have two citizenships, and that was key to its success

Suetonius quotes him, ‘I found the city built of brick and left it built of marble,’

Found acity of brick and left a city of marble

Gaius may have been assassinated because he was a monster, but it is equally possible that he was made into a monster because he was assassinated.

Caligula May have been assassinated because he was a monster but it is equally plausable he was made into a monstor because he had been assassinated

‘If a man were called to fix the period in the history of the world, during which the condition of the human race was most happy and prosperous, he would, without hesitation, name that which elapsed from the death of Domitian to the accession of Commodus’ – that is, what many since have called the period of the ‘good emperors’: Nerva, Trajan, Hadrian, Antoninus Pius, Marcus Aurelius and Lucius Verus.

Gibbon's Good Emperors--and his naieve belief that everyone would prefer living then.

Vespasian continued his down-to-earth line in self-deprecating wit right up until his last words: ‘Oh dear, I think I’m becoming a god …’

Vespasien, on deathbead: "Oh dear: I think I'm becoming a god."

cliché of Roman moralising that a true gentleman was supported by the profits of his estates, not by wage labour, which was inherently dishonourable. Latin vocabulary itself captured the idea: the desired state of humanity was otium (not so much ‘leisure’, as it is usually translated, but the state of being in control of one’s own time); ‘business’ of any kind was its undesirable opposite, negotium (‘not otium’).

Liesure or work? The quesrion was social divide

‘they create desolation and call it peace’,

They create desolation and call it peace

the Jews managed to operate within Roman culture. For the Romans, Christianity was far worse. First, it had no ancestral home. In their ordered religious geography, Romans expected deities to be from somewhere: Isis from Egypt, Mithras from Persia, the Jewish god from Judaea.

Jews were from Judea; but Christians weren't from anywhere -- religion spread by conversion

Christianity spread from its small-scale origins in Judaea largely because of the channels of communication across the Mediterranean world that the Roman Empire had opened up and because of the movement through those channels of people, goods, books and ideas.

Rome's colossal territory and internal trade spread Christianity

irony is that the only religion that the Romans ever attempted to eradicate was the one whose success their empire made possible and which grew up entirely within the Roman world.

Only religion Rome sought to eradicate was the one its own success permitted to spread

by 200 CE, according to the best recent estimate, roughly 20 per cent of the free population had become citizens.

By 200 ad, 20 percent of the free population were citizens

The simple reason that, in the 60s CE, Saint Peter was crucified while Saint Paul enjoyed the privilege of being beheaded was that Paul was a Roman citizen.

Peter crucified but Paul beheaded, because Paul was a Roman citizen

By the end of the second century CE more than 50 per cent of the senators were from the provinces.

By end of second Century ad, 50 percent of Senators not.Roman

212 CE the emperor Caracalla decreed that all the free inhabitants of the Roman Empire, wherever they lived, from Scotland to Syria, were Roman citizens.

In 212 ad all Free men within Empire were decreed to be Roman citizens

Citizenship, once granted to all, became irrelevant.

Citizenship, once granred to all, became irrelevant

the new Rome that emerged from ‘the crisis’ of the third century CE was strikingly different from anything that we have been exploring in Rome’s first millennium.

New Rome in third Century ad was not in Agustian template, so strikingly riff than before