SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome

by Mary Beard

is a dangerous myth that we are better historians than our predecessors. We are not.

I love this statement!

SPQR takes its title from another famous Roman catchphrase, Senatus PopulusQue Romanus, ‘The Senate and People of Rome’.

‘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.

Cicero himself had large amounts of money invested in low-grade property and once joked, more out of superiority than embarrassment, that even the rats had packed up and left one of his crumbling rental blocks.

Rome had projected its obsessions with the apparently unending cycle of civil conflict back onto its founder.

The ‘Republic’ was born slowly, over a period of decades, if not centuries. It was reinvented many times over.

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

In most of the conservative writing that survives, the word means something close to ‘mob rule’.

Rome was the only place in the ancient Mediterranean where the state took responsibility for the regular basic food supplies of its citizens.

Caesarian sections, which despite the modern myth had no connection with Julius Caesar, were used simply to cut a live foetus out of a dead or dying woman.

He also secured his position by severing the links of dependence and personal loyalty between armies and their individual commanders, largely thanks to a simple, practical process of pension reform.

Eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow you die’ was a favourite theme in Roman moralising).

‘The cash that comes from selling your labour is vulgar and unacceptable for a gentleman … for wages are effectively the bonds of slavery.’ It became a cliché of Roman moralising that a true gentleman was supported by the profits of his estates, not by wage labour, which was inherently dishonourable.

‘I’m no longer worried that I shall die of hunger / I’m rid of aching legs and getting a deposit for my rent / I’m enjoying free board and lodging for eternity.’

This was on a Roman Tombstone.