Ancient Rome was an imposing city even by modern standards, a sprawling
imperial metropolis of more than a million inhabitants, a "mixture of
luxury and filth, liberty and exploitation, civic pride and murderous
civil war" that served as the seat of power for an empire that spanned
from Spain to Syria. Yet how did all this emerge from what was once an
insignificant village in central Italy? In S.P.Q.R., world-renowned
classicist Mary Beard narrates the unprecedented rise of a civilization
that even two thousand years later still shapes many of our most
fundamental assumptions about power, citizenship, responsibility,
political violence, empire, luxury, and beauty.
From the foundational myth of Romulus and Remus to 212 ce--nearly a
thousand years later--when the emperor Caracalla gave Roman citizenship
to every free inhabitant of the empire, S.P.Q.R. (the abbreviation of
"The Senate and People of Rome") examines not just how we think of
ancient Rome but challenges the comfortable historical perspectives that
have existed for centuries by exploring how the Romans thought of
themselves: how they challenged the idea of imperial rule, how they
responded to terrorism and revolution, and how they invented a new idea
of citizenship and nation.
Opening the book in 63 bce with the famous clash between the populist
aristocrat Catiline and Cicero, the renowned politician and orator,
Beard animates this "terrorist conspiracy," which was aimed at the very
heart of the Republic, demonstrating how this singular event would
presage the struggle between democracy and autocracy that would come to
define much of Rome's subsequent history. Illustrating how a classical
democracy yielded to a self-confident and self-critical empire,
S.P.Q.R. reintroduces us, though in a wholly different way, to famous
and familiar characters--Hannibal, Julius Caesar, Cleopatra, Augustus,
and Nero, among others--while expanding the historical aperture to
include those overlooked in traditional histories: the women, the slaves
and ex-slaves, conspirators, and those on the losing side of Rome's
glorious conquests.
Like the best detectives, Beard sifts fact from fiction, myth and
propaganda from historical record, refusing either simple admiration or
blanket condemnation. Far from being frozen in marble, Roman history,
she shows, is constantly being revised and rewritten as our knowledge
expands. Indeed, our perceptions of ancient Rome have changed
dramatically over the last fifty years, and S.P.Q.R., with its nuanced
attention to class inequality, democratic struggles, and the lives of
entire groups of people omitted from the historical narrative for
centuries, promises to shape our view of Roman history for decades to
come.
